The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs with the assistance of the Department’s Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) transferred 13 Mexican nationals, serving prison sentences for drug distribution-related convictions in the United States, to their home country on Friday.
“Friday’s transfer of 13 federal inmates to correctional authorities in Mexico has saved the United States over $3 million by eliminating the need to pay incarceration costs for the 75 years remaining on their combined sentences,” said Matthew R. Galeotti, Head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “The Justice Department’s International Prisoner Transfer Program, which is administered by the Criminal Division’s Office of International Affairs, enhances offender rehabilitation, reduces incarceration costs, and relieves overcrowding in federal prisons. The transfer is pursuant to the Treaty between the United States of America and the United Mexican States on the Execution of the Penal Sentences.”
All 13 inmates transferred today were serving sentences relating to the distribution of controlled substances, including cocaine, methamphetamine, and fentanyl. The inmates will complete the remainder of their sentences in Mexico pursuant to the treaty. The inmates requested to be transferred to their home country, and the governments of both the United States and Mexico approved these transfers.
The U.S. Congress enacted legislation authorizing the International Prisoner Transfer Program in October 1977, which also set the requirements of the transfer program. The United States signed its first transfer treaty with Mexico in 1976, which entered into force in November 1977, and since that time has entered into 10 additional bilateral transfer agreements and two multilateral transfer conventions. These international agreements give the United States transfer treaty relationships with more than 85 countries.
The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs’s International Prisoner Transfer Unit (IPTU) administers the program. Under the program, approved foreign national inmates in federal and state prisons are permitted, under certain circumstances, to complete their prison terms in their home countries’ prisons.
This is the 184th such transfer since the treaty entered into force in 1977. The last transfer prior to today, which took place in December 2024, transferred nine inmates to Mexico pursuant to the treaty. To learn more about the International Prisoner Transfer Program, visit: https://www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-oia/iptu