By José de Córdoba

MEXICO CITY -- For decades, drug boss Rafael Caro Quintero sat in a Mexican prison serving a 40-year sentence for the brutal 1985 murder of a federal narcotics agent whose death set off a crisis in U.S.-Mexico relations.

In a sign of how dramatically President Trump has reshaped the U.S. posture toward Mexican kingpins and drug gangs, Caro Quintero was sued Thursday by the family of Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena, in one of the first applications of the U.S.'s new designation of Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.

The lawsuit adds to the U.S. legal jeopardy faced by Caro Quintero, one of the Sinaloa drug cartel's founders. Last month, Mexico transferred Caro Quintero and another 28 alleged drug traffickers to the U.S., where he pleaded not guilty to murder conspiracy and drug trafficking charges in a Brooklyn federal court.

"We have waited 40 long years for the man who killed my husband to be under arrest in the U.S.," said Camarena's widow, Geneva "Mika" Camarena, who filed the lawsuit on Thursday in federal court in San Diego seeking recovery of damages in an amount to be determined by a jury. "Kiki was a kind man who spent his life fighting the cartels, and now we are continuing this fight for him."

The 72-year-old Caro Quintero has long been seen as one the pioneers of Mexico's drug smuggling industry that gained unprecedented power and wealth after joining forces with Colombian cocaine producers in the 1980s. In the following decades, Mexican cartels became the world's top smugglers and distributors of narcotics with operations in six continents.

The terrorist designation makes it easier for families of victims of the cartels to seek justice and obtain judgments against cartel assets, said Michael Elsner, a lawyer with the Motley Rice law firm who is representing the Camarena family. For one thing, the government accepts that the cartel is a terrorist organization, freeing the plaintiff from having to prove that accusation. And if other persons or corporations are shown to have supported the cartel, plaintiffs can also bring suit against them.

"It's a very powerful tool," said Elsner, who expects other lawsuits to be filed taking advantage of the terrorist designation.

Elsner, who also represents relatives of nine Americans, three mothers and six children who were killed in a 2019 massacre in the Mexican hamlet of La Mora, said the U.S. should expand the list of terrorist organizations to include La Línea and the Juárez cartel. The two groups have been implicated by Mexican and U.S. authorities in the deaths of Americans, including the nine killed in La Mora.

Camarena was a 37-year-old agent working in the DEA's Guadalajara office when gunmen kidnapped him across the street from the U.S. consulate in broad daylight. His wife was waiting for him at a Chinese restaurant for a lunch date.

Caro Quintero and his colleagues first flooded the U.S. with Mexican marijuana and Colombian cocaine in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, the Sinaloa cartel is considered to be the largest producer and smuggler of fentanyl to the U.S., while still sending tons of methamphetamine, heroin and cocaine north.

In November 1984, Caro Quintero and his colleagues were furious after the Mexican army raided a huge marijuana plantation known as El Búfalo causing enormous financial losses. Caro Quintero believed the farm, which he owned, had been spotted by Camarena and his Mexican pilot, Alfredo Zavala, while conducting aerial surveillance, the lawsuit said.

Four months later, cartel gunmen kidnapped Camarena at gunpoint, shoved him into a car and drove him to Caro Quintero's home about 1 mile away, the lawsuit said. For the next two days, Camarena and Zavala, who was also kidnapped, were tortured and interrogated before being killed.

The Camarena family lawsuit also names as defendants Ernesto "Don Neto" Fonseca and Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, who along with Caro Quintero were the founders of the Guadalajara cartel, which broke up into the Sinaloa cartel and other gangs after Camarena's killing.

"I believe the evidence will show that Caro Quintero was the leader," said Elsner. "It was his Búfalo ranch that Kiki identified and it was his property where Kiki and the pilot were held while they were being tortured."

Their disappearance sparked a crisis between Mexico and the U.S. The Reagan administration exerted enormous pressure on the Mexican government. The U.S. Customs Service closed down the 2,000-mile border, disrupting trade.

It took almost a month for their remains to be found. Their bodies, blindfolded, gagged, bound and wrapped in plastic sheets were found by Mexican authorities in a ranch some 60 miles southeast of Guadalajara.

The DEA mounted a worldwide manhunt for the drug bosses involved in the killing. As part of the investigation, police found an audiotape of Caro Quintero interrogating Camarena under torture at a house belonging to Fonseca in Puerto Vallarta, where the latter was arrested in April of 1985, according to the lawsuit. Fonseca, now 94, was convicted in Mexico of Camarena's murder. Since 2016, he has been serving his 40-year sentence under house arrest.

Félix Gallardo, now 79, was the last to be captured. He was arrested in Guadalajara in 1989. In an interview with the Telemundo network four years ago, Felix Gallardo, who suffers from ill health and said he is blind in one eye, denied responsibility for Camarena's death. He said he had been a farmer and a cattleman, not a drug smuggler.

"I'm a corpse," said Félix Gallardo, citing his deteriorating health.

Caro Quintero was captured in Costa Rica in 1985 and extradited to Mexico, where he was found guilty of Camarena's death and sentenced to 40 years. But in 2013, an appeals judge found that Caro Quintero had been wrongly tried in federal court instead of state court, ordering his immediate release. The federal government issued a new warrant for his arrest, but by then Caro Quintero was gone.

He disappeared into the mountains of Sinaloa and soon regained part of the power he once held, playing a major role in an organized-crime group in the border state of Sonora.

He remained the DEA's most important target with a $20 million reward for his capture. In 2022, Caro Quintero was apprehended in an operation led by an elite task force of Mexican marines, found hiding behind a thicket by a search dog named Max.

During his campaign, and since taking office, Trump indicated that the U.S. would take action against powerful Mexican cartels as part of an effort to boost border security and fight fentanyl trafficking, including placing tariffs on Mexican goods if Mexico's government failed to step up enforcement measures. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has opposed the terrorist designation and called for increasing bilateral security cooperation.

Write to José de Córdoba at jose.decordoba@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 20, 2025 16:24 ET (20:24 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.