Mexico has sent drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, who is wanted for the notorious killing of a U.S. DEA agent in 1985, to the United States with 28 other prisoners requested by the U.S. government, the Justice Department confirmed Thursday evening.
“The defendants taken into U.S. custody today include leaders and managers of drug cartels recently designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists,” the Justice Department said in a statement. It said they are facing charges including racketeering, drug-trafficking, murder, illegal use of firearms, money laundering and other crimes.
The Mexican government said in a statement, “They were wanted for their links to criminal organizations for drug trafficking, among other crimes.” Mexico said the transfers were carried out “under institutional protocols with due respect for their fundamental rights.”
Also on the list were two leaders of the Los Zetas cartel, Mexicans Miguel Treviño Morales and his brother Omar Treviño Morales, known as Z-40 and Z-42.
The removal of the drug lords from Mexico coincided with a visit to Washington by Mexico’s Foreign Minister Juan Ramón de la Fuente and other top economic and military officials. The meeting was the latest in ongoing negotiations with the U.S. over trade and security relations, which have radically shifted since President Trump took office.
“As President Trump has made clear, cartels are terrorist groups, and this Department of Justice is devoted to destroying cartels and transnational gangs,”Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement.
DEA Acting Administrator Derek S. Maltz described Caro Quintero as “a cartel kingpin who unleashed violence, destruction, and death across the United States and Mexico” and called his transfer “extremely personal for the men and women of DEA” due to Caro Quintero’s role in the brutal 1985 kidnapping and killing of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena.
The attack marked a low point in U.S.-Mexico relations. Caro Quintero walked free in 2013 after 28 years in prison when a court overturned his 40-year sentence for Camarena’s murder. He spent years on the FBI and DEA’s most wanted lists.
Caro Quintero, the former leader of the Guadalajara cartel, had since returned to drug trafficking and unleashed bloody turf battles in the northern Mexico border state of Sonora until he was arrested by Mexican forces in 2022.
In January, a nonprofit group representing the Camarena family sent a letter to the White House urging the Trump administration to renew longstanding U.S. requests for Mexico to extradite Caro Quintero, according to a copy of the letter provided to The Associated Press by a person familiar with the family’s outreach.
“His return to the U.S. would give the family much needed closure and serve the best interests of justice,” the letter states.
The U.S. had sought the extradition of Caro Quintero shortly after his arrest in 2022. But the request remained stuck at Mexico’s foreign ministry for unknown reasons as Sheinbaum’s predecessor and political mentor, Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, severely curtailed Mexican cooperation with DEA to protest undercover U.S. law enforcement operations in Mexico targeting senior political and military officials.
“If he’s being sent to the U.S. outside of a formal extradition, and if Mexico didn’t place any restrictions, then he can be prosecuted for whatever the U.S. wants,” according to Bonnie Klapper, a former federal narcotics prosecutor in Brooklyn who is familiar with the case.
The removal of the Treviño Morales brothers also marks the end of a long process that began after the capture in 2013 of Miguel Treviño Morales and, two years later, of his brother, Omar. The process wound on for so many years that then-Mexico’s Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero, described the lags as “truly shameful”.
The Treviño Morales family, who American authorities have accused of running the violent northeastern Cartel from prison, have charges pending in the US for participation in a criminal organization, drug trafficking, firearms offenses and money laundering.
The 29 prisoners, who had been held in various prisons across Mexico, were being transferred to several cities across the U.S. on Thursday, including Chicago; Houston; McKinney, Texas; New York City; Phoenix; San Antonio; Washington, D.C. and White Plains, New York, officials said.
The Mexican government released mug shots of the 29 men, with parts of their faces hidden behind black bars.
The transfer comes as top Mexican officials are in Washington, D.C., trying to head off the Trump administration’s threat of imposing 25% tariffs on all Mexican imports next week.
Mr. Trump said Thursday that he intends to move forward with the sanctions, writing on Truth Social that “drugs are still pouring into our Country from Mexico and Canada at very high and unacceptable levels.”
In exchange for delaying tariffs, Trump had insisted that Mexico crack down on the U.S.-Mexico border, cartels and fentanyl production, despite significant dips in migration and overdoses over the past year. The removals may indicate that negotiations are moving along as the tariff deadline approaches.
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