Mexico sends the drug lord Caro Quintero and 28 others to the USA: NPR

Mexico -Stadt -Mexico sent 29 drug cartel figures, including the drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, who was behind the murder of a USdea agent in 1985, into the United States when the Trump administration increases the pressure on drug trafficking.

The unprecedented exhibition of the security cooperation comes because the Mexican top Mexican officials in Washington try to control the threat from the Trump government, from Tuesday, to impose 25% tariffs on all Mexican imports.

Those who were sent to the United States on Thursday were brought by prisons across Mexico to climb aircraft at an airport north of Mexico city, which, according to the Mexican government, brought them to eight US cities.

Among them were members of five of the six Mexican groups for organized crime, which were shown at the beginning of this month by the administration of US President Donald Trump as “foreign terrorist organizations”.

A Who is who made of Mexican cartels

In addition to Caro Quintero, the cartel leader, security chief from both factions of the Sinaloa cartel, the antitrust financing employee and a man who was sought in connection with the murder of a sheriff in North Carolina in 2022.

Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, a former leader of the Juarez drug cartel, based in the border town of Ciudad Juarez, to El Paso, Texas, and brother of drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes, known as “Lord of Heaven”, who died in 1997 in a botched plastic operation, were among those who were filmed in the USA over the USA in 1997

According to the prosecutors in both countries, the prisoners were sent to the United States on Thursday, which were confronted with drug trafficking and in some cases, among other things, murder crimes in connection with drug trafficking.

“We will fully pursue these criminals in honor of the courageous law enforcement officers who have devoted their career – and in some cases of their lives – to protect innocent people from the scourge of violent cartels,” said the US Attorney General Pamela Bondi in a statement.

Customs to Mexican imports that are emerging

The removal of the drugs of the drug cartel fell with a visit to Washington by the Mexican Foreign Minister Juan Ramón de la Fuente and other top economic and military officers who met with their colleagues, including US foreign minister Marco Rubio.

In return for the delay of tariffs, Trump insisted that Mexico, despite considerable migration and overdose last year, was promoted against cartels, illegal immigration and fentanyl production.

“This is historical, that really never happened in Mexico,” said Mike Vigil, former DEA leader for international operations. “This is a big solemn thing for the administration of the drug authority.”

A long-time dea target

Mexico's surprising handover of one of the ten most sought -after refugees of the FBI was the manufacture weeks.

Caro Quintero ran after 28 years in prison in 2013 when a court tipped his 40-year imprisonment for the kidnapping and murder of the US drug authority administrative administrator Enrique “Kiki” Camarena in 1985. The brutal murder marked a low point in relationships between the USA and Mexico.

Caro Quintero, the former leader of the Guadalajara cartel, has since returned to drug trafficking and had triggered bloody lawn battles in the border state of Northern Mexico by Sonora until it was arrested by Mexican armed forces in 2022.

In January, a non -profit group, which the Camarena family represented, sent a letter to the White House in which the Trump administration was asked to renew the long -standing US inquiries about Mexico in order to deliver Caro Quintero, as from a copy of the letter that was made available to the associated press with the family of the family.

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

The pressure increased after Trump threatened to impose stiff trade tariffs on Mexico and to describe several Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, a person on the condition of anonymity, to discuss sensitive diplomacy that went at Caro Quintero's distance.

The incumbent director of the US drug authority, Derek Maltz, provided the White House, according to the person, a list of almost 30 Mexican goals that were sought in the United States for criminal charges. Caro Quintero, for which the United States had offered a reward of 20 million US dollars, was number one on this list, according to the person.

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

The person said the government of President Claudia Sheinbaum, in the hurry to enter into favor with the Trump administration and to show a strong ally in the fight against the cartels, dealt with the formalities of the delivery contract in the USA-Mexico to remove Caro Quintero and the other accused.

This means that it could possibly enable the public prosecutors in the United States to try it for murder at Camarena – something that was not considered in the existing delivery application for separate drug trafficking in a federal court in Brooklyn.

“If he is sent to the USA outside of a formal delivery and that Mexico has not brought any restrictions, he can be pursued for everything that the United States wants,” said Bonnie Klapper, a former federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, who is familiar with the case.

Shortly after its arrest in 2022, the United States applied for the delivery of Caro Quintero. However, for unknown reasons, the request remained in the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as Sheinbaum's predecessor and political mentor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the Mexican cooperation with DEA ​​-Official official, against the proper investigation of the US sovereignty in the areas of US rights authority, in the areas of the US legal authority.

Cartels could answer

Also below the removed were two leaders of the Los Zetas cartel, who had now died, the Mexican Miguel Treviño Morales and his brother Omar Treviño Morales, known as Z-40 and Z-42. The brothers were accused by the American authorities to run the successor Northeast Cartel from prison.

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

David Saucedo, Mexican Security Analyst, said that the US government had expected the Trump government to call three things since the start of the negotiations with the Trump government: an increase in drug attacks, the arrests of suspects with high profile drug trafficking and the handover of drug dealers, who have long been targeted by the USA for delivery.

He called the circumstances on Thursday “an important concession” of the Mexican government to the United States.

The decision also threatens an unwritten understanding – with remarkable exceptions – that Mexican drug lords would serve sentences in Mexican prisons in which they were often able to continue their illegal business, said Sauckedo.

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