Mexico has sent drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, who was behind the killing of a U.S. DEA agent in 1985, to the United States with 28 other prisoners requested by the U.S. government, the Mexican government said in a statement Thursday.
The unprecedented show of security cooperation comes as top Mexican officials are in Washington trying to head off the Trump administration's threat of imposing 25% tariffs on all Mexican imports starting Tuesday.
Those sent to the U.S. Thursday were brought from prisons across Mexico to board planes at an airport north of Mexico City that took them to eight U.S. cities.
Among them were members of five of the six Mexican organized crime groups designated earlier this month by the Trump administration as “foreign terrorist organizations.”
Besides Caro Quintero were cartel leaders, security chiefs from both factions of the Sinaloa cartel, cartel finance operatives and a man wanted in connection with the killing of a North Carolina sheriff’s deputy in 2022.
Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, a former leader of the Juarez drug cartel, based in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, and brother of drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes, known as “The Lord of The Skies,” who died in a botched plastic surgery in 1997, was among those turned over to the U.S.
Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office said in a statement that the 29 prisoners sent to the U.S. Thursday faced charges related to drug trafficking among other crimes.
Also among those removed 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.
“This is historical, this has really never happened in the history of Mexico,” said Mike Vigil, former DEA chief of international operations. “This is a huge celebratory thing for the Drug Enforcement Administration.”
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, who met with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The meeting was the latest in ongoing negotiations with the U.S. over trade and security relations, which have radically shifted since U.S. President Donald Trump took office.
In exchange for delaying tariffs, Trump had insisted that Mexico crack down on cartels, illegal migration 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.
Mexico’s surprise handover of one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives was weeks in the making.
Caro Quintero had walked free in 2013 after 28 years in prison when a court overturned his 40-year sentence for the 1985 kidnapping and killing of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. The brutal murder marked a low point in U.S.-Mexico relations.
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.
The U.S. reached an agreement with Mexico and Canada on Monday to delay a 25% tariff on all imports from the countries for one month.
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.
Pressure increased after Trump threatened imposing stiff trade tariffs on Mexico and designated several Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, according to a person on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive diplomacy that went into Caro Quintero’s removal.
The acting head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Derek Maltz, provided to the White House a list of nearly 30 Mexican targets wanted in the U.S. on criminal charges, according to the person. Caro Quintero, for whose arrest the U.S. had offered a $20 million reward, was number one on that list, according to the person.
The person said President Claudia Sheinbaum’s government, in a rush to seek favor with the Trump administration and show itself a strong ally in the fight against the cartels, bypassed the formalities of the U.S.-Mexico extradition treaty to remove Caro Quintero and the other defendants.
That means it could potentially allow prosecutors in the U.S. to try him for Camarena’s murder — something not contemplated in the existing extradition request to face separate drug trafficking charges in a Brooklyn federal court.
“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 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.
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 Mexico’s Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero, described the lags as “truly shameful”.
The Treviño Morales family, who have been accused by American authorities 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.
Mexican security analyst David Saucedo said that since negotiations with the Trump administration began, he had expected the U.S. government to demand three things: an increase in drug seizures, arrests of high-profile drug trafficking suspects and the handing over of drug traffickers long targeted by the U.S. for extradition.
He called Thursday's removals “an important concession” by Mexico’s government to the United States.
“The United States’ intention is to extend its justice system,” so that crimes committed in Mexico are prosecuted in the U.S., Saucedo said.
The decision also threatens to upend an unwritten understanding — with notable exceptions — that Mexican drug lords would serve sentences in Mexican prisons where they were often able continue to run their illicit businesses, Saucedo said.
“There will surely be a furious reaction by drug trafficking groups against the Mexican state,” he said.
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Goodman reported from Miami. Megan Janetsky contributed to this report from Mexico City.
