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.
Pressure increased after Trump threatened imposing stiff trade tariffs on Mexico and designated several Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, according to the person on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive diplomacy that went into Caro Quintero’s removal.
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 prisoners requested by the U.S. government, a Mexican government official and other sources said Thursday.
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 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.
