By Drazen Jorgic, Laura Gottesdiener and Lizbeth Diaz
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Mexico will extradite to the United States drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, convicted of murdering a U.S. anti-narcotics agent in 1985, and more than two dozen other suspected cartel members, sources told Reuters on Thursday.
Mexico’s attorney general’s office said in a statement that it had handed over 29 cartel members to the U.S., without confirming that Caro Quintero was among them. The move comes as diplomatic tensions simmer between the United States and Mexico over security, migration and tariffs.
President Donald Trump has threatened to impose 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico by March 4, given what his administration sees as insufficient progress reducing fentanyl deaths.
Caro Quintero, a co-founder of the Guadalajara Cartel, one of Latin America’s most powerful drug trafficking organizations during the 1980s, spent 28 years in prison for the brutal murder and torture of former Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, one of the most notorious killings in Mexico’s bloody narco wars.
Caro Quintero, 72, has previously denied involvement in the killing of Camarena. He was released in 2013 on a technicality by a Mexican judge and returned to trafficking before he was eventually captured by Mexican authorities in 2022.
Mexico on Thursday also extradited Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, known as Z-40, and Oscar Omar Trevino Morales, known as Z-42, two suspected former leaders of the violent Los Zetas drug cartel, to the United States, the Webb County Sheriff’s Office in Texas said. They were detained by Mexico’s military in 2013 and 2015, respectively.
The Trevinos’ lawyer, Juan Manuel Delgado, told Reuters he had not been officially notified of the extraditions.
Mexico’s foreign ministry, national defense ministry and the office of President Claudia Sheinbaum did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Drazen Jorgic, Laura Gottesdiener and Lizbeth Diaz; Editing by Anthony Esposito and Rosalba O’Brien)
