Mexican authorities have sent 37 inmates allegedly linked to powerful drug cartels to face trials in the US, after President Donald Trump floated the possibility of US land strikes targeting organised criminal gangs inside Mexico.
It marks the third round of extraditions of alleged criminals from Mexico to the US over the past year, as President Claudia Sheinbaum’s government faces accusations of appeasing Trump.
Mexico’s secretary of security Omar García Harfuch said in a post on X the transferred detainees posed a “threat to the country’s security”.
The US Justice Department welcomed the extraditions, declaring it a successful part of a broader strategy to “destroy the cartels”.
“These 37 cartel members,” US Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement, “will now pay for their crimes against the American people on American soil”.
García Harfuch confirmed US prosecutors had committed to not pursuing the death penalties for the accused criminals and said they had been transported in accordance with “National Security Law and under bilateral cooperation mechanisms, with full respect for national sovereignty.”
Inmates were sent to Washington, New York, Houston, Pennsylvania, San Diego and San Antonio on board seven armed Mexican aircrafts.
Mexico extradited 26 “key operatives” of major gangs last August, following a similar operation in February. It takes the total number of prisoners transferred to 92 in Trump’s second administration.
President Sheinbaum’s government has recently pursued an aggressive crackdown on drug trafficking. She has cited a 50% decrease in fentanyl seizures at the US southern border when defending her position.
Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity in an interview aired in early January that after targeting drug trafficking by water “We are going to start now hitting land,” adding that “the cartels are running Mexico”.
Last week, President Sheinbaum said US troop deployment across the southern border was “not on the table”.
Since seizing former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro from the capital Caracas, Trump has made threats against other countries in the region, including Mexico, Cuba and Colombia.
