By More than two dozen drug cartel suspects from Mexico — including the man charged in the 1985 slaying of a U.S. drug agent — are in U.S. custody after Mexican officials agreed to send them to the United States, four sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.
The 29 people accused of violence and drug trafficking were deported as the Trump administration has turned up pressure on Mexico to curb illegal immigration, cartel activity and fentanyl production with a promised 25% tariff on all Mexican imports set to start next week.
“For those of us who have investigated Mexican cartels for many generations, this is truly an historical moment,” said Ray Donovan, the former chief of operations at the Drug Enforcement Administration. “We have never seen this many sent from Mexico to the U.S. in one day.”
Among those deported by Mexico is Rafael Caro Quintero, who U.S. officials believe is responsible for the 1985 murder of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena and others.
Caro Quintero has been on the DEA’s most-wanted fugitives list for four decades. “Today we can proudly say he has arrived in the United States where justice will be served,” acting DEA Administrator Derek S. Maltz said.
The suspects sent to the United States included members of five of the six Mexican organized crime groups the Trump administration designated this month as “foreign terrorist organizations.”
Those sent to the United States on Thursday were taken from prisons across Mexico to board planes at an airport north of Mexico City that took them to eight U.S. cities, according to the Mexican government.
Among them were two leaders of the now-defunct Los Zetas cartel, Mexicans Miguel Treviño Morales and his brother Omar Treviño Morales, known as Z-40 and Z-42. U.S. authorities have accused the brothers of running the successor Northeast Cartel from prison.
The removal of the Treviño Morales brothers marks the end of a long process that began after the capture in 2013 of Miguel and two years later of his brother Omar. Mexican Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero had described the delay as “truly shameful.”
Agents escort Rafael Caro Quintero in Sinaloa, Mexico, on July 15, 2022.Secretary of the Navy of Mexico via AP file
Besides Caro Quintero, there 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 was among those turned over to the United States. He is a former leader of the Juárez drug cartel, based in the border city of Ciudad Juárez, 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 procedure in 1997.
According to prosecutors in both countries, the prisoners sent to the United States 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,” U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.
The deportation of the drug cartel figures coincided with a visit to Washington by Mexican Foreign Affairs Secretary Juan Ramón de la Fuente and other top economic and military officials, who met with their U.S. counterparts, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
In exchange for delaying tariffs, President Donald 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.
Mexico’s surprise handover of one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives was weeks in the making.
Caro Quintero had walked free in 2013 after 28 years in prison when a court overturned his 40-year sentence for the kidnapping and killing of Camarena, the DEA agent, in 1985. The brutal murder marked a low point in U.S.-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 Mexican forces arrested him in 2022.
The United States had sought Caro Quintero’s extradition shortly after he was arrested in 2022. But the request remained stuck at Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Ministry for unknown reasons as President Claudia Sheinbaum’s predecessor and political mentor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, severely curtailed Mexican cooperation with the DEA to protest undercover U.S. law enforcement operations in Mexico targeting senior political and military officials.
“This moment is extremely personal for the men and women of DEA,” said Maltz, the acting head of the DEA.
Mexican security analyst David Saucedo said that since negotiations with the Trump administration began, he had expected the U.S. government to demand three things: an increase in drug seizures, arrests of high-profile drug trafficking suspects and the handing over of drug traffickers the United States has long targeted for extradition.
He called Thursday’s removals “an important concession” by Mexico’s government.
The decision also threatens to upend an unwritten understanding — with notable exceptions — that Mexican drug lords would serve sentences in Mexican prisons, where they were often able continue to run their illicit businesses, Saucedo said.
“There will surely be a furious reaction by drug trafficking groups against the Mexican state,” he said.
