Mike Baker

In today's Back of the Brief, Mexico transferred 37 cartel figures to the U.S.

this week, the largest such handover to date, after the Trump administration intensified pressure on the southern neighbor to accelerate its crackdown on drug traffickers.

Mexican authorities described those flown north as, quote, high-impact criminals.

That's a category reserved for senior operatives tied to the country's most violent organizations.

Those transferred include figures...

linked to the Sinaloa Cartel, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the Beltran Leyva Organization, the Northeast Cartel, and remnants of the Zetas.

These are groups Washington has increasingly framed as national security threats, with several designated as terrorist organizations by the Trump administration just last year, marking a shift away from treating them solely as criminal syndicates.

One of the more notable names among those transferred is Maria del Rosario Navarro Sanchez, the first Mexican national charged in the U.S.

with providing material support to a terrorist organization.

That's according to a reporting from Fox News.

The handovers come as U.S.

pressure on Mexico's cartels intensifies, shifting from arrests and law enforcement cooperation toward open military warnings.

with President Trump publicly suggesting that U.S.

forces could strike land-based narco-terror targets if needed.

It also follows direct conversations between President Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum just last week, where the White House made clear it expects faster, more decisive action against fentanyl networks.

A Mexico analyst with the International Crisis Group told the Associated Press, quote, this is Mexico resorting to extraordinary measures as pressure from the White House increases, end quote.

But Mexico's security chief defended the transfers on public safety grounds, arguing that cartel leaders were continuing to direct criminal operations even while incarcerated inside Mexican prisons.

In other words, officials are framing the extraditions not just as cooperation with Washington, but as a domestic security necessity.

Still, the political backdrop is impossible to ignore.

Scheinbaum has acknowledged the pressure that she's facing from the Trump administration while maintaining that U.S.