Celso Gamboa, a 49-year-old former Supreme Court justice and cabinet minister, was placed in handcuffs at Juan Santamaria International Airport in San Jose on Friday and loaded onto a Texas-bound plane. He wasn't alone. Edwin Lopez Vega, an alleged drug trafficker known as "Pecho de Rata", "Rat's Chest", sat beside him. Together they became the first Costa Rican citizens ever extradited to the United States.
The scene at the airport marked the culmination of a legal and political earthquake that has been building for months. Costa Rica's constitution once flatly banned sending its own citizens abroad for prosecution. That changed in 2025, when the country's legislature passed a constitutional amendment, championed by President Rodrigo Chaves Robles, allowing extradition for suspects accused of drug trafficking and terrorism. The vote wasn't close: 44 of 57 deputies backed it.
Now the law has teeth. And its first bite landed on a man who once sat on the nation's highest court.
Gamboa's résumé reads like a who's-who of Costa Rican law enforcement and justice. He served as director of intelligence and national security under President Laura Chinchilla. He held the post of minister of public security under President Luis Guillermo Solis. He was deputy attorney general from 2015 to 2016 and a Supreme Court justice from 2016 to 2018.
Then the U.S. government came calling.
A provisional warrant for Gamboa's arrest was issued in the eastern district of Texas in 2024. On June 23, 2025, Costa Rican authorities arrested him. The following month, a federal indictment charged him with manufacturing and distributing cocaine destined for the United States, along with related conspiracy counts, as Al Jazeera reported. The U.S. Department of Justice alleged that Gamboa worked directly with Lopez Vega to assist international drug trafficking operations.
The U.S. Treasury sanctioned both men the month after the indictment. The Treasury's description of Gamboa's alleged conduct was blunt: he "used his extensive network of contacts within the government to acquire information about ongoing counternarcotics investigations." Then, the Treasury said, "He subsequently sold this information to the targets of those exact investigations."
Let that sink in. A former Supreme Court justice and intelligence chief allegedly tipped off drug traffickers about the very investigations meant to stop them. The charges against Gamboa echo a broader pattern of ethical concerns surrounding high-court figures that have drawn scrutiny on both sides of the hemisphere.
Attorney General Carlo Diaz delivered a video message after the extradition, leaving no ambiguity about the government's posture.
"Costa Rica is sending a strong message: no one can use our nationality to evade justice."
Diaz acknowledged that "high-profile individuals" were among those included in the inaugural extradition. He called it "a historic day." The Chaves administration hailed the move as a major step in ensuring criminal justice, and the president himself went further, accusing Gamboa of representing "the tip of the iceberg" in terms of corruption in the political system.
Proponents of the constitutional amendment argued it was necessary to combat growing crime and that corruption in the judicial system made pursuing justice inside Costa Rica's own courts unreliable. That argument carried the day in the legislature. The amendment does include safeguards: suspects cannot be sent abroad to face the death penalty or sentences exceeding 50 years.
Gamboa, for his part, has pushed back. He is paraphrased as saying the accusations were made in "bad faith" and that he plans to testify against other government figures if his safety and his family's safety are not guaranteed. If convicted in the U.S., both he and Lopez Vega face a minimum of 10 years in federal prison.
Costa Rica isn't moving in isolation. The extradition fits a wider pattern across Latin America, where governments once hostile to sending citizens north for prosecution are reversing course under pressure from drug violence, corruption, and diplomatic alignment with Washington.
Ecuador blazed the trail. In April 2024, Ecuadorian voters approved a referendum allowing extraditions of citizens to countries like the United States. By July 2025, the U.S. confirmed it had received its first extradition from Ecuador under the new framework. Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa praised the measure as giving his country "more tools to fight crime."
Costa Rica's amendment followed a similar logic, and the timing of its implementation aligns with a broader diplomatic tilt. Since President Trump took office for a second term, Costa Rica has accepted U.S. deportation flights carrying citizens of "third-party" countries as part of the administration's mass deportation push. This week, Costa Rica also expelled Cuban diplomats from its borders. And on March 7, Chaves joined other right-wing Latin American leaders at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort for a security summit.
The convergence is hard to miss. Countries that cooperate with Washington on enforcement, deportation, and extradition are finding themselves welcomed at the table. Those that don't are finding the pressure ratchets tighter. The debate over how far courts and legal institutions should be reshaped to meet the moment is playing out across the Americas, not just in the U.S.
The Gamboa case illustrates a hard truth that many Latin American reformers have grasped: when the rot reaches the courts themselves, domestic prosecution may not be enough. A man who ran intelligence operations, oversaw public security, and sat on the Supreme Court allegedly used every one of those positions to shield drug traffickers. If the Treasury's allegations hold, Gamboa didn't just fail to fight narcotics, he actively sold out the people trying to stop them.
Chaves and his allies in the legislature decided that the only way to break that cycle was to let an outside jurisdiction handle the case. That's a dramatic concession of sovereignty, and critics will have legitimate questions about the precedent. But the alternative, leaving alleged narco-corruption to be adjudicated by the very system the accused allegedly corrupted, was evidently unacceptable to a supermajority of Costa Rica's lawmakers.
The 44-to-57 vote wasn't a squeaker. It reflected a country that had seen enough.
Gamboa and Lopez Vega now face the U.S. federal court system in the eastern district of Texas. The charges are serious. The minimum sentence is steep. And Gamboa's threat to name other government figures adds a volatile element. If he cooperates with American prosecutors, the fallout could extend well beyond one ex-minister and his alleged co-conspirator.
For Costa Rica, Friday's extradition was both a first and a signal. The constitutional amendment is no longer theoretical. The government has shown it will use the new authority against its most powerful citizens, not just street-level operatives but former judges, former ministers, and former intelligence chiefs.
That willingness matters. Across the region, governments have passed tough-sounding laws only to let them gather dust when enforcement would embarrass the powerful. Costa Rica, at least on this day, chose differently.
When a former Supreme Court justice ends up in handcuffs on a DEA plane, it's a reminder that the law means nothing if the people sworn to uphold it are the ones selling it out.
