Mexico Arrests Alleged Sonora Drug Gang Boss

One of Mexico’s most wanted drug trade suspects was arrested in Sinaloa state Thursday, one of the biggest apprehensions yet in President Vicente Fox’s campaign to crack down on narcotics trafficking.

Miguel Caro Quintero is the alleged boss of the so-called Sonora drug gang, one of the four largest cocaine- and marijuana-smuggling operations along the U.S.-Mexican border. Arrested in Los Mochis along Sinaloa’s coast, he will be extradited to the United States, Mexican officials said. He has been indicted on drug charges in Arizona and Colorado.

The capture of Caro Quintero was made possible by U.S.-Mexican law enforcement cooperation, Mario Estuardo Bermudez, a prosecutor with the Mexican attorney general’s office, said at a news conference Thursday night.

The arrest came on the same day that the U.S. Congress suspended for one year the annual “certification” process by which Mexico had to prove a good-faith effort in combating drug crime, a process Mexican officials found humiliating. Countries not certified face a variety of sanctions, including loss of foreign aid and U.S. opposition to loans from international banks.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has said that the Caro Quintero gang and three others control 60% of the cocaine and 14% of the heroin consumed in the United States. Caro Quintero’s brother Rafael is jailed on charges of kidnapping and killing DEA agent Enrique Camarena in 1985.

Caro Quintero, 38, took over the operation from his brother. He is on the U.S. State Department’s list of most wanted criminals, and a reward of $2 million had been offered by Washington for information leading to his arrest. It was not clear Thursday night whether the bounty would be paid or to whom.

In addition to the Sonora gang, other powerful cartels include the Arellano-Felix mafia based in Tijuana, the Gulf cartel led by Osiel Cardenas, and the Juarez gang headed by Vicente Carrillo Fuentes.

On ABC’s “Nightline” in 1999, former DEA chief Thomas A. Constantine described the Caro Quintero gang and others like it as “more powerful than the government.”

“They make hundreds of millions of dollars, they kill hundreds of people, they are charged time and time again in U.S. courts, and they are never arrested,” Constantine said.