Mexico sends Drugs Lord Caro Quintero and 28 in the US, while officials meet with the Trump team

Mexico City – Mexico sent 29 digits of drug cartel, including Drugs Lord Rafael Caro Quintero, which was Behind the killing of a US DEA agent in 1985The United States, because the Trump administration is pressure on drug trafficking organizations.

The unprecedented show of security cooperation comes under the conditions in which top Mexican official imposing 25% rates for all Mexican imports Starting on Tuesday.

Thursday to the US on Thursday were brought from Mexico prisons to board a airport in northern Mexico, which took them to eight American cities, according to the Mexican government.

Among them were counted members of five of the six Mexicans Organized crime groups designated earlier this month by the administration of US President Donald Trump as “foreign terrorist organizations”.

A WHO’S WHO OF MEXICAN CARTELS

In addition to Caro Quintero were the leaders of the Cartel, the Security Heads from both factions of the Sinaloa Cartel, Cartel Finance Operators and a desired man in connection with Killing a northern Carolina sheriff’s deputy in 2022.

Vicente Carrillo FuentesFormer leader of the Drug Cartel Juarez, based in the Border City Ciudad Juarez, opposite El Paso, Texas, and the brother of Lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes, known as “Mr. Cerului”, who died in a plastic surgery in 1997, was among those taken in the USA.

According to prosecutors in both countries, prisoners sent in the US on Thursday faced drug trafficking and, in some cases, homicides among other crimes.

“We will follow these offenders to the greatest extent of the law in honor of the agents to apply the brave law who have dedicated their careers – and, in some cases, given their lives – to protect people innocent from the flower of violent cartels,” said the US General Prosecutor, Pamela Bondi, in a statement.

Rates to Mexican imports that appear

Removing the figures of the drug card coincided with a visit to Washington by the Secretary for Foreign Affairs of Mexico, Juan Ramón from Fuente and other top economic and military officials, who met with their counterparts, including with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

In exchange for delaying tariffs, Trump has insisted that Mexico collapse on cartels, illegal immigration and fentanel production, despite the significant decreases in migration and overdoses in the last year.

“This is historical, this has never happened in the history of Mexico,” said Mike Vigil, the former head of the International Operations. “This is a huge holiday thing for the drug application administration.”

A long -lasting Da Target

The surprise surface of the Mexico of one of the ten most sought after FBI was becoming weeks.

Caro Quintero released in 2013, after 28 years in prison, when a court overturned the 40 -year penalty for the 1985 abduction and killing of the US Drug Administration Agent, Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. Brutal crime marked a low point in US-Mexico relationships.

Caro Quintero, the former leader of the Guadalajara cartel, has since returned to drug trafficking and has unleashed bloody lawn in the border state in northern Mexico until the Mexico He was arrested by Mexican forces in 2022.

In January, a non -profit group representing the Camarena family sent a letter to the White House, asking the Trump administration to renew the US long -term requests for Mexico to extract Caro Quintero, according to a letter provided by the Associated Press by a person familiar with the family disclosure.

“The return to the US would give the family such a necessary closure and serve the best interests of justice,” the letter shows.

Pressure increased after Trump threatened to impose rigid commercial tariffs on Mexico and was designated More Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizationsAccording to a person provided anonymity to discuss the sensitive diplomacy that has entered the removal of Caro Quintero.

The interim chief of the US administration for drug application, Derek Maltz, offered the white house a list of almost 30 Mexican targets searched in the US, according to the person. Caro Quintero, for whose arrest of the US offered a reward of $ 20 million, was the number one on this list, according to the person.

“This moment is extremely personal for men and women who believe that Caro Quintero is responsible for brutal torture and killing the special agent Da Enrique” Kiki “,” Maltz said on Thursday.

The person said that the government of President Claudia Sheinbaum, haste to seek favor with the Trump administration and show a powerful ally in the fight against cartels, bypassed the formalities of the US-Mexico extradition treaty to remove Caro Quintero and the other defendants.

This means that it could allow US prosecutors to try it for Camarena’s killing -something that is not provided in the existing extradition request to deal with separate drug trafficking in a federal court.

“If it is sent to the US outside a formal extradition and if Mexico has not placed restrictions, then it can be prosecuted for whatever the US wants,” according to Bonnie Klapper, a former Brooklyn Federal Prosecutor, who is familiar with the case.

The US sought the extradition of Caro Quintero shortly after his arrest in 2022. But the request remained blocked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for unknown reasons, as Sheinbaum’s predecessor and mentor, Andrés Manuel López ObradorIt has severely reduced Mexican cooperation with DEA ​​to protest against US law enforcement operations, targeting high political and military officials.

Cartels could answer

Also among those eliminated were two leaders of now deceased Cartel Los ZetasMexicans Miguel Treviño Morales and his brother Omar Treviño Morales, known as Z-40 and Z-42. The brothers were accused by the American authorities of leaving the successor of the Northern Cartel in prison.

The removal of the Treviño Morales brothers marks the end of a long process that began after Miguel’s 2013 capture and two years later of his brother, Omar. The lawyer General of Mexico, Alejandro Gertz Manero, described the delay as “really shameful”.

Mexican security analyst David Saucdo said that, since the negotiations with the Trump administration began, he expected the US government to ask for three things: an increase in drug seizures, arrests of high profile drugs and the teaching of drugs targeted for a long time.

He called on Thursday’s removals “an important concession” by the Mexico government in the United States.

The decision also threatens to support an unwritten understanding – with notable exceptions – That Mexican drug gentlemen will execute sentences in the Mexican prisons, where they have often been able to continue to run their illicit affairs, said Saucedo.

“There will certainly be an angry reaction of drug trafficking groups against the Mexican state,” he said.

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Goodman reported from Miami. Megan Janetsky contributed to this report in Mexico City.

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