Mexico’s security minister said Tuesday that Mexico has sent another 37 people tied to drug cartels to the United States, as President Donald Trump’s administration presses governments to crack down on criminal networks it says are smuggling drugs across the border.
Omar García Harfuch, Mexico’s security minister, wrote on X that the people transferred were “high impact criminals” that “represented a real threat to the country’s security.” He said the transfers are part of a pattern that includes Mexico’s third such batch in less than a year and that Mexico has sent 92 people in total.
Mexican authorities shared video showing a line of handcuffed prisoners surrounded by heavily armed, masked officers being loaded onto a military jet at an airport on the outskirts of Mexico City.
David Mora, a Mexico analyst at the International Crisis Group, said in an interview that as U.S. pressure increases, Mexico is “need[ed] to resort to extraordinary measures, such as these transfers,” language he linked to rising demands from the White House.
The report said the U.S. State Department and Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mexico said Tuesday’s transfer included figures from multiple organizations, including the Sinaloa Cartel, the Beltrán-Leyva cartel, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the Northeast Cartel, and a remnant of the Zetas based in the border state of Tamaulipas. Mexican authorities said all of the transferred figures had pending U.S. cases.
Among those sent was María Del Rosario Navarro Sánchez, described by the report as the first Mexican citizen to face charges in the United States for providing support to a terrorist organization, after being accused of conspiring with a cartel.
The transfer comes as Trump has repeatedly taken a hard line on drug trafficking and, the report said, publicly entertained the idea of military action on Mexican cartels. It cited Trump’s Fox News interview in which he said: “We’ve knocked out 97% of the drugs coming in by water and we are going to start now hitting land, with regard to the cartels.”
The report also said Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum spoke with Trump and told him that U.S. intervention in Mexico was “not necessary,” while emphasizing that the two governments would continue to collaborate.
The report said Mexico sent 29 cartel figures to the U.S. last February, including drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, who the report said was behind the killing of a U.S. DEA agent in 1985. It added that in August Mexico sent another 26 cartel figures, and that none had Caro Quintero’s profile even though they spanned multiple cartels.
After the August transfer, the report said García Harfuch characterized the move as a public safety decision, saying Mexico did not want the figures to continue operating their illicit businesses from inside Mexican prisons. The report said another transfer to the U.S. had been rumored for weeks and that Mexico sought to assure the Trump administration that it remains a willing partner in combating drug traffickers.
Mora said in the report that for the Trump administration and the Trump base, “what is going to matter in the end is some wins that Trump can actually bring back and say ‘Look this is what I’m getting out of Mexico,’” as the U.S. seeks visible enforcement outcomes.