Three Mexican nationals accused of crewing a drug-trafficking vessel loaded with nearly 840 kilograms of cocaine have been extradited from Costa Rica to Milwaukee, where they made their first court appearance this week. Officials said Tuesday the cocaine was worth nearly $17 million.
Miguel Ángel Campos-Barragán, Giovanni Vidrio-López, and Eustaquio Espinosa-Hernández were charged as crew members of a U.S.-flagged drug trafficking vessel, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The three were indicted in May 2025 and later extradited from Costa Rica. As reported by FOX6 News Milwaukee, the federal drug case is now being prosecuted in Wisconsin's Eastern District.
The interdiction itself happened more than a year earlier, on April 15, 2025, when international law enforcement intercepted a U.S.-flagged boat named the My Lisa Too carrying roughly 840 kilograms of nearly pure cocaine in Costa Rican waters, per the Justice Department's account. On Monday, the three defendants appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Nancy Joseph in Milwaukee for their initial arraignment, and she ordered them remanded to federal custody.
Why a Costa Rica Bust Landed in a Wisconsin Courtroom
The jurisdictional path from the Caribbean to Lake Michigan isn't as strange as it sounds. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Brad Schimel said Milwaukee federal prosecutors took the case as part of efforts to go after cartel assets, according to CBS 58.
The defendants were charged under the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act, a federal statute that grants the United States jurisdiction over drug trafficking offenses committed in international waters or aboard U.S.-flagged vessels, the Justice Department noted. That law effectively let prosecutors reach across borders to claim the case for a Midwestern court, even though no part of the alleged crime touched Wisconsin soil.
One of the Largest Cases in the District's History
Federal prosecutors confirmed the 840-kilogram seizure ranks as one of the largest single drug seizures ever prosecuted in the history of the Eastern District of Wisconsin.
The interdiction and extradition were carried out as part of a Homeland Security Task Force initiative involving Costa Rica's Drug Control Police, Costa Rica's Special Coast Guard Operations Group, the U.S. Marshals Service, and the Justice Department's Office of International Affairs.
The Milwaukee case also lands amid a broader surge in maritime drug enforcement off Central America. Hoodline previously reported that in September 2026, Coast Guard operations in international waters off Central America seized over 25,000 pounds of cocaine across three interdiction operations involving four vessels in just six days. Federal agencies benchmark those interdictions by the millions of lethal consumer doses kept out of American cities.
Campos-Barragán, Vidrio-López, and Espinosa-Hernández remain in federal custody as the case proceeds in Milwaukee. As with all federal defendants, they are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in court.
