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‘Cartel enforcer' sentenced in San Diego to 28 years behind bars
SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — A man accused of acting as a cartel enforcer who admitted to ordering the killing of a Tijuana police officer and dozens of others was sentenced in a San Diego federal court on Friday to 28 years behind bars on drug trafficking charges.
Edgar Herrera Pardo — also known as 'Caiman' — was indicted back in 2019 on a slew of federal charges tied to his alleged role as a leader of the group Los Cabos, a Baja California-based branch of the cartel Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG).
CJNG was one of the eight cartels and transnational organizations designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the Trump administration earlier this year.
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According to prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of California, Los Cabos was involved in a 'campaign of violence' in the Mexican state, abducting and killing purported enemies of CJNG to maintain their drug trafficking channels through Tijuana.
Herrera Pardo, 35, pleaded guilty as part of an agreement with prosecutors to two felony drug trafficking conspiracy charges for his role in the scheme, which involved directing or threatening violence against a number of people in the Baja California region, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
As part of the agreement, he admitted to roles in a number of deaths between September 2018 to November 2018, including a Tijuana police officer, cartel rivals who had provided information to law enforcement and former members of CJNG who had joined other cartels.
According to prosecutors, a group chat of Los Cabos led by Herrera Pardo discussed 'well over' 100 murders.
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Herrera Pardo was arrested and extradited to the U.S. in 2023, court records show. The U.S. Attorney's Office says the Department of Justice's Office of International Affairs assisted in the arrest and extradition process.
'This cartel sicario ordered brutal killings to instill terror and crush opposition,' interim U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon said in a release. 'The cartel he served earned its designation as a foreign terrorist organization for a reason: its reach and ruthlessness rivaled that of any terror group. But today, his reign of terror has come to an end.'
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