Mexico flew 37 cartel members to the United States on Tuesday as the Trump administration intensified pressure on foreign governments to crack down on their criminal drug trafficking networks.
“This morning, [Mexico’s Security Cabinet] transferred 37 operators of criminal organizations to the United States, individuals who represented a real threat to the country’s security,” Mexican Security Minister Omar García Harfuch announced in a Tuesday X post.
Harfuch also shared video footage of handcuffed prisoners surrounded by armed and masked officers being loaded onto a military jet in Mexico City.
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The Mexican Security Minister added that Tuesday’s transfer means that, under the Trump administration, Mexico has now sent “a total of 92 high-impact criminals” who “will no longer be able to generate violence in our country.”
Harfuch went on to note that the recently transferred cartel members were sent to “the cities of Washington, Houston, New York, Pennsylvania, San Antonio, and San Diego,” where they will face trial.
Mexican authorities, meanwhile, have noted the criminals all have pending cases in U.S. courts.
Among those recently flown from Mexico to the U.S. include members of the Sinaloa Cartel, the Beltrán-Leyva cartel, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the Northeast Cartel, and what is left over from the Los Zetas cartel, according to a report by Associated Press.
David Mora, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, told the outlet these transfers mean Mexico’s government is responding to increased pressure from the Trump administration by resorting to “extraordinary measures” as “demands from the White House dial up.”
Among those sent to the U.S. on Tuesday was alleged cartel conspirator María del Rosario Navarro Sánchez, the first Mexican national charged in the U.S. with providing material support to a terrorist organization.
Notably, Mexico’s cooperation also comes after President Donald Trump publicly flirted with the idea of taking military action on Mexican cartels — language that is likely being taken seriously, as it follows the United States’ capture of Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro.
“We’ve knocked out 97 percent of the drugs coming in by water, and we are going to start now hitting land with regard to the cartels,” President Trump told Fox News earlier this month, noting that the cartels he was referring to “are running Mexico.”
Last week, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum told President Trump that U.S. intervention in Mexico was “not necessary,” and insisted that the two governments should continue collaborating.
Mexico first flew cartel members to the United States last February — shortly after President Trump took office — sending 29 people, one of whom was notorious drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, who is wanted for the 1985 killing of a U.S. DEA agent.
In August, a second transfer included 26 cartel members from multiple organizations.
As Breitbart News reported, New York Times bestselling investigative journalist and Breitbart News Senior Contributor Peter Schweizer’s new book, The Invisible Coup, includes bombshell revelations on how Mexico’s more than 50 consulates have been running a shadow campaign in the U.S. to bend American elections in favor of Mexican interests.
In his book, Schweizer notes that former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) toured American cities in February 2017 seeking to rally Mexican migrants in the U.S. against President Trump’s policies that crippled drug cartel profits through strict immigration enforcement.
In his attempts to upend President Trump’s border policies, AMLO went as far as to suggest turning Mexico’s consulates into migrant defense offices, Schweizer writes — an unprecedented level of lobbying by a neighboring nation’s leader against a sitting United States president.
“A foreign leader so brazenly interfering in American politics was unprecedented, at least from a country with which the United States was not at war,” Schweizer says.
Peter Schweizer’s The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon is published by HarperCollins and is available to purchase now.
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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