Infamous drug lord and Guadalajara Cartel founder Rafael Caro Quintero was arrested in Chihuahua, Mexico, on Friday, a Mexican Navy official confirmed to multiple news outlets.
Caro Quintero, accused of killing a Drug Enforcement Administration officer in 1985, had gone into hiding after being released from a Mexican prison in 2013, when an appeals court overturned his conviction. He had served 28 years of the 40-year sentence at the time.
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The capture came days after President Joe Biden met with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador at the White House in an effort to repair the United States’s relationship with its southern neighbor. During the meeting, the two leaders discussed the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. Obrador had previously claimed to have no interest in detaining drug lords but has since cracked down on drug-running businesses, including efforts to control the exportation of fentanyl, a potent opioid that has caused a spike in fatal overdoses in the U.S.
The former cartel leader was placed on the FBI’s and the DEA’s most wanted lists with a $20 million bounty for killing DEA officer Enrique Camarena, who the drug lord believed orchestrated a raid on his cartel in 1984. However, Caro Quintero has denied any connection to Camarena’s death. Friday’s arrest came one year after Caro Quintero lost his final appeal against being extradited to the U.S. to be tried for Camarena’s death.
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The Guadalajara Cartel was considered one of the most powerful drug trafficking organizations in Latin America in the 1980s. Caro Quintero himself was an important supplier of cocaine, heroin, and marijuana, according to the Associated Press.
Caro Quintero’s capture has been an important objective for multiple presidential administrations on both sides of the political aisle since his release.
