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A fugitive Michigan felon wanted for drug trafficking and weapons charges has been apprehended in Mexico, officials said.
Janero Van DeMario Garrett, 49, was arrested last Friday in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, Mexico, by agents with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Marshals, the FBI, and Mexican police, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan Jerome Gorgon said.
“The Homeland Security Task Force works with our foreign partners to keep Americans safe by prosecuting drug dealers who harm our people," Gorgon said in a statement Tuesday. "Hiding in another country will not save you. No defendant is beyond our reach."
Garrett was wanted for federal drug crimes and for firearms charges in Wayne County, according to Gorgon.
If convicted of the federal narcotics offenses, Garrett faces at least 10 years in prison, the U.S. Attorney said.
Federal court records did not list an attorney for the defendant on Wednesday.
Surveillance led to arrest
DEA agents allege Garrett was involved in large-scale cocaine trafficking and money laundering activity since 2023, according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan in June 2025.
Investigators suspected Garrett was using a home in the Lodge Freeway and Evergreen Road area of Southfield to facilitate his drug trafficking operation, the complaint said. They placed the residence under surveillance.
On Oct. 31, 2024, agents watched the defendant leave the house, get into a rented car, drive to a nearby business complex, and return to the residence, court documents said. Later in the day, they watched him leave the home with a large orange, rolling travel bag, put it in the vehicle, and drive away. Authorities said they followed the vehicle and requested that Detroit police conduct a traffic stop.
Officers tried to pull the vehicle over, but the driver refused to stop and fled, records said. Agents later found the rented vehicle behind a home on Detroit's east side, but the driver was gone.
Police searched the home's backyard and found the orange travel bag in a trash bin, according to officials. They found 10 packaged bricks of a substance they suspected to be narcotics inside the bag. Each brick weighed about one kilogram, authorities said. Agents conducted a field test of the substance, and the results were positive for cocaine, they said.
Investigators reviewed security camera footage of the area, and it showed Garrett and a woman fleeing the area after abandoning the rented vehicle, agents said in court documents.
They obtained a search warrant for the Southfield house and seized more suspected cocaine as well as nearly $607,000 in cash.
Agents returned the next day to the Detroit property where Garrett allegedly abandoned the rental car, court records said. They tracked cell phone data for the device Garrett had been using and found it about a mile away between two abandoned homes. The device was with two other cell phones on top of bricks and underneath a sheet of plywood, officials said.
Authorities said Garrett has many previous convictions for crimes, including carrying a concealed weapon in Wayne County and Macomb County, as well as federal possession of controlled substances and federal gun crimes.
"This individual was wanted on federal drug trafficking charges, and today’s arrest demonstrates that no one can evade justice indefinitely," Joseph Dixon, Special Agent in Charge of the DEA's Detroit Office, said in a statement. "Drug trafficking fuels violence, addiction, and instability in our communities, and the DEA will remain committed to working with our law enforcement partners around the globe to identify, locate, and apprehend those who engage in these criminal activities, and they will be held accountable in the U.S. justice system."
Other fugitives caught
Garrett is the most recent Michigan fugitive to be arrested.
This week, a Battle Creek man was arrested last Thursday near Kalamazoo in connection with a man's murder more than 30 years ago in Alaska. He was indicted on two counts of second-degree murder.
Earlier this month, a fugitive from Guatemala linked to a Farmington Hills man's death 25 years ago was charged with murder.
In May, a fugitive wanted in the 1993 murder of a Detroit man was caught in Panama and returned to the United States, officials said.
@CharlesERamirez
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Michigan fugitive wanted on drug, gun charges arrested in Mexico
