Drug lord Caro Quintero, 28 others sent to US as Mexican officials meet with Trump administration

Soldiers escort a man who authorities identified as Omar Trevino Morales, leader of the Zetas drug cartel. (Image: AP)

Drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero and 28 others drug cartel members were sent to the United States by Mexico as the Trump administration turned up the pressure on drug trafficking organizations.

The removal of the drug cartel figures coincided with a visit to Washington by Mexico's Foreign Affairs Secretary Juan Ramón de la Fuente and other top economic and military officials, who met with their counterparts, including US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

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 percent tariffs on all Mexican imports starting Tuesday, AP reported.

In exchange for delaying tariffs, Trump had insisted that Mexico crack down on cartels, illegal immigration and fentanyl production, despite significant dips in migration and overdoses over the past year.

According to the Mexico government, the drug cartel members sent to the US on Thursday were brought from prisons across Mexico to board planes that took them to eight US cities.

Among them were members of five of the six Mexican organized crime groups designated earlier this month by US President Donald Trump's administration as “foreign terrorist organizations”, according to a report by AP.

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 US.

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

“We will prosecute these criminals to the fullest extent of the law in honor of the brave law enforcement agents who have dedicated their careers — and in some cases, given their lives — to protect innocent people from the scourge of violent cartels," US Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement, AP reported.

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 US Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. The brutal murder marked a low point in US-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.

In January, a nonprofit group representing the Camarena family sent a letter to the White House urging the Trump administration to renew longstanding US 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.

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 US Drug Enforcement Administration, Derek Maltz, provided the White House with a list of nearly 30 Mexican targets wanted in the US on criminal charges, according to the person. Caro Quintero, for whose arrest the US had offered a $20 million reward, was number one on that list, according to the person.

(With inputs from AP)