Prisoners, including Rafael Caro Quintero, extradited as Mexico faces pressure to show it’s tackling fentanyl trafficking. Mexico has extradited 29 high-level organised crime operatives to the US, as it faces intense pressure from the Trump administration to show that it is tackling fentanyl trafficking.
Among the prisoners sent to the US was Rafael Caro Quintero, the drug lord who was convicted of the murder of an undercover US Drug Enforcement Administration agent in 1985. The extraditions come as Mexico tries to convince the US to postpone 25% tariffs on all Mexican imports. Donald Trump has tied the tariffs to results on fentanyl trafficking and migration, without setting any specific targets.
Caro Quintero, the former leader of the now defunct Guadalajara cartel, spent 28 years in prison for the torture and murder of Enrique “Kiki” Camarena before being released in 2013 when a court overturned his sentence. He returned to drug trafficking and was on the FBI’s 10 most wanted fugitives list until he was rearrested by Mexican security forces in 2022.
Other big names being handed over to the US include two former leaders of the notoriously violent Zetas cartel, Omar and Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales. They were arrested in 2013, but US authorities had accused them of continuing to run the Cartel del Noreste, the successor of Las Zetas, from prison.
The extraditions come as Mexican delegations visit their counterparts in the US to negotiate another delay of Trump’s tariffs, the deadline for which is 4 March. Roughly 80% of Mexican exports go to the US, and experts say the tariffs could send the country into recession – though they would also hit the US economy and business interests too.
Mexico won a one-month reprieve from the previous deadline by agreeing to send 10,000 soldiers to the US-Mexico border – even though it was unclear how the extra soldiers would reduce the flow of fentanyl, given that it is so potent that only relatively small volumes are moved, and that the great majority is trafficked through ports of entry by US citizens.
Since then, the US has designated six Mexican organised crime groups as foreign terrorist organisations (FTOs), ratcheting up the diplomatic pressure between the countries. While the designation of cartels as FTOs itself does not authorise US military action in Mexico, some fear it is a first step towards it.
Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, warned that her country would not tolerate an “invasion” of its national sovereignty by US forces. Mexico has stepped up its own actions against the Sinaloa cartel, one of the groups now considered a terrorist organisation by the US, arresting several significant figures in recent weeks.
