WASHINGTON (AP) — Mexico despatched 26 high-ranking cartel figures to the USA Tuesday in the latest major deal with the Trump administration as American authorities ratchet up strain on legal networks smuggling medication throughout the border.
These handed over to U.S. custody embody Abigael González Valencia, a frontrunner of “Los Cuinis,” a gaggle intently aligned with infamous cartel Jalisco New Technology or CJNG. One other defendant, Roberto Salazar, is needed in connection to the 2008 killing of a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy. Different outstanding figures have ties to the Sinaloa Cartel and different violent drug trafficking teams.
The transfers are a milestone for the Trump administration, which is made dismantling harmful drug cartels a key Justice Division precedence. It’s the second time in months that Mexico has expelled cartel figures accused of narcotics smuggling, homicide and different crimes amid mounting strain from the Trump administration to curb the circulate of medicine onto American streets.
“These 26 males have all performed a task in bringing violence and medicines to American shores — underneath this Division of Justice, they are going to face extreme penalties for his or her crimes towards this nation,” Lawyer Basic Pam Bondi stated in an announcement. “We’re grateful to Mexico’s Nationwide Safety group for his or her collaboration on this matter.”
The cartel figures have been placed on planes to the U.S. after the Justice Division agreed to not search the dying penalty towards any of the defendants or towards any cartel leaders and members despatched to the U.S. in February. That switch was of 29 cartel figures, together with drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, who was behind the killing of a U.S. DEA agent in 1985.
“This switch is yet one more instance of what’s doable when two governments stand united towards violence and impunity,” U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ronald Johnson stated in an announcement. “These fugitives will now face justice in U.S. courts, and the residents of each of our nations will probably be safer from these widespread enemies.”
The February transfers got here as Mexican officers have been making an attempt to move off the Trump administration’s risk of imposing tariffs on Mexican imports. Late final month, President Donald Trump spoke with Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum and agreed to place off threatened 30% tariffs for an additional 90 days to permit for negotiations.
Sheinbaum has proven a willingness to cooperate extra on safety than her predecessor, particularly being extra aggressive in pursuit of Mexico’s cartels. However she has drawn a transparent line relating to Mexico’s sovereignty, rejecting ideas by Trump and others of intervention by the U.S. army.
Additionally included within the group expelled Tuesday was Servando Gómez Martinez, often known as “La Tuta,” a former faculty trainer who grew to become one among Mexico’s most-wanted drug lords as head of the Knights Templar cartel. He was captured in 2015 and sentenced to 55 years in a Mexican jail in June 2019.
Gomez led the quasi-religious legal group that when exercised absolute management over Michoacan and he favored to seem in interviews and movies. The cartel orchestrated politics, managed commerce, dictated guidelines and preached a code of ethics round devotion to God and household, even because it murdered and plundered.
Abigael González Valencia is the brother-in-law of CJNG chief Nemesio Rubén “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, a high goal of the U.S. authorities. Abigael González Valencia was arrested in February 2015 in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco and had been preventing extradition to the USA since then. The U.S. authorities has supplied a reward of as much as $15 million for info resulting in “El Mencho’s” arrest or conviction.
Alongside his two brothers, Abigael González Valencia led “Los Cuinis,” which financed the the founding and progress of the CJNG, probably the most highly effective and harmful cartels in Mexico. CJNG traffics lots of of tons of cocaine, methamphetamine, and fentanyl into the USA and different international locations and is understood for excessive violence, murders, torture, and corruption.
One of his brothers, José González Valencia, was sentenced in Washington’s federal court docket in June to 30 years in a U.S. jail after pleading responsible to worldwide cocaine trafficking. Jose González Valencia was arrested in 2017 underneath the primary Trump administration at a seaside resort in Brazil whereas vacationing together with his household underneath a pretend identify.
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Verza reported from Mexico Metropolis
