A woman accused of distributing cocaine in Chicago has been extradited from Mexico to the United States, officials said Wednesday.
Norma Flores-Fernandez, 55, faces drug conspiracy charges in Newark, N.J., where she was indicted. Flores-Fernandez, part of a Guadalajara, Mexico, drug-trafficking organization, coordinated the distribution of 15 kilograms of cocaine in Chicago and more than 5 kilograms of heroin in New Jersey, prosecutors said.
She was arrested Sept. 24 in Mexico at the request of U.S. officials.
The indictment didn’t identify the Guadalajara drug-trafficking group, but sources said they believe it’s tied to the powerful Jalisco New Generation cartel. The group distributed drugs throughout the United States in 2018 and 2019, prosecutors said.
Women in Latin America have increasingly been joining drug cartels — and facing criminal charges in the United States, experts say.
Among them is Guadalupe Fernandez Valencia, known as “La Patrona” or “the Boss,” a high-ranking Sinaloa cartel operative who got a 10-year sentence in federal court in Chicago in 2021 for smuggling thousands of pounds of drugs into the United States and sending the proceeds back to Mexico.
At her sentencing, Fernandez Valencia, 60 at the time, told the judge through an interpreter, “I wish I could find the words to convince you of how sorry I am.”
According to the International Crisis Group, Mexican drug-trafficking organizations such as the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels have ramped up their recruiting of female members. A recent report by the group estimated that up to 8% of new cartel members are women engaged in everything from assassinations to coordinating drug shipments.
Norma Flores-Fernandez joins a woman and three men charged in New Jersey with drug conspiracy in an investigation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
Last year, Oscar Alberto Flores-Fernandez, 53, was sentenced to 87 months in prison, and Emilio Gutierrez-Martinez, 39, got 60 months. Laura Vanessa Diosa-Giraldo, 30, and Dario Camarillo, 60, have pleaded guilty and await sentencing.
