A set of handcuffs is pictured.
San Diego, California – After nearly seven years on the run, federal authorities say Rosa De Arcos is finally back in a San Diego courtroom.
The alleged drug trafficker, who fled to Mexico in 2018, was extradited to the United States last Friday and arraigned on a four-count federal indictment accusing her of importing and conspiring to distribute methamphetamine, fentanyl, and cocaine.
De Arcos’s case dates back to May 2017, when she was arrested for allegedly concealing more than 34 pounds of fentanyl in her Jeep Wrangler. At the time, prosecutors objected to her release, but she was granted bond. What she didn’t know, according to court records, was that law enforcement had already intercepted wiretap conversations between her, co-defendant Maria Elena Urena Cervantes, and others discussing earlier drug shipments — including meth and cocaine seized in January of that year.
Urena was arrested later in 2017, also released on bond, and the two women made several court appearances before both vanished in November 2018. They missed a scheduled status hearing just weeks before their trial was to begin, prompting a judge to issue no-bail arrest warrants. The U.S. moved to forfeit their bonds, and by December of that year, a grand jury had added bail-jumping charges to their indictments.
Federal prosecutors spent years trying to track them down. Urena resurfaced first — arrested in Mexico in September 2023, extradited that December, and pleading guilty this past July to drug trafficking alongside De Arcos. Her sentencing is set for December 15, 2025.
De Arcos proved harder to find. She remained a fugitive until April 2025, when she was finally arrested in Mexico. Four months later, she was flown back to the U.S. to face the charges she skipped out on nearly seven years earlier.
Her next court date is a status hearing scheduled for August 25 before U.S. District Judge Thomas J. Whelan.
The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joseph Orabona and Shauna Prewitt, with the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs assisting in securing De Arcos’s arrest and extradition.
If convicted, De Arcos faces the possibility of decades in prison — a stark turn for someone who, for years, managed to slip past the reach of the law. Now, with both defendants back in U.S. custody, prosecutors appear ready to finish the case they started before the two vanished into Mexico.
