Mexico has extradited 29 high-level organised crime operatives to the US, because it faces intense strain from the Trump administration to indicate that it’s tackling fentanyl trafficking.
Among the many prisoners despatched to the US was Rafael Caro Quintero, the drug lord who was convicted of the homicide of an undercover US Drug Enforcement Administration agent in 1985.
The extraditions come as Mexico tries to persuade the US to postpone 25% tariffs on all Mexican imports. Donald Trump has tied the tariffs to outcomes on fentanyl trafficking and migration, with out setting any particular targets.
Caro Quintero, the previous chief of the now defunct Guadalajara cartel, spent 28 years in jail for the torture and homicide of Enrique “Kiki” Camarena earlier than being launched in 2013 when a courtroom overturned his sentence.
He returned to drug trafficking and was on the FBI’s 10 most needed fugitives checklist till he was rearrested by Mexican safety forces in 2022.
Different massive names being handed over to the US embrace two former leaders of the notoriously violent Zetas cartel, Omar and Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales. They had been arrested in 2013, however US authorities had accused them of continuous to run the Cartel del Noreste, the successor of Las Zetas, from jail.
The extraditions come as Mexican delegations go to their counterparts within the US to barter one other delay of Trump’s tariffs, the deadline for which is 4 March.
Roughly 80% of Mexican exports go to the US, and specialists say the tariffs may ship the nation into recession – although they’d additionally hit the US economic system and enterprise pursuits too.
Mexico received a one-month reprieve from the earlier deadline by agreeing to ship 10,000 troopers to the US-Mexico border – despite the fact that it was unclear how the additional troopers would scale back the movement of fentanyl, on condition that it’s so potent that solely comparatively small volumes are moved, and that the good majority is trafficked by way of ports of entry by US residents.
Since then, the US has designated six Mexican organised crime teams as overseas terrorist organisations (FTOs), ratcheting up the diplomatic strain between the international locations.
Whereas the designation of cartels as FTOs itself doesn’t authorise US army motion in Mexico, some worry it’s a first step in the direction of it.
Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, warned that her nation wouldn’t tolerate an “invasion” of its nationwide sovereignty by US forces.
Mexico has stepped up its personal actions towards the Sinaloa cartel, one of many teams now thought-about a terrorist organisation by the US, arresting a number of vital figures in latest weeks.
US spy drones have been working over Mexico, feeding Mexican safety forces info that assisted within the arrests, in response to Gen Ricardo Trevilla, Mexico’s defence secretary.
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