The Mexican government on Thursday began sending to the United States nearly 30 top cartel operatives wanted by the American authorities, including one notorious drug lord that U.S. officials had been seeking to bring to justice for 40 years, according to a statement by the Mexican government.
The handover of so many significant cartel figures to the United States at once was one of the most important efforts by Mexico in the modern history of the drug war to send traffickers across the border to face charges in American federal courts.
The move came as a high-level delegation from Mexico arrived in Washington to meet with senior U.S. officials to hammer out a security agreement at a moment of tension between the two nations. The U.S. government declined to make any immediate public comment, but the Mexican foreign ministry released a statement announcing the release of the cartel figures.
“This action is part of the work of coordination, cooperation and bilateral reciprocity within the framework of respect for the sovereignty of both nations,” the statement said.
Among those being flown to the United States was Rafael Caro Quintero, a founding member of the Sinaloa drug cartel who was convicted in Mexico of having masterminded the 1985 murder of the D.E.A. agent Enrique Camarena, three people familiar with the matter said.
Mexico was also releasing into U.S. custody Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales, an infamously brutal former leader of the Zetas cartel who was captured in Mexico in 2013, the people said.
In recent weeks, the Trump administration has placed enormous diplomatic and economic pressure on President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico, threatening to impose tariffs on her country and suggesting that it might take military action against drug lords and cartel infrastructure within her nation’s borders.
On Thursday, at a joint news conference with Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, Mr. Trump kept up the pressure, saying that the flow of lethal narcotics across the southern border had not stopped.
“The drugs continue to pour into our country, killing hundreds of thousands of people,” he said. “We’re losing substantially more than 100,000 people. I mean, dead.”
Still, Mexico’s decision to send the wanted cartel operatives to the United States was hailed in American law enforcement circles as a major victory and a clear signal that Ms. Sheinbaum planned to cooperate with the Trump administration in cracking down on the cartels.
“This is an unbelievably important moment and marks a true turning point,” said Ray Donovan, the former chief of operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration. “This shows President Sheinbaum’s willingness to work with us to target and dismantle the criminal organizations that have impacted the United States and Mexico for generations.”
Getting hold of Mr. Caro Quintero in particular has been all but an obsession among officials at the D.E.A. for decades. After being released from Mexican custody on a legal technicality in 2013, he returned to hiding in rural Sinaloa state and was re-captured by the Mexican authorities near the town of San Simón in 2022.
He has been under indictment on several drug trafficking counts in Federal District Court in Brooklyn since 2020. And he could make an appearance there in a front of a federal judge as early as Friday, one of the people familiar with the matter said.
Mr. Treviño, who is better known as Z-40 after his radio call sign in the Zetas, is widely viewed as one of Mexico’s most violent cartel operatives, having helped to perfect the practice of using carnage as a message. He is facing overlapping drug charges in the federal courts in Texas, including those in Austin and Laredo.
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