By FABIOLA SÁNCHEZ and JOSHUA GOODMAN
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico has despatched 29 drug cartel figures, together with drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, who was behind the killing of a U.S. DEA agent in 1985, to the US because the Trump administration turns up the strain on drug trafficking organizations.
The unprecedented present of safety cooperation comes as high Mexican officers are in Washington making an attempt to go off the Trump administration’s menace of imposing 25% tariffs on all Mexican imports beginning Tuesday.
These despatched to the U.S. Thursday have been introduced from prisons throughout Mexico to board planes at an airport north of Mexico Metropolis that took them to eight U.S. cities, in keeping with the Mexican authorities.
Amongst them have been members of 5 of the six Mexican organized crime teams designated earlier this month by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration as “overseas terrorist organizations.”
In addition to Caro Quintero have been cartel leaders, safety chiefs from each factions of the Sinaloa cartel, cartel finance operatives and a person needed in reference to the killing of a North Carolina sheriff’s deputy in 2022.
Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, a former chief of the Juarez drug cartel, primarily based within the border metropolis of Ciudad Juarez, throughout from El Paso, Texas, and brother of drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes, often called “The Lord of The Skies,” who died in a botched cosmetic surgery in 1997, was amongst these turned over to the U.S.
In line with prosecutors in each international locations, the prisoners despatched to the U.S. Thursday confronted expenses associated to drug trafficking and in some instances murder amongst different crimes.
“We are going to prosecute these criminals to the fullest extent of the legislation in honor of the courageous legislation enforcement brokers who’ve devoted their careers — and in some instances, given their lives — to guard harmless folks from the scourge of violent cartels,” U.S. Lawyer Basic Pamela Bondi stated in a press release.
The elimination of the drug cartel figures coincided with a go to to Washington by Mexico’s International Affairs Secretary Juan Ramón de la Fuente and different high financial and army officers, who met with their counterparts, together with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
In trade for delaying tariffs, Trump had insisted that Mexico crack down on cartels, unlawful immigration and fentanyl manufacturing, regardless of vital dips in migration and overdoses over the previous 12 months.
“That is historic, this has actually by no means occurred within the historical past of Mexico,” stated Mike Vigil, former DEA chief of worldwide operations. “It is a big celebratory factor for the Drug Enforcement Administration.”
Mexico’s shock handover of one of many FBI’s Ten Most Needed Fugitives was weeks within the making.
Caro Quintero had walked free in 2013 after 28 years in jail when a court docket overturned his 40-year sentence for the 1985 kidnapping and killing of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. The brutal homicide marked a low level in U.S.-Mexico relations.
Caro Quintero, the previous chief of the Guadalajara cartel, had since returned to drug trafficking and unleashed bloody turf battles within the northern Mexico border state of Sonora till he was arrested by Mexican forces in 2022.
In January, a nonprofit group representing the Camarena household despatched a letter to the White Home urging the Trump administration to resume longstanding U.S. requests for Mexico to extradite Caro Quintero, in keeping with a duplicate of the letter offered to The Related Press by an individual conversant in the household’s outreach.
“His return to the U.S. would give the household a lot wanted closure and serve one of the best pursuits of justice,” the letter states.
Strain elevated after Trump threatened imposing stiff commerce tariffs on Mexico and designated a number of Mexican cartels as overseas terrorist organizations, in keeping with an individual on the situation of anonymity to debate the delicate diplomacy that went into Caro Quintero’s elimination.
The performing head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Derek Maltz, offered the White Home with a listing of practically 30 Mexican targets needed within the U.S. on legal expenses, in keeping with the individual. Caro Quintero, for whose arrest the U.S. had supplied a $20 million reward, was primary on that checklist, in keeping with the individual.
“This second is extraordinarily private for the women and men of DEA who consider Caro Quintero is answerable for the brutal torture and homicide of DEA Particular Agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena,” Maltz stated Thursday.
The individual stated President Claudia Sheinbaum’s authorities, in a rush to hunt favor with the Trump administration and present itself a robust ally within the combat towards the cartels, bypassed the formalities of the U.S.-Mexico extradition treaty to take away Caro Quintero and the opposite defendants.
Meaning it might probably enable prosecutors within the U.S. to strive him for Camarena’s homicide — one thing not contemplated within the current extradition request to face separate drug trafficking expenses in a Brooklyn federal court docket.
“If he’s being despatched to the U.S. exterior of a proper extradition, and if Mexico didn’t place any restrictions, then he might be prosecuted for regardless of the U.S. desires,” in keeping with Bonnie Klapper, a former federal narcotics prosecutor in Brooklyn who’s conversant in the case.
The U.S. had sought the extradition of Caro Quintero shortly after his arrest in 2022. However the request remained caught at Mexico’s overseas ministry for unknown causes as Sheinbaum’s predecessor and political mentor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, severely curtailed Mexican cooperation with DEA to protest undercover U.S. legislation enforcement operations in Mexico concentrating on senior political and army officers.
Additionally amongst these eliminated have been two leaders of the now defunct Los Zetas cartel, Mexicans Miguel Treviño Morales and his brother Omar Treviño Morales, often called Z-40 and Z-42. The brothers have been accused by American authorities of operating the successor Northeast Cartel from jail.
The elimination of the Treviño Morales brothers marks the tip of a protracted course of that started after the seize in 2013 of Miguel and two years later of his brother, Omar. Mexico’s Lawyer Basic Alejandro Gertz Manero had described the delay as “actually shameful.”
Mexican safety analyst David Saucedo stated that since negotiations with the Trump administration started, he had anticipated the U.S. authorities to demand three issues: a rise in drug seizures, arrests of high-profile drug trafficking suspects and the handing over of drug traffickers lengthy focused by the U.S. for extradition.
He referred to as Thursday’s removals “an necessary concession” by Mexico’s authorities to the US.
The choice additionally threatens to upend an unwritten understanding — with notable exceptions — that Mexican drug lords would serve sentences in Mexican prisons the place they have been usually ready proceed to run their illicit companies, Saucedo stated.
“There’ll absolutely be a livid response by drug trafficking teams towards the Mexican state,” he stated.
Goodman reported from Miami. Megan Janetsky contributed to this report from Mexico Metropolis.
Observe AP’s protection of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
Initially Printed: