Extraordinary transfer of 29 cartel bosses from Mexico to the US redefines the bilateral relationship

The murder of a DEA agent in Mexico 40 years ago has become a topic of interest this week with the transfer of one of his alleged assassins, Rafael Caro Quintero, to the United States. The transfer — not an extradition, as clarified on Friday by Mexican Prosecutor General Alejandro Gertz — was part of an extraordinary operation, carried out between Wednesday and Thursday, involving 3,500 police and military personnel and ending with 29 Mexican cartel bosses on U.S. soil. It remains to be seen whether the operation will completely remove the tariff threat looming over Mexico or whether, at least, it will resut in a pause in the medium- or long-term.

The delivery of the drug lords returns the initiative to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, at least for a while. Since Donald Trump’s return to the White House on January 20, the bilateral relationship has consisted of containing the threats of the Republican magnate, the apostle of aggressive negotiations, always with the hammer in hand. The fight against fentanyl trafficking has become one of his main slogans. In this context, Trump uses the regional economy to force changes in the North American security paradigm.

Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, a DEA agent working undercover in Mexico, was murdered in 1985 in Jalisco, an action carried out by the now-extinct Guadalajara Cartel, which included, among others, Caro Quintero himself. The torture inflicted on Camarena, his kidnapping, and his eventual assassination, elevated his figure to a mythical status for U.S. security agencies, which have been committed for decades to combating illegal drug trafficking.

As such, it was strange to see Caro Quintero this week on a military plane heading to the U.S., a place as much loved as it is hated by drug trafficking logistics operators: the great market, but also where the threat of final imprisonment looms. Now an old man, in reality, Caro Quintero setting foot in the U.S. has changed the bilateral narrative, hooked since the murder of Camarena to a feeling of injustice. At least that has been the case north of the Río Bravo.

The transfer of Caro Quintero and other cartel capos — most notably the leaders of Los Zetas, Omar and Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales, known as Z-40 and Z-42 — also buries a period of mistrust between the two nations, which began with the Cienfuegos affair. In October 2020, the U.S. justice system arrested General Salvador Cienfuegos, head of the Mexican army during the government of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), in Los Angeles on charges of drug trafficking. The arrest sparked an intense diplomatic offensive by the Mexican government, then led by Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-2024). The Department of Justice agreed to drop the charges and Cienfuegos returned to Mexico, where he was exonerated due to lack of evidence.

Although Mexico won that battle, López Obrador insisted on reviewing the role of foreign security agencies and their interference in the country’s affairs. The president even forced a reform of the National Security Law, which limited the actions of foreign agents on Mexican soil, which provoked protest from Washington. Eventually the changes were approved, although with some watering-down. The strained relationship has hardly changed in recent years. Mexico had assumed its role as watchdog against migratory flows from Central and South America, a major concern for the White House. Calm and routine suited both sides.

But Trump’s return has shaken the foundations of the relationship. Determined to impose his narrative in the media — the story that Mexico permits drug trafficking and the flow of migrants to the north — the facts mattered little. Upon his arrival in the White House, the U.S. president said that he would tax imports from Mexico by 25% if the neighboring country did not act decisively against the cartels. He never explained what criteria he would use to evaluate Mexico’s performance. A week ago, for example, he said that he was not happy. He did not explain why.

That is how a dizzying week began. As of last Monday, the specter of levies had crept into the conversations. The tariff moratorium that Trump had decreed at the beginning of February was entering its final stretch. Sheinbaum’s government announced meetings in Washington. The security cabinet took the lead over the economic team. On Thursday, the coordinator of Mexico’s national security strategy, Omar García Harfuch, presented the results in this area to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington. While that was happening, the military planes that had transported the 29 cartel bosses to the U.S. were flying back home.

There have been many doubts surrounding the transfer, first and foremost the word itself: transfer. Last Friday Gertz, suddenly converted into an extraordinary spokesperson for the Sheinbaum government, deployed a knotty repertoire of responses to reporters eager for information. The prosecutor assured that Harfuch’s explanations had convinced Rubio, as had the presentations of the heads of the army and navy, who also travelled to Washington. It is not clear, however, how much the thousands of arrests made in recent months in Mexico, or the thousands of kilos of drugs seized and weapons confiscated, mattered in the face of the media bombshell of the 29 cartel kingpins.

What was more important was what Gertz did not say, which was practically everything, the hallmark of a prosecutor who is fond of feints and gambits. Mexico still does not know how the handover of 29 drug lords to the U.S. was arranged, beyond the fact that it was not an extradition; a procedural modality subject to a series of rules, which in practice rules out the death penalty for those accused. Gertz explained that Mexico is handing over the capos on a matter of national security, the same reason why the United States can send them to the wall. The handover, he said, almost bored, was made at the request of the neighboring government.

The inside story of this whole affair — the how, the when, the who — remains for the moment in the shadows, a realm to which Trump’s subsequent maneuvers also belong. The joke in Mexico on Friday pointed to the lack of assets for future negotiations because, now that the government has emptied its prisons, what can it offer in the face of the Republican’s next tantrum? Mexico is now attempting to change the subject. On Friday, Sheinbaum presided over the state funeral for the Aztec ruler Cuauhtémoc, assassinated 500 years ago somewhere in the south of New Spain. The president recalled the importance of asking for forgiveness. The pendulum is moving away from the Río Bravo and swinging toward the Atlantic Ocean. For once, it is a relief.

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