The National Capital for Colombian Cocaine Prosecutions: Sherman and Plano TX

More Colombian cocaine traffickers have been extradited to the Eastern District of Texas than to any other federal district in the United States.

The federal courthouses handling these cases sit in Sherman and Plano, and they have been receiving extradited Colombian defendants for well over a decade.

The cases are built by the Dallas DEA working with its office in Bogota, charged under federal statutes that reach conduct committed entirely outside the United States, and venued in two North Texas courthouses most Americans could not find on a map.

Most Americans have never heard of Sherman, Texas.

The Cali cartel has.

This article explains why these cases land here, what the charges and penalties look like, how the Colombian side of extradition works, and what families and attorneys should do when the indictment says Eastern District of Texas.

Why Are Colombian Cocaine Cases Prosecuted in Sherman and Plano, Texas?

Colombian cocaine cases are prosecuted in Sherman and Plano because the Eastern District of Texas is home to a long-running international drug pipeline run by the Dallas DEA and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Texas.

Federal agents in Dallas build cases against Colombian trafficking organizations with the DEA’s office in Bogota, a federal grand jury in the Eastern District returns the indictment, and the defendants are arrested in Colombia and flown to North Texas.

The defendant may have never set foot in the United States before the extradition flight.

The cocaine may have never been seized on American soil.

None of that stops the prosecution.

What Did the Government Say About the EDTX Extradition Pipeline?

The U.S. Attorney’s Office put the scope of this pipeline on the record in a May 2019 press release announcing the arrest of 13 Colombian nationals.

The office stated that with just a handful of special agents from the Dallas DEA field office working these international cases, more Colombian drug defendants were extradited to the Eastern District of Texas in 2018 than to any other federal district in the country.

In the same release, the DEA credited the Dallas North Texas Strike Force and the DEA office in Bogota, Colombia, for the operation.

This was not a one-time event.

As far back as 2013, the U.S. Attorney announced the indictment of 17 alleged members of a Colombian drug trafficking organization in Plano, noting that prosecutors had already convicted 25 Colombian nationals in a separate cocaine importation conspiracy the year before.

How Does a Case From Medellin or Cali End Up in a Texas Courtroom?

The legal mechanism is the federal venue statute for crimes committed outside the United States, 18 U.S.C. Section 3238.

Under that statute, an offense committed outside the jurisdiction of any state or district is tried in the district where the offender is arrested or is first brought.

When the U.S. Marshals fly an extradited defendant from Bogota into North Texas, the Eastern District of Texas becomes the district where that person is first brought, and venue attaches there.

Because the Dallas DEA and the Eastern District grand juries originate these investigations, the government controls where the plane lands, and the plane lands in the Eastern District.

That is why a cocaine conspiracy that operated entirely in Colombia, Panama, and Central America gets tried in front of a jury in Sherman or Plano.

What Federal Charges Do Extradited Colombian Defendants Face?

Extradited Colombian defendants in the Eastern District of Texas are almost always charged under 21 U.S.C. Section 959 and its conspiracy counterpart, 21 U.S.C. Section 963.

These are the international drug trafficking statutes, and they are written to reach people who never touched American soil.

Many defendants are shocked to learn that United States law applies to them at all.

The statutes are designed for exactly that situation.

What Is 21 U.S.C. Section 959?

21 U.S.C. Section 959 makes it a federal crime to manufacture or distribute cocaine or another controlled substance intending, knowing, or having reasonable cause to believe that it will be unlawfully imported into the United States.

The statute says in plain terms that it is intended to reach acts of manufacture or distribution committed outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.

That means a cocaine lab operator in Putumayo or a maritime shipment coordinator in Medellin can be charged in a U.S. federal court if the government can prove the drugs were headed to the United States.

The fight in these cases is usually over destination and knowledge, not over whether drugs existed.

What Is Conspiracy Under 21 U.S.C. Section 963?

21 U.S.C. Section 963 makes it a separate crime to conspire to violate Section 959, and it carries the same penalties as the completed offense.

Conspiracy is the government’s favorite charge in these cases because it does not require a completed shipment or a seizure.

An agreement to move cocaine toward the United States, proven through wiretaps, cooperating witnesses, and ledgers, is enough.

Most of the Eastern District of Texas indictments coming out of Colombia are built on Section 963 conspiracy counts.

What Are the Penalties in These Cases?

For five kilograms or more of cocaine, the penalty under 21 U.S.C. Section 960 is a mandatory minimum of 10 years in federal prison and a maximum of life.

Five kilograms is a trivial amount in these cases, where indictments routinely allege multi-ton conspiracies.

There is no parole in the federal system, so the sentence imposed is close to the sentence served.

Sentencing then turns on the federal sentencing guidelines, drug quantity, role in the offense, and the defendant’s decisions about cooperation and plea negotiations.

Does It Matter That the Conduct Happened Outside the United States?

Yes, and this is one of the most active defense battlegrounds in international cocaine cases.

Sections 959 and 963 reach foreign conduct, but the domestic distribution statutes, 21 U.S.C. Sections 841 and 846, do not.

Federal appellate courts have confirmed the broad extraterritorial reach of Section 959, including the Eleventh Circuit in United States v. Brown, 549 F.3d 1370 (11th Cir. 2008), and the Fourth Circuit in United States v. Murillo, 826 F.3d 152 (4th Cir. 2016), which applied the due process standard governing extraterritorial prosecutions of conduct that is self-evidently criminal.

In United States v. Lopez-Vanegas, the Eleventh Circuit vacated the convictions of defendants who brokered a cocaine shipment from Venezuela to Paris for distribution in Europe, holding that Sections 841 and 846 do not apply to conduct occurring entirely outside the United States.

The lesson cuts both ways.

If the government’s evidence shows cocaine destined for Europe or elsewhere rather than the United States, the U.S. nexus required by Section 959 can be attacked head on.

The table below compares the international statutes with the domestic ones, because the difference matters for extradited defendants.

The takeaway is that the government chose Sections 959 and 963 for these prosecutions because they are the only drug statutes built for purely foreign conduct, and the U.S. destination element is the load-bearing wall of every one of these indictments.

How Does Extradition From Colombia Actually Work?

Extradition from Colombia to the United States today does not run through a treaty, even though a treaty exists on paper.

It runs through Colombian domestic law and the discretion of the Colombian government, with a review by Colombia’s Supreme Court of Justice before the national government gives final approval.

Understanding this history matters because families often receive bad, and sometimes criminal, advice about ways to defeat extradition on the Colombian side.

Is There a U.S.-Colombia Extradition Treaty?

The United States and Colombia signed an extradition treaty on September 14, 1979, and it entered into force in 1982, but its Colombian implementing law did not survive.

According to the U.S. State Department’s report on international extradition, Colombia’s Supreme Court ruled the treaty’s implementing legislation invalid under Colombian law in 1986, and extraditions afterward proceeded by executive decree.

Colombia’s 1991 Constitution then expressly prohibited the extradition of Colombian nationals by birth, shutting the door for several years.

On December 17, 1997, Colombia enacted a constitutional amendment allowing the extradition of its nationals once again.

Since then, extraditions of Colombian nationals to the United States have proceeded under Colombian domestic law rather than under the dormant 1979 treaty, which is why the Colombian side of every Eastern District of Texas case involves Colombian criminal procedure and Colombian politics, not treaty litigation.

What Does the FARC Peace Agreement Have to Do With Extradition?

The 2016 peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC created a carve-out that still shapes these cases.

Under the revised peace agreement that took effect on December 1, 2016, former FARC members are shielded from extradition for crimes committed during the armed conflict before that date, with those cases handled by Colombia’s transitional justice tribunal, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, known as the JEP.

Crimes committed after December 1, 2016 fall outside the protection, which is why the date of the alleged conduct becomes a fight with real stakes.

The carve-out also became the engine of a fraud scheme that hit Eastern District of Texas defendants directly, which I cover below.

If anyone tells you or your family that a defendant can simply be added to a FARC list to stop an extradition, treat that as a five-alarm warning.

What Have These Cases Looked Like in Sherman and Plano?

The sentences coming out of these prosecutions are long, and the case files show how the pipeline works from arrest in Colombia to sentencing in North Texas.

In United States v. Toro Londono, a 56-year-old man from Medellin known as Don Alonso pleaded guilty to a cocaine conspiracy moving multi-ton quantities from Colombia through Costa Rica and Panama toward the United States, and U.S. District Judge Amos L. Mazzant sentenced him in Sherman to 262 months in federal prison.

In United States v. Molina-Ferro, a maritime shipment coordinator arrested at his Medellin apartment in August 2018 was extradited in December 2020 and sentenced in Sherman to 300 months, which is 25 years, in December 2023.

Two more cases show the predators who circle these defendants.

Texas attorney James Balagia, known as the DWI Dude, was convicted by a Sherman jury and sentenced to 188 months for swindling his Colombian cocaine trafficking clients out of roughly 1.5 million dollars with false claims that he could buy off U.S. officials.

Colombian attorney Maritza Lorza Ramirez was convicted in Plano and sentenced to 90 months for collecting more than 3 million dollars from traffickers by claiming she could corruptly add their names to the FARC list and block their extraditions.

The lesson for families is blunt: these cases attract con artists on both sides of the border, and any lawyer selling guaranteed outcomes, secret connections, or FARC list placements is selling fraud.

Why Is Costa Rica Now Part of the Same Pipeline?

The same Eastern District of Texas pipeline now reaches Costa Rican nationals, and that is brand new.

In May 2025, Costa Rica’s Legislative Assembly approved and President Rodrigo Chaves signed a constitutional reform amending Article 32 to permit, for the first time in the country’s history, the extradition of Costa Rican citizens for international drug trafficking and terrorism.

Before that reform, Costa Rican nationals were constitutionally protected from extradition no matter the charge.

The first defendants arrived in March 2026, and they arrived in the Eastern District of Texas.

According to the FBI’s announcement, former Costa Rican judge and one-time Minister of Public Security Celso Gamboa Sanchez and co-defendant Edwin Lopez-Vega were extradited to face international cocaine trafficking charges, with initial appearances in the Eastern District of Texas set for March 24, 2026.

The takeaway is simple: the Sherman and Plano courthouses are no longer just the national center for Colombian cocaine extraditions, they are becoming the destination for a widening set of Latin American extradition cases.

What Should Families and U.S. Co-Counsel Do When a Case Is Venued in the EDTX?

The first step is to confirm the basics from the actual court record: the indictment, the case number, the assigned judge, and the charged statutes.

The Eastern District of Texas dockets in these cases will almost always show Section 963 and Section 959 counts, an OCDETF designation, and a detention order, since extradited defendants are held without bond as a practical matter.

The second step is to retain counsel who actually practices in the Sherman and Plano federal courts, because these cases move on the rhythms of a small set of judges and Assistant U.S. Attorneys who have handled this docket for years.

I have defended federal drug conspiracy cases in the Eastern District of Texas, and I know how the discovery, the cooperating witness testimony, and the sentencing arguments play out in front of these courts.

The third step is to make the early strategic decisions deliberately.

Those decisions include whether to attack the U.S. destination element and the sufficiency of the conspiracy evidence, how to handle Spanish-language discovery and witnesses located abroad, whether cooperation makes sense given the safety risks to family in Colombia, and how to build sentencing mitigation around role, drug quantity, and the conditions of pre-extradition confinement.

Finally, protect the family’s money.

Verify any lawyer’s bar status and federal court admissions, get fee agreements in writing, and remember the Balagia and Lorza cases before wiring anyone a fortune for a promised miracle.

Facing Federal Cocaine Trafficking Charges in Sherman or Plano?

These prosecutions move fast once the extradition flight lands, and the decisions made in the first weeks shape the next two decades of a defendant’s life.

As an International Extradition Lawyer, Michael Lowe can help with extradited cocaine trafficking and Section 963 conspiracy cases venued in the Eastern District of Texas.

Michael Lowe has been Board Certified in Criminal Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization since 2007 and defends federal cases throughout Texas, including the Sherman and Plano federal courts.

Contact Michael Lowe today for a free consultation by calling 214-526-1900.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are so many Colombian cocaine cases prosecuted in Sherman and Plano, Texas?

The Dallas DEA and its Bogota office build international cocaine investigations that are indicted by federal grand juries in the Eastern District of Texas, headquartered in Sherman and Plano. The U.S. Attorney’s Office stated in 2019 that more Colombian drug defendants were extradited to this district in 2018 than to any other federal district.

Can the United States prosecute someone who never entered the country?

Yes. Under 21 U.S.C. Section 959, manufacturing or distributing cocaine outside the United States is a federal crime if the person intended or knew the drugs would be unlawfully imported into the United States. The statute expressly reaches conduct committed entirely outside U.S. territory, and Section 963 punishes conspiracy the same way.

How does venue end up in the Eastern District of Texas?

Under 18 U.S.C. Section 3238, crimes committed outside any U.S. district are tried where the defendant is arrested or first brought. Extradited defendants are flown by the U.S. Marshals into North Texas on Eastern District of Texas indictments, so the district where the plane lands becomes the district where the case is tried.

Is there still an extradition treaty between the United States and Colombia?

A treaty was signed in 1979 and entered into force in 1982, but Colombia’s Supreme Court invalidated its implementing legislation in 1986. After a 1991 constitutional ban and a 1997 constitutional amendment restoring extradition of nationals, Colombia now extradites its citizens to the United States under Colombian domestic law and government approval rather than the treaty.

What sentence does an extradited cocaine trafficking defendant face?

For five kilograms or more of cocaine, federal law sets a mandatory minimum of 10 years and a maximum of life in prison under 21 U.S.C. Section 960. Most Eastern District of Texas extradition cases allege far larger quantities, and recent sentences in Sherman have included 262 months and 300 months in federal prison.

Can Costa Rican citizens now be extradited to the Eastern District of Texas?

Yes. In May 2025, Costa Rica amended Article 32 of its constitution to allow the extradition of its nationals for international drug trafficking and terrorism for the first time. The first extradited Costa Rican defendants, including a former judge, arrived in the Eastern District of Texas in March 2026 to face cocaine trafficking charges.