The Justice Department said on Saturday that a suspected top assassin for the Sinaloa drug cartel in Mexico had been extradited to the US, where he will be charged with smuggling firearms and drugs.
“El Nini,” also known as Nestor Isidro Perez Salas, was one of the “lead sicarios, or assassins, of the Sinaloa Cartel and was responsible for the murder, torture, and kidnapping of rivals and witnesses who threatened the cartel’s criminal drug trafficking enterprise,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement following the extradition on Saturday morning.
“We also allege El Nini was a part of the Sinaloa Cartel’s production and sale of fentanyl, including in the United States,” Garland stated.
The United States had offered up to $3 million for information that resulted in Perez Salas’s apprehension. He is accused of conspiring to traffic in guns, cocaine, and fentanyl, among other things.
He is believed to be good friends with the sons of Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who is currently incarcerated in the United States for life.
Less than a week after President Biden and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador promised to work more closely together to combat drug trafficking, particularly that of the potent synthetic narcotic fentanyl, he was taken into custody in the northwest Mexican city of Culiacan in November 2023.
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“El Nini played a prominent role in the notorious Sinaloa Cartel, one of the deadliest drug trafficking enterprises in the world,” Mr. Biden stated on Saturday. “The United States has charged him for his role in illicit fentanyl trafficking and for murdering, torturing, and kidnapping numerous rivals, witnesses, and others. This is a good day for justice.”
Mike Vigil, the former head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s international operations, called Perez Salas “a complete psychopath” and told the Associated Press that “taking him out of commission is a good thing for Mexico” at the time of his arrest.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that over 107,000 drug overdose deaths occurred in the United States in 2023. Approximately 70% of them were related to fentanyl usage.
According to the U.S. government, drug traffickers—particularly the Sinaloa cartel—often use Chinese-sourced materials to make fentanyl, which they then bring from Mexico across the border.
