Mexico has sent 29 drug cartel figures, including drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, who was behind the killing of a U.S. DEA agent in 1985, to the United States as the Trump administration turns up the pressure on drug trafficking organizations. 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% tariffs on all Mexican imports starting Tuesday. Those sent to the U.S. Thursday were brought 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 members of five of the six Mexican organized crime groups designated earlier this month by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration as “foreign terrorist organizations.” A who’s who of Mexican cartels 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 U.S. According to prosecutors in both countries, the prisoners sent to the U.S. 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 Pamela Bondi said in a statement. Tariffs on Mexican imports looming 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 U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. 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. “This is historical, this has really never happened in the history of Mexico,” said Mike Vigil, former DEA chief of international operations. “This is a huge celebratory thing for the Drug Enforcement Administration.” A long-time DEA target 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 1985 kidnapping and killing of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. 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 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 U.S. requests for Mexico to extradite Caro Quintero, according to a copy of […]