Mexico Extraditas Rafael Caro Quintero, another 28 drug chiefs for us – Complete list

Mexico City (AP) – Mexico has sent 29 drug cartels figures, including drug trafficker Rafael Caro Quintero, who was behind the murder of an agent of the United States DEA in 1985, to the United States when the Trump administration presents the pressure on drug trafficking organizations.

The unprecedented sample of security cooperation occurs when the senior Mexican officials are in Washington trying to avoid the threat of the Trump administration to impose 25% tariffs on all Mexican imports as of Tuesday.

Those sent to the United States on Thursday were brought from prisons throughout Mexico to address airplanes at an airport north of Mexico City that took them to eight US cities, according to the Mexican government.

Among them were members of five of the six Mexican organized crimes groups designated earlier this month by the administration of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, as “foreign terrorist organizations.”

Who is who of the Mexican posters

In addition to Caro Quintero, they were leaders of the poster, security leaders of both factions of the Sinaloa cartel, poster finance agents and a man wanted in relation to the murder of a deputy of the Sheriff of North Carolina in 2022.

Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, a former leader of the Juarez Drug Poster, based in the border city of Ciudad Juárez, in front of El Paso, Texas, and brother of the drug trafficker Amado Carrillo Fuentes, known as “The Lord of the Skies”, who died in a failed plastic surgery in 1997, was among the United States.

According to prosecutors from both countries, prisoners sent to the United States faced positions related to drug trafficking and, in some cases, homicide, among other crimes.

“We will prosecute these criminals to the maximum extension of the law in honor of the brave agents of application of the law who have dedicated their careers, and in some cases, given their lives, to protect the innocent people from the scourge of violent posters,” said the attorney general of the United States, Pamela Bondi, in a statement.

Tariffs on Mexican imports that are coming

The elimination of the figures from the drug poster coincided with a visit to Washington by the Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, and other senior economic and military officials, who met with their counterparts, including the Secretary of State of the United States Marco Rubio.

In exchange for delaying tariffs, Trump had insisted that Mexico take energetic measures against posters, illegal immigration and fentanyl production, despite the significant falls in migration and overdose during the past year.

“This is historical, this has never really happened in the history of Mexico,” said Mike Vigil, former head of international operations of the DEA. “This is a great celebration for drug control administration.”

A goal of the DEA for a long time

The surprise delivery of Mexico of one of the ten most wanted FBI fugitives was weeks in development.

Caro Quintero had walked free in 2013 after 28 years in prison when a court revoked his 40 -year sentence for the kidnapping and murder of 1985 of the United States Drug Control Administration agent, Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. The brutal murder marked a low point in relations between the United States and Mexico.

Since then, Caro Quintero, the former leader of the Guadalajara poster, had returned to drug trafficking and unleashed the bloody grass battles in the border state of northern Mexico in Sonora until he was arrested by Mexican forces in 2022.

In January, a non -profit group that represents the Camarena family sent a letter to the White House urging the Trump administration to renew US requests. UU. To extradite Caro Quintero, according to a copy of the letter provided to the Associated Press by a person familiar with the dissemination of the family.

“His return to the United States would give the family a very necessary closure and serve the best interests of justice,” says the letter.

The pressure increased after Trump threatened imposing rigid commercial tariffs in Mexico and designated several Mexican posters as foreign terrorist organizations, according to a person under condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive diplomacy that entered the elimination of Caro Quintero.

The interim chief of the United States drug control administration, Derek Maltz, provided the White House for a list of almost 30 Mexican objectives sought in the United States for criminal charges, according to the person. Caro Quintero, on whose arrest the United States had offered a reward of $ 20 million, was number one on that list, according to the person.

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

The person said that the government of President Claudia Sheinbaum, hurried to seek the favor of the Trump administration and shows a strong ally in the fight against the posters, ignored the procedures of the United States Extradition Treaty and Mexico to eliminate Caro Quintero and the other defendants.

That means that prosecutors in the United States prove it for the murder of Camarena, something that is not contemplated in the existing extradition request to face separate drug trafficking charges in a Federal Brooklyn court.

“If you are being sent to the United States outside formal extradition, and if Mexico did not impose any restriction, then it can be processed by what the United States wants,” according to Bonnie Klapper, a former federal prosecutor of narcotics in Brooklyn who is familiar with the case.

The United States had sought the extradition of Caro Quintero shortly after its arrest in 2022. But the request remained trapped in the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs for unknown reasons, since the predecessor and political mentor of Sheinbaum, Andrés Manuel López, Obrador, severely rounded Mexican cooperation with DEA ​​to the operations of the United States Law.

The posters could answer

Also among those eliminated were two leaders of the now missing poster of Los Zetas, Mexicans Miguel Treviño Morales and his brother Omar Treviño Morales, known as Z-40 and Z-42. The brothers have been accused by the US authorities of directing the northeast successor of the prison cartel.

The elimination of the Treviño Morales brothers marks the end of a long process that began after the capture in 2013 of Miguel and two years after his brother, Omar. The Attorney General of Mexico, Alejandro Gertz Manero, had described the delay as “truly shameful.”

Mexican security analyst David Saucedo said that since negotiations with the Trump administration began, he expected the United States government to demand three things: an increase in drug seizures, arrests of suspected trafficking of high profile drugs and the delivery of drug traffickers attacked by the United States by extradition.

He called on Thursday’s motive “an important concession” of the Government of Mexico to the United States.

The decision also threatens to dump an unwritten understanding, with notable exceptions, that Mexican drug traffickers would fulfill sentences in Mexican prisons where they could often continue to manage their illicit businesses, Saucedo said.

“Surely there will be a furious reaction from drug trafficking groups against the Mexican State,” he said.