Edgar Veytia, the attorney general in Mexico’s western state of Nayarit, was arrested Monday at the US border in San Diego. He was detained on a warrant from a New York state court.
Veytia was believed to have been detained on the bridge between San Diego and the Tijuana airport, local media reported.
“This is a development that we were not expecting,” Nayarit Governor Roberto Sandoval said without addressing the alleged high-level crime.
“The details… Still have not been made public yet. It will be up to US authorities to address those,” he told reporters.
In the indictment read by AFP, prosecutors said Veytia is facing three counts: conspiracy to produce and distribute heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana, conspiracy to import those substances, and conspiracy to distribute them.
Nayarit is on Mexico’s Pacific north coast and shares a border with the states of Jalisco and Sinaloa, where drug cartels are powerful.
Some Mexican officials have faced trial for drug trafficking in the United States, including Mario Villanueva, former governor of the state of Quintana Roo on the Caribbean coast.
Mexico is the scene of brutal violence linked to drug trafficking.
Since the government deployed the army to fight drug cartels in 2006, more than 170,000 people have been killed and 28,000 have gone missing.
Recently discovered mass graves in the eastern state of Veracruz — another state where Jalisco New Generation is seeking dominance — contained at least 242 bodies, according to investigators.
PTI