NEW YORK >> A Mexican drug lord notorious for his role in a U.S. drug enforcement agent’s brutal 1985 murder was arraigned on sweeping drug-trafficking charges in New York on Friday.

The arraignment of the drug lord, Rafael Caro Quintero, a founding member of the Sinaloa Cartel, came a day after he was transferred to the United States from Mexico in a move that potentially signaled a new era of cooperation between the two countries.

Caro Quintero was arraigned in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn along with Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, a former leader of the Juarez Cartel.

Caro Quintero, 72, was charged in a superseding indictment in 2020 with smuggling thousands of kilograms of illegal drugs across the U.S. border as well as with a four-decade effort to murder his rivals.

Carrillo Fuentes, 62, was charged in a separate indictment with similar crimes from 1990 to 2014. Both pleaded not guilty and were ordered held without bail.

Saritha Komatireddy, an assistant U.S. attorney, said in court that Caro Quintero and his associates had “pioneered the Mexican drug-trafficking industry.”

The men appeared before Magistrate Judge Robert M. Levy a day after Mexican authorities turned them and 27 other top drug-cartel operatives over to their American counterparts in an extraordinary move.

The transfer was widely seen as a sign of Mexico’s willingness to increase its cooperation with the U.S.’s plans to crack down on its criminal mafias.