Arizona aims to extradite traffickers from Mexico
PHOENIX – Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes’ office will ramp up work to extradite drug traffickers from foreign nations as part of the Democratic prosecutor’s efforts to combat fentanyl coming into the state.
“We are going to reach into Mexico and bring the leaders of these drug cartels back to Arizona for prosecution,” Mayes said. “We are going to disrupt, dismantle and try to destroy these drug trafficking organizations.”
It’s an undertaking much easier said than done, as extradition involves coordination with the federal government and untangling a patchwork of international treaties and foreign laws. Not to mention the investigative work needed on the front end to put together witnesses and evidence to make a case.
Mayes has hired a veteran prosecutor, Adena Bernstein, to lead those efforts as well as serve as coordinator for her office’s response to the fentanyl crisis.
“The Attorney General’s Office has not seriously been involved in this type of extradition work for about the last 14 or 15 years,” Mayes said last week at an event debuting a public service announcement to warn Arizonans about the dangers of the deadly synthetic opioid. “But we have prioritized these cases and are ensuring that those guilty of trafficking and selling drugs do not evade prosecution by fleeing the state or the country for the first time in a long, long time.”
That’s not to say extraditions haven’t occurred at all, though they are hard to quantify.
It took about eight months after the January 2023 arrest of Ovidio “El Ratón” Guzmán, the son of former Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, for the younger Guzmán who took over Sinaloa leadership to be extradited.
“This action is the most recent step in the Justice Department’s effort to attack every aspect of the cartel’s operations,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a Sept. 15 news release. “The fight against the cartels has involved incredible courage by United States law enforcement and Mexican law enforcement and military servicemembers, many of whom have given their lives in the pursuit of justice.”
In federal court in Chicago, Guzmán was arraigned and pleaded not guilty to charges in an indictment alleging that from 2008 to 2021, he engaged in a drug trafficking criminal enterprise, along with more fentanyl, money laundering and firearm conspiracy offenses.
The clash surrounding Guzmán’s Jan. 5, 2023, arrest in Culiacán, Mexico, resulted in nearly 30 deaths, on both the side of the Mexican authorities and the cartel.
Bernstein came from the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, where she had worked for much of the previous 25 years. She most recently handled cases involving international extraditions there.
Bernstein said a review of cases that could lead to extradition includes seeing if any have passed a statute of limitations for prosecution – either in Arizona or the foreign nation – and whether witnesses were still available to testify. She said there could be cases that may not be prosecuted because they were not acted upon sooner.