Supreme Court Upholds DEA's Kidnapping of Mexican Doctor
| Author | Allen Pusey |
| Pages | 72-72 |
Supreme Court Upholds
DEA’s Kidnapping
of Mexican Doctor
BY ALLEN PUSEY
72
On Feb. 7, 1985, while on
a short walk to meet his
wife for lunch, Enrique
“Kiki” Camarena Salazar
disappeared from a street near the U.S.
consulate in the fabled Mexican city
of Guadalajara. His body was found a
month later on a ranch in Michoacán.
There were signs of apparent torture:
his ribs and nose broken, his windpipe
crushed, his body burned and a screw-
driver driven into his skull.
Camarena was an American citizen
and a highly regarded agent of the Drug
Enforcement Administration. His sourc-
es had led to recent raids of marijuana
elds controlled by Rafael Caro Quin-
tero, head of the Guadalajara cartel,
and news of his disappearance sent U.S.
federal law enforcement into a frenzy.
A joint U.S.-Mexico investigation
led to a house at 881 Lope de Vega that
was often occupied by Caro. Physical
evidence was gathered, including audio
tapes of the actual torture.
In the months and years that fol-
lowed, dozens of suspects were arrested.
Caro himself was seized in Costa Rica
and extradited to Mexico, where he was
convicted of several murders—including
Camarena’s—and sentenced to 40 years
in prison.
Dr. Humberto Álvarez Machaín,
a Guadalajara gynecologist accused
of drugging Camarena to prolong his
torture, had avoided extradition. But
on April 2, 1990, four men bearing
badges arrived at the physician’s ofce
and accused him of performing an
illegal abortion. In an operation the
conviction for larceny in Illinois. A
Pinkerton agent hired by the federal
government to serve a warrant for his
extradition instead abducted him and
brought him back. The court ruled that,
extradition or no, “such forcible ab-
duction is no sufcient reason why the
party should not answer when brought
within the jurisdiction which has the
right to try him.”
In the second case, Frisbie v. Collins
(1952), the court similarly rejected a
plea by Shirley Collins that Michigan
police kidnapped him in Chicago to
stand trial for murder in Michigan. In
what became known as the Ker-Frisbie
doctrine, the court declared defendants
are required to be in court to stand
trial, and it doesn’t much matter how
the authorities get them there.
After 2001, the Álvarez-Machaín
decision became a routine citation jus-
tifying the extractions of enemy
combatants from foreign
countries.
Álvarez, however,
was never con-
victed. Midway
through his
1992 trial in
Los Angeles,
Judge Edward
Rafeedie ordered
Álvarez’s acquit-
tal on all charges,
saying the case was
insufcient to send
to a jury. And after an
effort to detain him for—
ironically—illegal entry into the
U.S., Álvarez returned to Mexico.
In 1993, Álvarez led a lawsuit
naming several DEA agents, the DEA,
and the Mexican operatives who had
abducted him under the Federal Tort
Claims Act and the Alien Tort statute.
Although Álvarez found some success
in the lower courts, the Supreme Court
unanimously ruled against him in Sosa
v. Álvarez-Machaín, a diversely rea-
soned 2004 decision. Q
DEA later acknowledged it had bank-
rolled, Álvarez was taken into custody,
held overnight in a neighboring state,
bundled into a small private airplane
and own to El Paso, Texas, where he
was informed by federal authorities
that he had been indicted for his part in
Camarena’s death.
Álvarez conceded to investigators
that he had been to the house on Lope
de Vega; his ngerprints had been
found there. And he admitted in a
later afdavit that he knew
Camarena was “in a
bad state,” though he
asserted a different
doctor was attend-
ing to the DEA
agent. Álvarez
claimed that the
kidnapping—in
effect, the arrest
of a foreign citizen
on foreign soil in
violation of extradi-
tion agreements—was
illegal, thus nullifying the
charges against him.
A history of forcible
abductions
Not so, said the U.S. Supreme Court in
U.S. v. Álvarez-Machaín. In an 6-3 deci-
sion delivered June 15, 1992, the court
rejected Álvarez’s defense, citing two
cases, both of which involved abduct-
ing defendants to bring them before
the courts.
In the rst, Ker v. Illinois (1886),
Frederick Ker ed to Peru after his
Dr.
Humberto
Álvarez
Machaín
Photo by AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana
ABA JOURNAL | JUNE–JULY 2021
72
JUNE 15, 1992
Precedents
ABAJ J E-J Y Pr c s A PM
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