Mexico’s security minister said Tuesday that it had sent another 37 members of Mexican drug cartels to the United States, as the Trump administration ratchets up pressure on governments to crack down on criminal networks it says are smuggling drugs across the border.
Mexican Security Minister Omar García Harfuch wrote in a social media post on X that the people transferred were “high impact criminals” that “represented a real threat to the country’s security.”
It is the third time in less than one year that Mexico has sent detained cartel members to the U.S. as the country attempts to offset mounting threats by U.S. President Donald Trump. García Harfuch said the government has sent 92 people in total.
Video shared by Mexican authorities shows a line of handcuffed prisoners surrounded by heavily armed and masked officers being loaded onto a military jet at an airport on the outskirts of Mexico City.
The latest group of 37 detainees includes suspects affiliated with various cartels, including the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation syndicates — Mexico’s two largest criminal organizations — along with the Northeast cartel, which operates along the Texas-Mexico border, and the Beltrán Leyva gang.
These detainees include both suspects charged in the United States and others sought by U.S. authorities, but with no official charges pending against them, Saucedo said.
The Justice Department has agreed not to seek the death penalty for any of those expelled to the United States, García Harfuch says. Mexico has abolished capital punishment and routinely seeks U.S. guarantees that any suspects extradited or otherwise sent to the United States will not face the death penalty.