Washington Post Accredits Caro Quintero's Capture To The U.S.

"Sol Prendido" for Borderland Beat

There were twelve failed operations prior to the arrest of the founder of the Guadalajara Cartel, who was located in rural areas of Sinaloa. The note highlights that the capo moved on a motorcycle and ATV, guarded by security. Former US official said DEA turned Rafael's relatives into informants

The newspaper The Washington Post in its edition this Saturday, July 23, published a secret group from the United States that tracked drug trafficker Rafael Caro Quintero for years and never stopped working on their objective, carrying out at least 12 failed operations to catch him.

Journalists Kevin Sieff and Mary Beth Sheridan report that the task was entrusted to a special group called "The RCQ Task Force", which through the DEA carried out operations with Mexican authorities to catch the criminal accused of kidnapping and homicide drug agent Enrique Kiki Camarena.

The actions of US authorities between 2013 and 2022, the time in which the capo was released from the Puente Grande state prison, Jalisco, and the reward was increased from 5 to 20 million dollars, would have failed due to "high-level Mexican leaks , a sign that the Mexican government was protecting him,” highlights the news.

Presumably the Americans had Caro Quintero located long ago, when they detected that he lived in a rural area of ​​Sinaloa "just a few miles from a Mexican military base in a town that he ran like a fiefdom."

Add the information that the Sinaloa capo moved by motorcycle and ATV, guarded by security teams that rotated every week.

"The DEA had turned some of Caro Quintero's relatives into informants, said a former senior US official, and even knew which dirt roads he took to visit his girlfriends," highlights The Washington Post.

After the announcement of the capture of Rafael Caro on July 15, and the statement by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador assuring that the operation was planned and executed entirely by Mexico, the members of the RCQ Task Force team felt injured in their pride and described AMLO's presumed triumph as absurd.

It is highlighted in the note that the special group was providing intelligence information to the Navy and the Mexican Army for nine years, according to some of them who commented to journalists anonymously.

Reference is even made to the fact that in the tenth attempt to arrest Rafael Caro Quintero, dating from around January 2021, both countries planned a capture operation, but it failed.

“A team of Marines flew several Blackhawk helicopters into a part of northern Mexico known as the “Golden Triangle.” But when the Blackhawks landed in the town of Babunica, Caro Quintero's birthplace, he was gone," the briefing piece read.

Supposedly, a former high-ranking Mexican security official justified the failed operation by pointing out to US special agents that the drug trafficker's men “control everything. They have informants, guards, people in the mountains watching the drones. They are very careful."

Interestingly now he was detained without any surveillance.

The note reports that a former US official said “the most recent iteration of the Caro Quintero investigation began at least eight months ago and involved US anti-drug agents who provided intelligence and other assistance to veteran Mexican Navy special forces”.

After López Obrador returned from a July 12 meeting with President Biden in Washington, senior Mexican military leaders signed the capture, the former US official said.

DEA officials were following the development of the operation but were not physically present when the capo was arrested, the source is quoted as saying. Mexican authorities denied that the arrest was related to the bilateral meeting three days earlier.

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