Ieva Jusionyte, the Watson Family University Associate Professor of International Security and Anthropology, was awarded the 2025 Salomon Award in social sciences for exceptional merit on her project, “Extradition: Can Justice Be Exported?”
“Extradition: Can Justice be Exported?” examines extraditions from Mexico to the United States - as legal, political, and social processes - to understand the impact this practice has on justice: Do extraditions aid it or impede it? In the past two decades, more than a thousand Mexicans have been extradited to the United States to face charges of drug trafficking and money laundering conspiracies. The crimes they committed in Mexico - extortion, kidnapping, disappearance, and murder of Mexican citizens – are not investigated by US courts. This means that communities which experience the most direct effects of violent crime and gross human rights violations in Mexico are left without access to truth and accountability. The widespread practice of prosecuting Mexican citizens involved in organized crime in the United States is a highly politicized and obscure process, which brings up questions about the rule of law and the meaning of justice on two sides of the border. Drawing on legal and archival research, observations of court hearings, and interviews with defense attorneys, prosecutors, and judges involved in extradition cases in the United States and in Mexico, former and current Mexican and US government officials, Mexican citizens who have been extradited to the United States, and family members of crime victims in Mexico who are seeking truth and accountability, the project will investigate the immediate as well as the long-lasting consequences that extraditions have had on the Mexican society and its criminal justice system.