Years after being one of the most wanted men in the US authorities, Mexican drug cartel boss Rafael Caro Quintero was taken to a New York court on Friday to answer charges that included coordinating the 1985 murder of a US federal agent.
Karo Quintero pleaded not guilty to running a continuing criminal enterprise. Apart from that, too, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, the leader of another cartel. Carrillo has been accused of arranging the lure and murder in Mexico, but has not been accused of being involved in the death of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena.
Caro Quintero, Carillo Fuentes and 27 Mexican prisoners were sent to eight U.S. cities on Thursday. This is a move that came as Mexico tried to stem the threat of the Donald Trump administration to impose a 25% tariff on Mexican imports next week.
For Camarena's family, the arrest marked a much-anticipated moment.
“For 14, 631 days, we have held hope. We hope that this moment will come. We hope that we will live to see accountability, and now that hope has finally become a reality,” the family said in a statement thanking Trump and everyone who has worked on the incident over the years.
The White House in a statement Friday ahead of the arrest known as “one of the world's most evil cartel bosses,” known as Caro Quintero.
In exchange for delays in tariffs, Trump had insisted that Mexico would crack down on cartels, illegal immigration and fentanyl production.
However, members of the Mexican security cabinet on Friday surrounded the relocation of 29 prisoners as a national security decision.
“It's not a commitment to the US, it's a commitment to ourselves,” said Mexican Attorney General Alejandro Ghatz Manelo. “The problems of drug trafficking and organized crime have been a real tragedy for our country.”
Mexican security secretary Omar Garcia Halfucci said those sent to US custody were Mexico's “power generation of violence,” representing a security threat to both countries.
Caro Quintero has long been one of America's top Mexican targets for extradition.
He was one of the founders of the Guadalajara-based cartel and was one of the leading suppliers of heroin, cocaine and marijuana in the late 1970s and 1980s.
Authorities said Caro Quintero was because Camarena was lured, tortured and murdered in 1985, and he blamed agents for the attack on a huge marijuana plantation the previous year. Camarena's murder became a low point in US Mexican relations and was adapted into a drama on the popular Netflix series Narcos: Mexico.
Caro Quintero was 28 years in Mexico when the Court of Appeal overturned his verdict in 2013.
Upon his release, he returned to drug trafficking and unleashed a bloody turf battle in the Mexican border states in northern Sonora until he was arrested by Mexican forces in 2022.
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“I've never returned to drugs,” Caro Quintero told Spanish newspaper El Pais in 2018.
“Anyone says it's a liar!” he said, according to the newspaper. “I'm not working anymore. Let's be clear about that! I was a drug trafficker 23 years ago, and now I'm not. I'll never again.”
The US, which added Caroquinterror to the FBI's 10 most wanted list in 2018 with a $20 million reward, sought extradition shortly after its 2022 arrest. A few days after the then-Mexico and the US president, Andre's Manuel Lopez Obrador and Joe Biden met at the White House, respectively.
However, the demand remained as Lopez Obrador severely cut his cooperation with the United States in protest of American law enforcement operations targeting political and military officials in Mexico.
Then, in January, a nonprofit group representing the Camarena family sent a letter to the new Trump administration, urging them to update their extradition requests.
Carrillo Fuentes is a brother to Amado Carrillo Fuentes, a drug Lord known as “The Lord of the Skies,” who died in a failed plastic surgery in 1997. Carrillo Fuentes, known as “The Viceroy,” continued his brother's business of smuggling drugs across borders until his arrest in 2014.
He was sentenced to 28 years in prison in 2021 for organized crime, money laundering and arms violations.
Among others are key members of Mexican organized crime groups that have been recently designated as “foreign terrorist organizations” by the Republican administration.
They include cartel leaders, security chiefs of both factions of the Sinaloa Cartel, cartel finance operatives and a man they wanted in connection with the 2022 murder of the North Carolina Sheriff's deputy.
