Mexican authorities arrested Francisco Javier Román-Bardales, an MS-13 cartel leader and one of the 10 most wanted fugitives in the United States.
The Defense Ministry announced Monday that Román-Bardales, 47, alias “El Veterano,” was arrested on the Teocelo-Baxtla highway in the coastal state of Veracruz.
Román-Bardales was arrested after authorities received a tip that he was traveling through the town of Baxtla.
Mexican authorities said the Salvadoran national will be deported to the United States, where he was charged with conspiring to provide and conceal material support and resources to terrorists, narco-terrorism, racketeering, and alien smuggling. The FBI issued an arrest warrant for Roman-Bardales in September 2022 and had placed a $250,000 bounty on his head.
Founded in the 1980s, MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, is one of the largest and most violent street gangs in the Americas. The Trump administration designated the gang a foreign terrorist organization in February, along with Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang and six Mexican cartels, including the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels.
Román-Bardales’ arrest follows the arrest last week by Mexican authorities of another MS-13 gang member, Kevin Fernando Perdomo Díaz, also known as “El Kino,” wanted by El Salvador and the U.S.
Earlier this month, another alleged MS-13 leader, Moises Humberto Rivera-Luna, appeared before a U.S. district court following his extradition from Guatemala to face racketeering conspiracy charges.
On Sunday, in defiance of court orders after Donald Trump invoked an 18th century wartime act, the U.S. government deported 23 alleged members of MS-13, including two ringleaders, along with more than 230 people, mostly Venezuelans, to El Salvador.
In exchange for a payment from the U.S., El Salvador received the alleged gang members to be held in a 40,000-person “terrorism confinement center” for a year, which can be extended, according to El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele.
