Under mounting pressure from Donald Trump, Mexico has handed 37 people with alleged ties to drug cartels over to U.S. authorities, the country's security minister said Tuesday. It is the third mass transfer in about a year, pushing the total number of people sent to the United States to 92 and signaling a more hard-edged posture from Mexico's federal government toward working with U.S. prosecutors.
Mexican Security Minister Omar García Harfuch said in a post on X that the transferred individuals were "high impact criminals" who "represented a real threat to the country's security," according to the San Diego Union-Tribune, which republished the Associated Press report that first detailed the shift in strategy and the count of 92 people now in U.S. custody.
A pattern of big transfers
The latest move fits into a clear pattern. In February 2025, Mexico transferred 29 suspected cartel figures, including fugitive Rafael Caro Quintero, to U.S. custody amid intense talks with American officials, according to The Guardian. Six months later, in August 2025, another 26 alleged cartel members were expelled at the request of the U.S. government, Al Jazeera reported.
Taken together, those earlier operations marked a break with past practice in which some cartel bosses served sentences in Mexico rather than facing U.S. courts, a shift that officials on both sides of the border have framed as part of a tougher, more coordinated response to cross-border crime.
How Mexico says it carried out the transfers
Mexican officials say they have leaned on national security powers to move detainees directly into U.S. custody, sidestepping the usual extradition process. That same tool was used when dozens of suspects were flown to eight U.S. cities in February 2025.
The Associated Press reported that the transfers relied on tightly coordinated military and federal police operations, designed to keep detainees from continuing to run criminal networks from behind bars in Mexico.
Legal and diplomatic questions
Earlier transfers came with explicit promises from Washington. U.S. prosecutors reportedly agreed not to seek the death penalty for defendants in prior handovers, a guarantee Mexican officials have described as crucial to making the transfers politically and legally viable.
Al Jazeera noted that those assurances helped ease fears of violent backlash and smoothed cooperation between the two governments. Even so, legal experts have warned that bypassing formal extradition procedures raises thorny questions about the scope of U.S. prosecutions and the limits of Mexican sovereignty.
What comes next
U.S. prosecutors in multiple federal districts will now take over cases against the newly transferred suspects, who face charges ranging from drug trafficking to violent crimes. American officials say the strategy could help chip away at cartels' cross-border operations by putting alleged leaders and key operatives in U.S. courts.
Observers caution that shipping more alleged cartel leaders to the United States will only work with sustained intelligence sharing and could provoke reprisals from criminal groups, a concern raised after earlier transfers reported by The Guardian. For Mexican officials, the latest handover functions as both a domestic security play and a diplomatic gesture, aimed at cooling tensions with Washington as U.S. authorities press for tougher action on fentanyl and trafficking.
