Mexican drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero pleads not guilty in 1985 killing of US federal agent

NEW YORK (AP) — After years as one of U.S. authorities' most wanted men, Mexican drug cartel boss Rafael Caro Quintero was brought into a New York courtroom Friday to answer charges that include orchestrating the 1985 killing of a U.S. federal agent.

The White House called Caro Quintero “one of the most evil cartel bosses in the world” in a statement before his arraignment, where more than 100 Drug Enforcement Administration agents and other federal officials filled a large ceremonial courtroom.

Dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, the 72-year-old Caro Quintero spoke little during the brief proceeding as his lawyer entered a not guilty plea on his behalf.

Another cartel leader, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, 62, also pleaded not guilty through an attorney. He's accused of arranging kidnappings and killings in Mexico but not accused of involvement in the death of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, whose killing was dramatized in the Netflix series “Narcos: Mexico.”

Prosecutors say Caro Quintero blamed Camarena for a raid on a huge marijuana plantation and had the agent kidnapped, tortured and killed as revenge.

“For 14,631 days, we held on to hope — hope that this moment would come. Hope that we would live to see accountability. And now, that hope has finally turned into reality,” Camarena's family said Friday in a statement thanking President Donald Trump and everyone who worked on the case.

Caro Quintero, Carrillo Fuentes and 27 other Mexican prisoners were sent Thursday to eight U.S. cities. The move came as Mexico sought to stave off the Trump administration’s threat of imposing 25% tariffs on all Mexican imports next week. In exchange for delaying tariffs, Trump had insisted that Mexico crack down on cartels, illegal immigration and fentanyl production.

Members of Mexico’s Security Cabinet on Friday framed the transfer of the 29 prisoners as a national security decision.

“It is not a commitment to the United States. It is a commitment to ourselves,” said Mexican Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero. “The problem of drug trafficking and organized crime has been a true tragedy for our country.”

Caro Quintero has long been one of America’s top Mexican targets for extradition. As head of the Guadalajara cartel, the “Narco of Narcos" and his partners “pioneered drug trafficking routes to Columbia, Mexico and into the United States," Brooklyn-based U.S. Attorney John Durham said outside court.

An indictment accuses Caro Quintero of presiding over a sprawling criminal network responsible for channeling tons of heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana and cocaine into the U.S.

He was 28 years into a 40-year sentence in Mexico when an appeals court overturned his sentence in 2013. Mexico's Supreme Court later upheld it, but by then, Caro Quintero had been released and was in the wind. Authorities said he returned to drug trafficking and unleashed bloody turf battles in the northern Mexico border state of Sonora until he was arrested by Mexican forces in 2022, authorities said.

Caro Quintero told the Spanish newspaper El País in 2018 that he “never went back to drugs.”

“I was a drug trafficker 23 years ago, and now I’m not, and I won’t ever be again," he said, according to the newspaper.

The U.S. added Caro Quintero to the FBI’s 10 most wanted list in 2018 with a $20 million reward. Washington sought his extradition immediately after his 2022 arrest, which happened days after a White House meeting between then-President Joe Biden and his Mexican counterpart, then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The extradition request stalled as López Obrador severely curtailed his country’s cooperation with the U.S. to protest undercover American law enforcement operations targeting Mexican political and military officials.

In January, a nonprofit group representing the Camarena family asked the new Trump administration to renew the extradition request.

Frank Tarentino III, special agent in charge of the DEA's New York office, on Friday called Camarena a “symbol of strength, honor, and determination."

Carrillo Fuentes is the brother of drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes, known as “The Lord of The Skies,” who died in 1997. Carrillo Fuentes, nicknamed “The Viceroy,” continued the brothers' business until his arrest in 2014.

He was sentenced in Mexico in 2021 to 28 years in prison.

U.S. prosecutors say his Juarez cartel brought tons of cocaine into the country. But his lawyer, Kenneth Montgomery, took aim Friday at any notion that Carrillo Fuentes is responsible for the flow of drugs into the U.S, saying it began before he took power and continued long after his arrest.

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Associated Press writer Fabiola Sánchez contributed from Mexico City. Follow Philip Marcelo at twitter.com/philmarcelo.