Mexico’s security minister said Tuesday that it had sent another 37 members of Mexican drug cartels to the United States, as the Trump administration ratchets up pressure on governments to crack down on criminal networks it says are smuggling drugs across the border.
Mexican Security Minister Omar García Harfuch wrote in a social media post on X that the people transferred were “high impact criminals” that “represented a real threat to the country’s security.”
Garia said under an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department, prosecutors would not seek the death penalty. He said the 37 individuals were taken to multiple cities, including Washington, Houston, New York,, San Antonio and San Diego, aboard 7 aircraft.
Mexican Security Minister Omar García Harfuch wrote on social media that the people transferred were “high impact criminals.”
Mexican Security Minister Omar García Harfuch
It is the third time in the past year that Mexico has sent detained cartel members to the U.S.
Harfuch said that the government has sent 92 people in total.
Last August, Mexico sent 26 high-ranking cartel figures to the U.S., including Abigael González Valencia, a leader of “Los Cuinis,” a group closely aligned with notorious cartel Jalisco New Generation, or CJNG. Another defendant, Roberto Salazar, was wanted in connection to the 2008 killing of a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy.
MEXICO CITY — Adrián Ramírez hadn’t been to his hometown in western Mexico for more than two decades. When he finally returned there early last year after being deported from the United States, he found the place transformed.
Ramírez remembered the town as vibrant. But the discotheque where he used to dance through the night in his 20s was gone. The bustling evening market, where locals gather for tacos, now empties out early. After 10 p.m., cartel members wielding military-grade weapons take control of the streets.
“It is no longer the same Mexico of my childhood,” said Ramírez, 45, who asked to be identified by his middle and last name for security reasons. “There was more joy, more freedom. But that’s not the case anymore.”
Anyone returning to their hometown after decades away will note changes — old businesses close and new ones open, some people move away and others die. Adjusting to such shifts has long been part of the Mexican migrant experience.
But many of the tens of thousands of people who have been deported to Mexico by the Trump administration have spent decades in the U.S. and are discovering that their country has also changed in more profound ways.
Criminal groups, better armed and better organized than in the past, now control about a third of Mexican territory, according to an analysis by the U.S. military. Gangs have branched out beyond drug trafficking to extort money from small businesses and dominate entire industries, such as the avocado and lime trade. In some regions, criminals charge taxes on just about anything — tortillas and chicken, cigarettes and beer.
Military forces provide security during a meeting about the Michoacan Plan for Peace and Justice, at the facilities of the Morelos barracks in the XXI Military Zone in Morelia, Micoacan, Mexico, in November.
(Enrique Castro / AFP via Getty Images)
Parts of Michoacán, the state where Ramírez is from, now resemble an actual battlefield, with criminal groups fighting each other with grenade launchers, drones rigged with explosives and improvised land mines.
Returning migrants are vulnerable to violence because they stand out. Many speak Spanglish. Their stylish haircuts, often with fades on the sides, set them apart in rural communities. So does their gringo-style attire, like baggy pants and T-shirts touting their favorite sports teams — Dodgers, Raiders, Dallas Cowboys. Ramírez said that even his mannerisms, which had changed from years up north, quickly identified him as an outsider.
Cartels single out returning migrants for kidnapping or extortion because they are perceived to have money, said Israel Concha, who runs Nuevo Comienzos, or New Beginnings, a nonprofit with offices in Las Vegas and Mexico City that supports deportees. Returnees often don’t know how to navigate cartel-run checkpoints or local rules set by criminal groups.
“We’re an easy target,” Concha said.
Concha said he was abducted and tortured by cartel members in 2014 after he was deported to Mexico. He said 16 migrants from his organization’s support group have been assassinated or disappeared since he founded his organization.
Ten of those cases happened in the last year.
In May, a recently returned man vanished after leaving his job at a hotel in the central state of Querétaro, Concha said. His parents, giving up hope of finding him alive, held a funeral and a Mass for him in October.
Ramírez left his town in Michoacán state for the United States when he was 21, hoping to save money so he could come back home and build a house of his own.
But life happened — Ramírez got married and had three children — and he stayed. He was washing cars and driving for Uber in Nashville before he was deported.
Returning to Michoacán was bittersweet. He cried with happiness as he hugged his mother and siblings for the first time in years. But shortly after, he was interrogated by a cartel member on the street who wanted to know his name and what he did for a living. Another cartel member photographed him while he strolled the town plaza.
His town had once been famous for its cheese production. Now its most dominant industry is fuel theft, a booming multimillion-dollar enterprise in Mexico. Criminals with the Jalisco New Generation cartel recently burned down the town’s two gas stations and killed the owner to assert their control over the pueblo, Ramírez said. They then set up their own illegal stations, leaving locals no choice but to buy from them.
The authorities were no help.
Ramírez learned from his family that the mayor had been handpicked by the cartel. The police are also in cahoots with criminals. After a relative suffered an accident, the cops who responded ended up extorting money from him, Ramírez said.
Ramírez began to fear for his life. He wondered whether it might be time to leave, and if so, where he would go.
A growing number of Mexicans are being forced to flee their communities because of violence, data show. The conflict-ridden states of Michoacán, Chiapas and Zacatecas have seen particularly high levels of displacement.
Israel Ibarra, a migration expert at the College of the Northern Border, said migrants returning to war-torn communities often end up having to leave again.
“They are not only becoming deported people,” he said. “They will experience double-forced displacement.”
That is what happened to a man who returned to a town few hours away from where Ramírez grew up, in the mountains of Michoacán. A local rancher hired the migrant to manage his herd of cattle.
Contracting outsiders requires vetting and approval by the regional faction of the cartel, which the rancher had not done. No locals had dared help the rancher repair his fence and care for his herd because of the cartel requisites, leaving the rancher with a limited employment pool.
The migrant, who declined to provide his name because he feared for his life, didn’t fully recognize the power wielded by cartels and took the job. The rancher also paid better than others, to the consternation of the Jalisco cartel, which controls wages in the area.
One morning, sicarios arrived at the migrant’s home and fired round after round of bullets into the building. The worker fled out the back door as gunmen stormed in.
“They left me in ruin,” he said. “They took everything.” He went into hiding in Michoacán’s capital.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum touts data showing that homicides fell during her first year in office. But the number of people being disappeared has surged across the country, particularly in cartel-controlled regions. And shocking acts of violence continue to make headlines.
“For people who left a long time ago, many of them are coming back to communities that are much more violent than they were when they left,” said Andrew Selee of the Washington, D.C.-based Migration Policy Institute.
In Michocán in the fall, the Jalisco cartel is accused of assassinating a prominent mayor who had vowed to hold criminals accountable. In December the group detonated a car bomb in a municipality located along a top cocaine-trafficking route, killing four police officers.
Deportations to Mexico were fewer last year than either of the two previous years, according to data from the country’s National Migration Institute. But President Trump’s hard-line deportation campaign means fewer migrants who were returned to Mexico are attempting to cross back into the the U.S., experts said.
Sheinbaum’s government launched a reintegration program called México te Abraza, or Mexico welcomes you with open arms, that has provided limited support to those returning, according to migrant advocates.
Under the program, migrants are supposed to be given around $100 and a bus ticket to their hometown. But Concha said that some don’t receive the money and that migrants need much more help. “The program doesn’t work,” Concha said. “We need something more comprehensive that also supports emotional and mental health.”
Ramírez wants to return to the U.S. to be with his family but is afraid of ending up in detention there.
He misses his children, and dreams of buying them plane tickets so they can visit. But he is afraid of exposing them to Mexico’s violence. “It’s a very different kind of life here,” he said. “It hurts me what’s happening.”
He decided to leave his pueblo a few months ago. The town where he is now living seems more tranquil, although it is also controlled by the Jalisco cartel. After he got a job at a tortilleria, his new employer warned him: Cartel members may stop by to ask him where he’s from.
This article was co-published with Puente News Collaborative, a bilingual nonprofit newsroom that covers stories from Mexico and the U.S.-Mexico border.
An F-18E fighter jet is seen on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford while it sails during NATO’s Neptune Strike 2025 exercise on September 24 in the North Sea.
JONATHAN KLEIN
AFP via Getty Images
Maracaibo
President Donald Trump said Monday that the United States has destroyed a docking area used by suspected drug traffickers in Venezuela, marking what would be the first publicly acknowledged U.S. ground strike inside the country amid escalating tensions with the Nicolás Maduro regime.
Speaking to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said U.S. forces targeted a coastal facility used to load drugs onto boats bound for international markets.
“There was a big explosion in the dock area where they load the boats with drugs,” Trump said. “So we hit all the boats, and now we hit the area. It’s the staging area. And that’s gone now.”
The president did not specify whether the operation was carried out by U.S. military forces or intelligence agencies, nor did he identify the precise location of the strike, saying only that it occurred “along the coast.” He also declined to say whether there were casualties.
Trump’s remarks, first made during a radio interview on Friday and reiterated Monday, have not been confirmed by U.S. defense officials. The White House has issued no formal statement, and the Pentagon referred questions to the president’s office.
Venezuelan authorities have likewise remained silent. State-controlled media have not reported any attack, although social media users in western Venezuela circulated images and videos over the weekend of a large fire at what appeared to be a warehouse near the city of Maracaibo. The cause of the blaze has not been independently verified.
The blaze erupted early Tuesday morning at the Primazol facility in the city of San Francisco, in Zulia state, roughly 700 kilometers west of Caracas and near Lake Maracaibo, one of the largest bodies of water in South America. Local authorities said the incident was unrelated to any foreign military action.
According to Mayor Héctor Soto, a political ally of strongman Nicolás Maduro, the fire was caused by an electrical failure. Speaking to local media, Soto said no one was injured and dismissed suggestions that the incident was linked to an external attack. He added that agents from Venezuela’s military counterintelligence agency, along with police and firefighters, responded immediately to the scene.
“Let the Americans — the gringos, in this case Donald Trump and all his people — continue to dream,” Soto said. “We will defend the homeland of Bolívar.”
Primazol dismissed in a statement the unofficial versions that linked the fire to President Trump’s statements, calling it an “incident.”
If confirmed, the strike would represent a significant escalation in Washington’s pressure campaign against the Maduro regime and the first known instance of a U.S. military strike on Venezuelan territory in the current standoff.
The Trump administration has accused Maduro and senior officials of leading what it calls the “Cartel of the Suns,” a network of military and political figures allegedly involved in large-scale cocaine trafficking. U.S. authorities have offered a reward of up to $50 million for information leading to Maduro’s arrest on charges including narco-terrorism and conspiracy.
Trump said Monday that he had spoken “very recently” with Maduro by phone but characterized the conversation as unproductive. “Not much came of it,” he said.
The alleged strike comes amid an intensifying U.S. campaign against drug trafficking networks operating in the Caribbean and along South America’s northern coast. Since September, U.S. forces have increased maritime and aerial patrols in the region, targeting vessels suspected of transporting narcotics.
According to U.S. officials, at least 107 people have been killed in operations tied to what the administration has dubbed Operation Southern Spear, a sweeping effort aimed at disrupting transnational drug networks. Washington has described the campaign as one of the largest U.S. military deployments in the Caribbean in decades.
The Pentagon has recently surged additional assets into the region, including the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford and several guided-missile destroyers. U.S. officials say the deployments are intended to bolster interdiction efforts in both the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific.
Human rights organizations, however, have raised concerns about civilian casualties and the legal basis for some of the operations. Several groups have accused the United States of carrying out extrajudicial killings, allegations the administration has firmly denied, insisting all actions comply with international law and are conducted in self-defense.
The reported strike also comes as Washington tightens economic pressure on Caracas. The Trump administration has expanded sanctions on Venezuela’s oil sector and recently ordered the seizure of vessels linked to sanctioned entities. U.S. officials argue that oil revenues are being funneled into drug trafficking, corruption, and the financing of armed groups.
The Maduro regime has repeatedly rejected those claims, accusing Washington of waging economic warfare and seeking to justify regime change. Venezuelan officials insist that the country is the victim of an international disinformation campaign aimed at undermining its sovereignty and seizing control of its vast oil reserves.
Trump, however, struck a defiant tone, suggesting that the operation marked a turning point. “They’re loading the ships with drugs,” he said. “So we attacked the ships, and now we’re attacking the area. That area no longer exists.”
Galardonado periodista con más de 30 años de experiencia, especializado en la cobertura de temas sobre Venezuela. Amante de la historia y la literatura.
A high-ranking Mexican drug cartel leader accused of faking his death to avoid capture was sentenced Thursday to more than 11 years in U.S. prison for his money laundering role in one of his home country’s largest and most violent narcotics trafficking organizations.
Cristian Fernando Gutierrez-Ochoa was living in California under a phony identity when he was arrested in November 2024. The father of his longtime girlfriend is Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, the fugitive Jalisco New Generation boss known as El Mencho.
Gutierrez-Ochoa was wanted in Mexico on suspicion of kidnapping two Mexican Navy members in 2021 to secure the release of El Mencho’s wife after she had been arrested by Mexican authorities, according to a Drug Enforcement Administration agent’s affidavit.
At the time of his arrest, Nicole Argentieri, a senior Justice Department official, said Gutierrez-Ochoa “allegedly directed the importation of tons of methamphetamine and cocaine into the United States and engaged in violence to aid the cartel’s criminal activities.”
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington sentenced Gutierrez-Ochoa to 11 years and eight months in federal prison. Howell said the violent cartel, known by its Spanish-language acronym CJNG, also is a “dangerous force” in the United States.
“It’s a dangerous way to make a living,” Howell said. “It’s a dangerous way to live.”
Gutierrez-Ochoa told the judge that he accepts responsibility for his “mistake.”
“I regret all of this,” he said through a translator. “Never again will I make a mistake like this in my life.”
Justice Department prosecutors recommended a 14-year prison sentence for the 28-year-old Gutierrez-Ochoa, who pleaded guilty in June to conspiring to launder millions of dollars in drug trafficking proceeds. Prosecutors described him as a dangerous, trained operative who was secretly embedded in the U.S. to do the CJNG cartel’s bidding.
“The CJNG kills, tortures, and corrupts to traffic staggering quantities of cocaine, methamphetamine and other drugs into the United States and elsewhere – all for profiting and enrichment, which in turn fund the cycle of violence, ravaging countless lives and communities,” prosecutors wrote.
Last year, the U.S. imposed sanctions on a group of Mexican accountants and firms allegedly linked to a timeshare fraud ring run by the Jalisco cartel in a multi-million dollar scheme targeting Americans.
Gutierrez-Ochoa’s lawyers asked for a seven-year prison sentence. They said he was remorseful and accepted responsibility for his criminal conduct.
“Mr. Gutierrez’s rehabilitation is not performative,” they wrote. “It reflects a young man who now fully understands the magnitude of his mistakes and who seeks to rebuild his life with integrity.”
El Mencho told associates that he killed Gutierrez-Ochoa for lying, but Gutierrez-Ochoa actually faked his death and fled from Mexico to Riverside, California, authorities have said. Gutierrez-Ochoa and his girlfriend, a U.S. citizen, lived “a CJNG-sponsored life of abundance” in a $1.2 million home purchased with laundered cartel money, according to prosecutors.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said previously that Gutierrez-Ochoa “assumed a false identity to evade justice and live a life of luxury in California.”
The State Department has offered a reward of up to $15 million for information leading to the arrest of El Mencho.
In February, President Donald Trump’s administration designated CJNG as a foreign terrorist organization, giving authorities new tools to prosecute cartel associates.
Howell has sentenced other CJNG leaders.
José González Valencia, a brother-in-law of El Mencho, was sentenced in June to 30 years in a prison after pleading guilty to a drug trafficking conspiracy charge. El Mencho’s son, Rubén Oseguera, known as El Menchito, was sentenced in March to life in prison after a jury convicted him of conspiring to distribute cocaine and methamphetamine for U.S. importation and using a firearm in a drug conspiracy.
MEXICO CITY — No floodlights illuminate the night sky when the citizens of Mexico’s Gotham need a hand. No hot line summons this super-cop from a hidden redoubt.
But Mexico does indeed have its own “Batman”: Omar García Harfuch, security czar in the government of President Claudia Sheinbaum.
He acquired the Batman moniker during his days as Mexico City’s crime-busting police chief under then-Mayor Sheinbaum. Like the stalwart Dark Knight, García Harfuch emits the vibe of a vigilant protector who compensates for a lack of superpowers with more cerebral skills — a mix of intelligence, resolve and moxie.
In his current post (official title: secretary of Security and Citizen Protection), García Harfuch is inevitably dispatched to hot spots from the northern border to the southern hinterlands — sites of assassinations, massacres, gang wars and other headline-grabbing incarnations of Mexican mayhem. The script never varies: He vows to snare the bad guys. Arrests follow.
Like his boss, Sheinbaum, the security chief disputes President Trump’s assertions that Mexico is “run by” cartels, though he doesn’t deny the widespread sway of organized crime.
“Yes, there is definitely a presence of criminal groups, but [Mexico] is not controlled by the cartels,” García Harfuch, 43, recently told the Mexican daily El Universal.
Omar García Harfuch, far left in suit, walks with President Claudia Sheinbaum, center, and other Mexican officials during a ceremony in Mexico City in September to mark the Sept. 19 earthquakes that hit Mexico in 1985 and 2017.
(Juan Abundis / ObturadorMX via Getty Images)
His stern, just-the-facts Joe Friday recitals of arrests, seizures, drug lab takedowns and other enforcement actions are signature moments at presidential news briefings. García Harfuch — always decked out in suit and tie — transmits an aura of competence, and his media-savvy advisors have burnished his image as an implacable foe of the cartels.
Supporters began calling him Batman, in English, when crime rates dropped precipitously in Mexico City during his tenure as police chief. Supporters even circulated online images of a modified Batman action figure, with “Harfuch” emblazoned on the chest.
While emphasizing intelligence-gathering and investigative diligence, he doesn’t shy from praising shoe-leather police work and citing traditional metrics of success. Since Sheinbaum took office Oct. 1, 2024, he says, authorities have arrested more than 37,000 suspects in “high-impact crimes,” seized more than 300 tons of illicit drugs and dismantled more than 600 drug labs.
Such statistics were rarely tossed about during the presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Sheinbaum’s predecessor and mentor. The ex-president favored a much-criticized “hugs not bullets” strategy — curtailing offensive operations against cartels and instead addressing poverty and other socioeconomic factors driving young people to join organized crime. Many Mexicans appear happy with the shift.
García Harfuch, at the National Palace in September, was chief of police of Mexico City before becoming secretary of Security and Citizen Protection.
(Gerardo Vieyra / NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“Harfuch seems to me a good man who has good intentions, but, unfortunately, crime is so ingrained in Mexican society that it’s hard to get rid of it,” said Gregorio Flores, 57, a shop owner in Mexico City.
García Harfuch is the probably the most visible figure in the Mexican government apart from the president, and polls show him to be among the most popular — and a possible candidate to succeed Sheinbaum, who clearly trusts him explicitly from their time together in Mexico City government. Even rivals of Sheinbaum acknowledge his effectiveness.
Taking a pronounced stance against organized crime is hardly without risk in Mexico, where politicians, cops, journalists and anyone else who stands in the way of the mobs may wind up in the gangsters’ cross-hairs. García Harfuch is well aware of the stakes.
Experts work at the crime scene after García Harfuch was wounded in an assassination attempt in Mexico City on June 26, 2020. Two of his bodyguards and a female bystander were killed.
(Pedro Pardo / AFP via Getty Images)
In 2020, while serving as the capital’s police chief, García Harfuch survived three gunshot wounds in a brazen attack as his SUV traveled along Mexico City’s elegant Paseo de la Reforma. Killed in the assault were two police bodyguards and a female street vendor who was a bystander. The commando-style strike utilizing multiple high-caliber armaments stunned one of the capital’s toniest residential districts, something like a mob hit on Rodeo Drive.
From his hospital bed, García Harfuch — a former federal cop who also has a law degree — blamed the powerful Jalisco New Generation cartel.
Ongoing threats against García Harfuch are frequently reported in the Mexican press, including chilling scribbled death threats found in May alongside several mangled bodies, presumed cartel victims, dumped outside Acapulco.
“García Harfuch is the cartels’ enemy No. 1,” said David Saucedo, a security analyst. “He’s become a headache for them. The cartels were accustomed to making deals with [the government]. … But Harfuch gives the impression that he’s not disposed to reach an agreement with organized crime groups. And that’s a problem for the cartels.”
Security is Mexicans’ major concern, and Garcia Harfuch gives the impression that the good guys are cracking down, even if many are dubious about the steep crime declines Sheinbaum regularly touts.
Homicides have nose-dived by almost 40% since Sheinbaum took office last year, the government says, though critics call the statistic inflated — it excludes, for instance, the rising numbers of “disappeared” people, presumed crime victims consigned to clandestine graves.
And some have suggested that Sheinbaum’s save-the-day call-ups of her media-savvy security chief are more performative than substantive, and probably counterproductive.
“There’s no Batman,” columnist Viri Ríos wrote recently in Mexico’s Milenio newspaper. “The myth of Batman is dangerous, especially for Harfuch. Making him a myth imposes on him the responsibility of pacifying the country. But, as we all know, Omar can’t defeat organized crime by himself.”
In fact, García Harfuch has relatively few forces under his direct command. Corruption remains rampant among state and municipal police, prosecutors and judges in Mexico, often rendering them unreliable partners. Thus García Harfuch is dependent on other agencies, notably the national guard, a 200,000-strong force under military command.
Sheinbaum speaks at her daily press briefing in November as García Harfuch looks on. He is a fixture at the briefings.
(Carl de Souza / AFP via Getty Images)
García Harfuch regularly extols his relationship with the armed forces, despite rumors of resentment against his sweeping powers and his closeness to Sheinbaum. Mexico’s first female president also serves as military commander in chief.
García Harfuch is said to have the trust of U.S. law enforcement, even though the Trump administration’s ever-escalating demands and threats of unilateral strikes on Mexican territory put him in a tough spot. Only last week, Trump declared that he was “not happy” with narcotics-fighting efforts in Mexico.
“The Americans have confidence in García Harfuch, but they are always asking for more — more arrests, more extraditions, more decommissions” of drug labs, said Saucedo, the security analyst.
For security reasons, officials provide few details on García Harfuch’s personal life, beyond saying he is divorced and a father.
García Harfuch descends from a line of prominent government officials, their careers reflecting, in part, Mexico’s past under a repressive, authoritarian government.
His grandfather, Gen. Marcelino García Barragán, was a secretary of defense during the infamous 1968 massacre of student protesters in Mexico City’s Tlatelolco district; and his father, Javier García Paniagua, was a politician who held various posts, including chief of a now-disbanded federal police agency assailed for human rights abuses.
Mexico’s top cop may not wear a cape and mask, but his background does have a touch of show business: His mother, María Sorté, is one of Mexico’s best-known actors, often portraying characters in telenovelas, or soap operas. Few know her real name, María Harfuch Hidalgo, whose paternal surname reflects her Lebanese ancestry.
“Harfuch strikes me as a good man with fine intentions,” said Carmen Zamora, 46, a restaurant owner in Mexico City. “But he needs more time. One cannot resolve in one year the violence that we have seen for so long in Mexico.”
Carlos Monjarraz, 34, a capital car salesman, is not convinced.
“All this Batman stuff is just a joke on Mexicans when everything is the same — the same murders, narco-trafficking, insecurity,” Monjarraz said. “We don’t need a Batman to save us. What we need is for authorities to jail the real criminals — crooked politicians who keep protecting each other.”
Special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed to this report.
Top U.S. military officials are meeting leaders of Caribbean nations this week as the Trump administration has escalated its firepower in the region as part of what it calls a campaign against drug trafficking.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will travel to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and meet Wednesday with the country’s top leaders, including President Luis Abinader, Minister of Defense Lt. Gen. Carlos Antonio Fernández Onofre and other officials, the Pentagon said Tuesday.The announcement came the same day that Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and President Donald Trump’s primary military adviser, met with Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar.They “exchanged views on challenges affecting the Caribbean region, including the destabilizing effects of illicit narcotics, arms, and human trafficking, and transnational criminal organization activities,” according to a summary released by Caine’s office.The U.S. military has built up its largest presence in the region in generations and has been attacking alleged drug-smuggling boats since early September. To date, the military, under Hegseth’s command, has carried out 21 known strikes on vessels accused of carrying drugs, killing at least 83 people.The actions are seen by many as a pressure tactic to get Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to step down. The visits by Hegseth and Caine this week come as Trump evaluates whether to take military action against Venezuela, which he has not ruled out despite raising the possibility of talks with Maduro, who has been charged with narcoterrorism in the U.S.The Trump administration added extra pressure by officially designating the Cartel de los Soles, or Cartel of the Suns, as a foreign terrorist organization on Monday, although the entity that the U.S. government alleges is led by Maduro is not a cartel per se.While a majority of Caribbean leaders have been muted in their response to the strikes on alleged drug boats, urging peace and dialogue, Persad-Bissessar has stood out for her public praise of the deadly attacks.In early September, she said she had no sympathy for drug traffickers, adding that “the U.S. military should kill them all violently.” Her remarks and support of the strikes have been condemned by some opposition leaders and regional officials.Amery Browne, Trinidad’s former foreign affairs minister, told the local newspaper Newsday that Persad-Bissessar’s stance is “reckless,” and that she has isolated herself from Caricom, a regional trade bloc.According to the Pentagon, Hegseth’s trip to the Dominican Republic will aim “to strengthen defense relationships and reaffirm America’s commitment to defend the homeland.”Meanwhile, Caine also used his time in the region to visit American troops in Puerto Rico and on at least one U.S. Navy ship, thanking service members for their service and sacrifice over the Thanksgiving holiday, the Pentagon said.Caine and Hegseth also visited the region in September, going to Puerto Rico after ships carrying hundreds of U.S. Marines arrived for what officials said was a training exercise.
WASHINGTON —
Top U.S. military officials are meeting leaders of Caribbean nations this week as the Trump administration has escalated its firepower in the region as part of what it calls a campaign against drug trafficking.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will travel to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and meet Wednesday with the country’s top leaders, including President Luis Abinader, Minister of Defense Lt. Gen. Carlos Antonio Fernández Onofre and other officials, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
The announcement came the same day that Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and President Donald Trump’s primary military adviser, met with Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar.
They “exchanged views on challenges affecting the Caribbean region, including the destabilizing effects of illicit narcotics, arms, and human trafficking, and transnational criminal organization activities,” according to a summary released by Caine’s office.
The U.S. military has built up its largest presence in the region in generations and has been attacking alleged drug-smuggling boats since early September. To date, the military, under Hegseth’s command, has carried out 21 known strikes on vessels accused of carrying drugs, killing at least 83 people.
The actions are seen by many as a pressure tactic to get Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to step down. The visits by Hegseth and Caine this week come as Trump evaluates whether to take military action against Venezuela, which he has not ruled out despite raising the possibility of talks with Maduro, who has been charged with narcoterrorism in the U.S.
The Trump administration added extra pressure by officially designating the Cartel de los Soles, or Cartel of the Suns, as a foreign terrorist organization on Monday, although the entity that the U.S. government alleges is led by Maduro is not a cartel per se.
While a majority of Caribbean leaders have been muted in their response to the strikes on alleged drug boats, urging peace and dialogue, Persad-Bissessar has stood out for her public praise of the deadly attacks.
In early September, she said she had no sympathy for drug traffickers, adding that “the U.S. military should kill them all violently.” Her remarks and support of the strikes have been condemned by some opposition leaders and regional officials.
Amery Browne, Trinidad’s former foreign affairs minister, told the local newspaper Newsday that Persad-Bissessar’s stance is “reckless,” and that she has isolated herself from Caricom, a regional trade bloc.
According to the Pentagon, Hegseth’s trip to the Dominican Republic will aim “to strengthen defense relationships and reaffirm America’s commitment to defend the homeland.”
Meanwhile, Caine also used his time in the region to visit American troops in Puerto Rico and on at least one U.S. Navy ship, thanking service members for their service and sacrifice over the Thanksgiving holiday, the Pentagon said.
Caine and Hegseth also visited the region in September, going to Puerto Rico after ships carrying hundreds of U.S. Marines arrived for what officials said was a training exercise.
CARACAS, Venezuela — On the face of it, the United States appears closer than ever to mounting a military campaign to remove President Nicolás Maduro from power in Venezuela.
President Trump says he has authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations inside the Caribbean nation, and has massed troops, fighter jets and warships just off its coastline.
U.S. service members in the region have been barred from taking Thanksgiving leave. Airlines have canceled flights to Venezuela after the Federal Aviation Administration warned of a “potentially hazardous situation” there. And on Monday the White House officially designated Maduro as a member of an international terrorist group.
In Caracas, the nation’s capital, there is a palpable sense of anxiety, especially as each new bellicose pronouncement emerges from Washington.
“People are very tense,” said Rosa María López, 47, a podiatrist and mother of two. “Although no one says anything because they are afraid.”
Traffic is sparse at the Simon Bolivar Maiquetia International Airport in Maiquetia, Venezuela, on Sunday after several international airlines canceled flights following a warning from the Federal Aviation Administration about a hazardous situation in Venezuelan airspace.
(Ariana Cubillos / Associated Press)
Trump has been presented with a set of military options by the Pentagon, a source familiar with the matter told The Times, and is said to be weighing his options. Still, his plans for Venezuela remain opaque.
Trump, even while warning of a possible military action, has also continually floated the possibility of negotiations, saying he “probably would talk” to Maduro at some point.
“I don’t rule out anything,” Trump said last week.
Now people in both the U.S. and Venezuela are wondering: is the U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean the prelude to an invasion, or a bluff intended to pressure Maduro to make a deal?
There are members of the White House — especially Secretary of State Marco Rubio — who are desperate to unseat Maduro, a leftist autocrat whom the U.S. does not recognize as Venezuela’s legitimately elected president.
But other members of Trump’s team seem more intent on securing access to Venezuela’s oil riches, and keeping them from China and Russia, than pushing for regime change. Parties of that camp might be willing to accept a deal with Venezuela that does not call for Maduro’s exit and a plan for a democratic transition.
Months of U.S. saber-rattling without any direct military action against the Maduro government may be weakening the Americans’ negotiating position, said Geoff Ramsey, a Venezuela expert at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based research group. “There is a psychological component to this operation, and it’s starting to lose its credibility,” he said. “I do fear that the regime thinks that it has weathered the worst of U.S. pressure.”
Maduro, for his part, insists he is open to dialogue. “Whoever in the U.S. wants to talk with Venezuela can do so,” he said this week. “We cannot allow the bombing and massacre of a Christian people — the people of Venezuela.”
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, speaking Friday at the presidential palace in Caracas, has insisted he is open to dialogue with the United States.
(Cristian Hernandez / Associated Press)
For years, he has refused efforts to force him from office, even in the face of punishing U.S. sanctions, domestic protests against his rule and various offensives during the first Trump administration that Caracas deemed as coup attempts. Experts say there is no evidence that Trump’s buildup of troops — or his attacks on alleged drug traffickers off of Venezuela’s coast — has weakened Maduro’s support amid the military or other hard-core backers.
Venezuela, meanwhile, has sought to use the prospect of a U.S. invasion to bolster support at home.
On Monday, top officials here took aim at the State Department’s designation of an alleged Venezuelan drug cartel as a foreign terrorist group. Rubio claims the Cartel de los Soles is “headed by Nicolás Maduro and other high-ranking individuals of the illegitimate Maduro regime who have corrupted Venezuela’s military, intelligence, legislature and judiciary.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth praised the declaration for introducing “a whole bunch of new options” to fight what he described as “narco-terrorists” and “illegitimate regimes.”
The Venezuelan government says the Cartel de los Soles does not exist. Foreign Minister Yván Gil described Monday’s designation as a “ridiculous fabrication.” The U.S., he said, is using a “vile lie to justify an illegitimate and illegal intervention against Venezuela under the classic U.S. format of regime change.”
The truth is somewhere in the middle.
The Cartel de los Soles, experts say, is less a traditional cartel — with a centralized command structure directing various cells — than a shorthand term used in the media and elsewhere to describe a loose group of corrupt Venezuelan military officials implicated in the drug trade.
The name, Cartel of the Suns, derives from the sun insignia found on the uniforms of Venezuelan soldiers, much like stars on U.S. military uniforms. It has been around since the early 1990s, when Venezuela was an important trans-shipment point for Colombian cocaine bound for the U.S. market. Today, only a small portion of cocaine trafficked to the U.S. moves through Venezuela.
Venezuelan journalist Ronna Rísquez Sánchez said it is unclear whether Maduro actually directs illicit activities conducted by his military or simply allows it to transpire among his government. Either way, she said, it is “happening under his nose.”
But she did not rule out that seizing on Maduro’s possible links to drug trafficking might be a convenient “pretext” for U.S. political machinations.
For the people of Venezuela, recent weeks have seen a heightened sense of uncertainty and anguish as people ponder ever-conflicting reports about a possible U.S. strike.
More than a decade of political, social and economic upheaval has left people exhausted and numbed, often unable to believe anything they hear about the future of Maduro’s government. There is a widespread sense of resignation and a feeling that things can only get worse.
“Every week we hear they are going to get rid of Maduro, but he’s still here,” said Inés Rojas, 25, a street vendor in Caracas. “We all want a change, but a change that improves things, not makes them worse. We young people don’t have a future. The doors of immigration are closed, we are locked in here, not knowing what is going to happen.”
Mostly, people seem to want an end to the overwhelming feeling of not knowing what comes next.
“I pray every day that this uncertainty ends,” said Cristina López Castillo, 37, an unemployed office worker who favors Maduro’s removal from office. “We don’t have a future — or a present. We live every day wondering what will happen tomorrow. I have more fear of hunger than of Trump.”
Still, Maduro retains many backers — and not only among the military and political elite who have seen their loyalty rewarded with additional wealth. Many people remain thankful for the social welfare legacy of Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, and are wary of U.S. motivations in Venezuela.
“We Venezuelans do not want to be anyone’s colony, nor do we want anyone to drop bombs on us to get rid of a president,” said José Gregorio Martínez Pina, 45, a construction worker in the capital.
“Is Maduro a narco? I haven’t seen any proof,” he said. “And if they have it, they should present it, instead of having a country living under terror for weeks.”
Times staff writers Linthicum and McDonnell reported in Mexico City. Mogollón, a special correspondent, reported in Caracas. Michael Wilner in the Times’ Washington bureau also contributed reporting.
Kate Linthicum, Patrick J. McDonnell, Mery Mogollón
Colombia made its largest cocaine bust in a decade, authorities announced Friday, with 14 tons confiscated at its main Pacific port amid tensions with Washington, which has branded Bogota’s anti-drug policies insufficient. Authorities said a canine team helped uncover the massive quantity of hidden drugs.
The seizure in the world’s largest cocaine-producing country comes as the White House has hit President Gustavo Petro with financial sanctions and removed Colombia from the list of allies in the war on drugs.
The cocaine, stored in dozens of 110-pound sacks inside a warehouse, was “camouflaged” in a mixture with plaster, the Defense Ministry posted on X, calling it a “historic blow against drug trafficking.”
The ministry released video of a sniffer dog reacting to the sacks and images of officers using an electronic device to test the contents. Officials said the seizure prevented the circulation of 35 million doses of cocaine valued at over $388 million.
Authorities said a canine team helped uncover the massive quantity of hidden drugs.
Colombia Defense Ministry
It was “the largest seizure by the Colombian police in the last decade,” said Petro, whose term ends in nine months.
The operation was carried out — “without a single death,” according to Petro — in the southwestern port of Buenaventura, a strategic departure point for Colombian cocaine.
Petro is critical of President Donald Trump’s anti-drug strategy and has rejected as “extrajudicial executions” the bombings that the U.S. president has authorized against boats suspected of carrying drugs in the Caribbean and the Pacific.
In an exclusive conversation with CBS News in October, Petro claimed some of those killed by the U.S. strikes on alleged drug boats have been innocent civilians, and he reiterated his accusation that the attacks violate international law.
“Killing the business’ workers is easy,” Petro told CBS News. “But if you want to be effective, you have to capture the bosses of the business.”
The White House has denied that innocent civilians were killed in the boat strikes.
The Drug Enforcement Administration says about 90% of the cocaine that reaches the U.S. comes from Colombia, and Mr. Trump has blamed Petro, saying he’s failed to rein in drug cartels that operate in his country.
Colombia regularly breaks its own annual record for coca leaf cultivation and powder cocaine production.
It has some 625,000 acres under drug cultivation and produces at least 2,600 tons of cocaine, according to United Nations figures for 2023, the most recent available.
Petro considers Mr. Trump’s sanctions unfair and claims that record seizures have been made under his government. Petro released a chart on social media late Friday, purporting to show a steady increase in cocaine seizures in the country over the last six years.
Earlier this week, Colombian navy divers at a port on the Pacific coast discovered over 450 pounds of cocaine underneath a ship that was preparing to set sail for Europe.
That seizure came just a few days after the navy announced it had confiscated more than seven tons of drugs from two speedboats and a semi-submersible vessel, or so-called “narco sub,” also in the Pacific Ocean.
Mexican authorities arrested a man Tuesday who is accused of being involved in planning and ordering the fatal shooting of the mayor of a Mexican state during a public event earlier this month.
The suspect, identified as Jorge Armando N., was arrested Tuesday afternoon, Mexico’s Public Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch said at a news conference.
The man allegedly directed members of a criminal cell through an encrypted messaging app, issuing orders to surveil Carlos Manzo, the mayor of Uruapan in the western state of Michoacan, track his movements and carry out the attack, Garcia Harfuch said.
Authorities said that two individuals who were part of this cell, identified as Fernando Josué N. and Ramiro N., were later found dead on a highway on Nov. 10, allegedly to prevent the development of the investigations.
García Harfuch said Wednesday that Armando N. was one of the leaders of a cell of the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which was designated by the Trump administration earlier this year as a foreign terrorist organization.
Manzo was killed in an attack in the city center on Nov. 1 during an event marking the Day of the Dead. Mexican authorities previously reported that two others involved in the attack had been arrested, and one of the assailants had died, the national public security agency said.
Manzo took office as mayor in September 2024 and at times joined street security patrols while wearing a bulletproof vest. In a video he posted from a June patrol, he called on the federal government to step up efforts to fight violent crime.
Michoacan state has for years suffered violence from powerful drug cartels operating in the agricultural region, seeking to extort farmers.
Last month, Bernardo Bravo, a leader of lime growers in Michoacan, was killed after repeatedly denouncing in recent months the extortion demands of organized crime on producers.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Tuesday ruled out allowing U.S. strikes against cartels on Mexican soil, a day after President Trump said he was willing to do whatever it takes to stop drugs entering the U.S. Meanwhile, Mexican and American diplomats were trying to sort out what may have been an actual U.S. incursion.
On Monday, men arrived in a boat at a beach in northeast Mexico and installed some signs signaling land that the U.S. Department of Defense considered restricted.
Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said late Monday that the country’s navy had removed the signs, which appeared to be on Mexican territory. “The origin of the signs and their placement on national territory were unclear,” the ministry said in a statement.
On Tuesday, Sheinbaum said the International Boundary and Water Commission, a binational agency that determines the border between the two countries, was getting involved.
The signs, driven into the sand near where the Rio Grande empties into the Gulf of Mexico, caused a stir when witnesses said men in a boat arrived at the local beach known as Playa Bagdad and erected them.
The signs read in English and Spanish, “Warning: Restricted Area,” and went on to explain that it was Department of Defense property and had been declared restricted by “the commander.” It said there could be no unauthorized access, photography or drawings of the area.
The U.S. Embassy in Mexico shared a comment from the Pentagon Tuesday about the incident, confirming that contractors putting up signs to mark the “National Defense Area III” had placed signs at the mouth of the Rio Grande.
“Changes in water depth and topography altered the perception of the international boundary’s location,” the statement said. “Government of Mexico personnel removed 6 signs based on their perception of the international boundary’s location.”
The Pentagon said the contractors would “coordinate with appropriate agencies to avoid confusion in the future.”
Mexico had contacted its consulate in Brownsville, Texas, and then the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. Eventually, it was determined that contractors working for some U.S. government entity had placed the signs, Sheinbaum said.
“But the river changes its course, it breaks loose and according to the treaty you have to clearly demarcate the national border,” Sheinbaum said during her daily press briefing Tuesday.
Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum speaks during her daily press conference at Palacio Nacional in Mexico City on Nov. 17, 2025.
YURI CORTEZ/AFP via Getty Images
The area is close to SpaceX Starbase, which sits adjacent to Boca Chica Beach on the Texas side of the Rio Grande.
The facility and launch site for the SpaceX rocket program is under contract with the Department of Defense and NASA, which hopes to send astronauts back to the moon and someday to Mars.
In June, Sheinbaum said the government was looking into contamination from the SpaceX facility after pieces of metal, plastic and rocket pieces were reportedly found on the Mexican side of the border following the explosion of a rocket during a test.
The area also carries the added sensitivity of Mr. Trump’s order to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, which Mexico has also rejected.
Meanwhile, Sheinbaum on Tuesday again rejected Mr. Trump’s offer of military intervention against cartels.
“It’s not going to happen,” Sheinbaum said.
“He (Trump) has suggested it on various occasions or he has said, ‘we offer you a United States military intervention in Mexico, whatever you need to fight the criminal groups,’” she said. “But I have told him on every occasion that we can collaborate, that they can help us with information they have, but that we operate in our territory, that we do not accept any intervention by a foreign government.”
Sheinbaum said she had said this to Mr. Trump and to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on previous occasions and that they have understood.
“Would I want strikes in Mexico to stop drugs? OK with me, whatever we have to do to stop drugs,” Mr. Trump said Monday, adding that he’s “not happy with Mexico.”
One of Ecuador’s most wanted drug traffickers was captured Sunday, years after he faked his death and moved to Spain.
Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa said that Wilmer Chavarria, also known as “Pipo,” was captured in the Spanish city of Malaga in a joint operation with Spanish police. In a message on X, Spain’s National Police posted a photo of Chavarria wearing a black and green track suit as he was escorted by police officers toward a patrol car.
Chavarria is believed to be the leader of Los Lobos, a drug trafficking group with around 8,000 fighters that was recently designated a terrorist organization by the United States. Los Lobos has been linked to political assassinations in Ecuador and has also been accused of working closely with Mexico’s Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
Noboa said Chavarria faked his death in 2021 during the COVID pandemic, obtained a new identity and moved to Spain, from where he coordinated drug shipments, ordered assassinations and ran extortion rackets against gold mines in Ecuador.
Detenido en #Málaga el prófugo de la justicia de #Ecuador conocido como #Pipo líder de la banda #Lobos a la que se atribuye varios atentados en #Guayaquil
El fugitivo había fingido su muerte para evitar su arresto
Ecuador was one of the most peaceful countries in South America in the early 2010s. But the nation of 18 million people has experienced a spike in homicides and other violent crimes, as it becomes a key transit point for cocaine produced in neighboring Colombia and Peru. Drug trafficking gangs have attacked presidential candidates, municipal officials and journalists as they fight for control over ports and coastal cities.
Chavarria’s capture comes as Ecuadorians vote on a four-part referendum, where they will be asked if the nation’s constitution should be amended to allow foreign countries to run military bases in Ecuador.
Noboa has argued that this reform is necessary to further anti-drug cooperation with countries like the United States and increase pressure on drug traffickers.
The U.S. last year declared Los Lobos to be the largest drug trafficking organization in Ecuador and imposed sanctions of “Pipo.”
Earlier this year, another leader of Los Lobos, Carlos D, was arrested Friday at his home in the coastal city of Portoviejo. Widely known by his alias “El Chino,” he was the second-in-command of the crime syndicate and “considered a high-value target.”
Criminal gang violence continues unabated following the recapture in June of the country’s biggest drug lord, Adolfo Macías, who leads the Los Choneros gang, after his escape from a maximum-security prison in 2024. In July, the Ecuadoran government extradited Macias to the United States, where he faces multiple drug trafficking and firearms charges.
U.S. officials say Los Lobos emerged as a branch of hitmen working within Los Choneros, which rose to power independently in 2020 when a former Los Choneros leader’s assassination left cracks in the gang’s command structure. Los Lobos is accused in the assassination of Ecuador’s 2023 presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, and gang members are said to be responsible for deadly prison riots in addition to drug trafficking, murder-for-hire and illegal gold mining operations.
President Donald Trump speaks with Attorney General Pam Bondi as he delivers an announcement on his Homeland Security Task Force in the State Dining Room of the White House on October 23, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Alex Wong
Getty Images
President Donald Trump said Friday night he has already decided on his next steps toward Venezuela, offering his clearest indication yet that Washington is preparing new military actions against Nicolás Maduro’s government as the United States dramatically expands its presence in the Caribbean.
“I sort of made up my mind,” Trump told reporters when pressed about recent high-level meetings on Venezuela within his administration and the deployment of U.S. forces near the country’s shores. Speaking briefly as he walked toward Air Force One before departing Washington for a weekend trip to Florida, the president declined to elaborate. “I can’t say what it will be,” he added.
Trump’s comments—captured in an audio recording by a reporter traveling with the press pool—came less than an hour after The Washington Post reported that he had met with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and senior Pentagon officials on Friday. According to the paper, the discussions focused on “a series of options” to advance the administration’s strategy against Venezuela, whose leadership U.S. officials increasingly accuse of turning the country into a narco-state.
Those accusations escalated in August, when U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi doubled the reward for Maduro’s capture to $50 million, calling him “one of the world’s biggest drug traffickers” and alleging he leads the regime-led Soles drug cartel. Bondi cited alleged collaboration between Maduro and criminal groups, including Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, and other transnational networks.
President Trump ordered the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers to the southern Caribbean, off the coast of Venezuela Sipa USA U.S. Navy/Sipa USA
A senior U.S. official, speaking anonymously to The Post, said the American forces already positioned in the Caribbean are awaiting orders to “strike and respond” to new operations. The official said Trump prefers to maintain “strategic ambiguity,” withholding clear signals about timing or targets to keep adversaries off balance.
Concerns about a looming escalation intensified Friday after Doral-based U.S. Southern Command posted a video on X showing the destruction of another vessel in the Caribbean, saying four alleged drug traffickers on board had been killed. Since Thursday, the administration has begun referring to the mission as Operation Southern Spear—a campaign Hegseth says is designed to block narcotics shipments bound for the United States.
Even ahead of the announcement, the U.S. Navy had already surged unprecedented firepower into the region. The USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest and most advanced aircraft carrier, entered SOUTHCOM’s area of responsibility this week, expanding what officials describe as the largest U.S. military presence in the Caribbean in decades.
Under Operation Southern Spear, an estimated 15,000 to 16,000 personnel are now operating near Venezuela. Washington describes the mobilization as part of a counter-narcotics effort, while Caracas denounces it as a prelude to regime change and has triggered a nationwide military mobilization in response.
At the center of the buildup is the Ford Carrier Strike Group, which arrived Tuesday. The nuclear-powered carrier—capable of launching more than 75 aircraft—is usually escorted by seven Arleigh Burke–class destroyers, including the USS Bainbridge, USS Mahan, USS Winston S. Churchill, and USS Gravely. The deployment also includes two guided-missile cruisers.
A U.S. military video released by the Department of Defense shows a precision strike destroying a high-speed narcotics vessel in international waters on Sept. 2, 2025. The footage, later shared by Trump on Truth Social, was described as targeting the Tren de Aragua criminal organization amid a U.S. naval buildup in the Caribbean. Department of Defense
A major amphibious force is also in place. The USS Iwo Jima, USS San Antonio and USS Fort Lauderdale are carrying roughly 4,500 Marines from the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, along with helicopters, Osprey tilt-rotors and landing craft. Live-fire drills near the Venezuelan coast and the presence of the fast-attack submarine USS Newport News further underscore U.S. readiness. Additional assets include Coast Guard cutters, F-35Bs, MQ-9 Reapers, CH-53 helicopters, and P-8 Poseidon patrol aircraft operating from Puerto Rico. A special-operations support vessel, the MV Ocean Trader, is providing logistics and covert-insertion capabilities.
The escalation follows more than 20 U.S. strikes on suspected drug-running boats since September, which have reportedly caused about 80 deaths, including alleged civilian casualties. Although Trump has not authorized land strikes, options under review reportedly include attacks on ports and airstrips tied to trafficking networks.
Venezuela has activated more than 200,000 troops and militia members under “Plan Independencia 200,” reinforcing coastal air defenses—possibly including Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missile systems—and hardening strategic sites. With U.S. naval forces operating ever closer to Venezuelan waters, analysts warn the risk of miscalculation is rising.
The USS Gerald R. Ford is the world’s largest aircraft carrier. U.S. Navy
While the deployments are officially framed as part of an anti-narcotics mission, they coincide with growing tensions with Caracas, which is scrambling to reinforce its Russian- and Iranian-backed air defense network amid speculation that U.S. forces may strike targets inside the country.
In recent days, multiple news outlets, including the Miami Herald and The Wall Street Journal, have reported that the administration has identified several Venezuelan military facilities allegedly linked to drug trafficking as potential targets. Regional diplomats quoted in those stories have described the expanding U.S. flotilla as an “armada,” warning that the buildup has raised alarm across Latin America.
Inside Venezuela, the arrival of the Ford has heightened public anxiety. Many residents view the deployment of the carrier—rarely used in counter-drug missions—as a symbolic threshold that could signal the next phase of Trump’s pressure campaign. With U.S. officials suggesting orders could come at any moment, uncertainty is deepening in Caracas and among Venezuela’s neighbors, who are watching closely to see whether Washington’s posture shifts from deterrence to action.
Galardonado periodista con más de 30 años de experiencia, especializado en la cobertura de temas sobre Venezuela. Amante de la historia y la literatura.
The U.S. military conducted another strike on an alleged drug-trafficking boat on Tuesday, a Pentagon official confirmed to CBS News. The attack targeted a vessel in the Caribbean Sea and killed four people on board.
Since September, U.S. forces have destroyed at least 21 vessels in 20 strikes in international waters, killing at least 80 people. The Trump administration says the operations — the details of which remain sparse — are part of an anti-drug offensive. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dubbed the wider anti-trafficking effort “Operation Southern Spear” later Thursday.
The Pentagon has not revealed more information about the most recent strike. Previously, Hegseth has said the attacks have targeted “narco-terrorists” on known drug trafficking routes, although U.S. officials have not provided specific evidence that the vessels were smuggling drugs or posed a threat to the United States.
Some experts say the strikes, which have taken place in both the Pacific and Caribbean, may violate international law even if they target known drug traffickers. U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk this week urged an investigation into the legality of the strikes, warning of “strong indications” of “extrajudicial killings.”
The latest strike comes amid an increasing U.S. military buildup in the region. This week, the U.S. Department of Defense confirmed the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Gerald Ford and other warships had entered the Southern Command’s area of responsibility, which includes the Caribbean. The USS Ford is the largest aircraft carrier in the world, and the U.S. Navy’s most advanced.
Senior military officials on Wednesday presented President Trump with updated options for potential operations in Venezuela, including strikes on land, according to multiple sources familiar with the meetings at the White House. No final decision has been made, however, two of the sources told CBS News.
Meanwhile, Venezuela announced Tuesday that it was launching a massive military exercise across the country, reportedly involving some 200,000 forces.
Many people both inside Venezuela, including President Nicolas Maduro himself, and observers outside the country believe the increased U.S. military pressure is aimed at forcing Maduro out of office.
When asked in a recent interview with “60 Minutes” if Maduro’s “days were numbered,” Mr. Trump responded, “I would say yeah. I think so, yeah.”
Mr. Trump has repeatedly accused Maduro of being complicit with armed criminal gangs that smuggle drugs into the U.S. — accusations the Venezuelan leader has rejected.
Meanwhile, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro on Tuesday ordered his country to stop sharing intelligence with the U.S. He said the directive would “remain in force as long as the missile attacks on boats in the Caribbean continue.”
Panamanian authorities on Tuesday announced a large seizure of U.S.-bound cocaine on a ferry in the Pacific, at a time Washington is upping an anti-drug military deployment in Latin America.
Prosecutor Julio Villareal told reporters approximately 13.2 tons of drugs, “in this case cocaine,” were seized in an operation Monday, and 10 people arrested.
It was one the biggest such hauls in Panamanian waters to date, he said.
In a social media post, the prosecutor’s office released several images of the alleged drugs, saying that a total of 11,562 packages were seized.
Panamanian authorities on Tuesday announced a large seizure of U.S.-bound cocaine on a ferry in the Pacific, at a time Washington is upping an anti-drug military deployment in Latin America.
Panama Prosecutor’s Office
Panama is a transit point for cocaine from South America, mainly Colombia, destined for the United States — the world’s largest consumer
Villareal said Venezuelans, Ecuadorans and Nicaraguans were among those detained on the ferry, which had set out from Colombia.
Panama in 2023 seized a total of 119 metric tons of drugs.
Latin American countries have been keen to show off anti-narcotics efforts as U.S. strikes on alleged drug-ferrying boats have claimed at least 76 lives so far in the Caribbean and Pacific.
Washington said its military deployment in the region is part of an anti-drug campaign, but Venezuela in particular fears it is all a ploy to get rid of its president, Nicolas Maduro.
When asked in an interview with “60 Minutes” recently if Maduro’s “days were numbered,” Mr. Trump responded, “I would say yeah. I think so, yeah.”
Recent drug seizures on the high seas
Large amounts of drugs have also been confiscated from boats in other parts of the world in recent months.
In October, police in Spain said that they seized 6.5 tons of cocaine and arrested nine people after a U.S. tip-off led them to raid a ship off the Canary Islands.
That same month, U.S. Central Command confirmed that a Pakistani navy ship seized narcotics worth more than $972 million from sailboats in the Arabian Sea.
In September, the French navy seized nearly 10 tons of cocaine worth more than $600 million from a fishing vessel off the coast of West Africa.
In April, the U.S. Coast Guard seized roughly 10,000 pounds of cocaine from a fishing boat in the Atlantic Ocean. Earlier this month, the Coast Guard said it had seized more than half a million pounds of cocaine in the Eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean during this fiscal year, the largest amount in its history.
MEXICO CITY — Carlos Manzo blazed a maverick path as he battled both cartels and what he called skimpy federal support for his crusade against organized crime in his hometown of Uruapan, in western Mexico.
The “man with a hat,” after his signature white sombrero, was an annoyance to the power structure in Mexico City, but beloved among many constituents for his uncompromising stance against the ruthless mobs that hold sway in much of the country.
“They can kill me, they can abduct me, they can intimidate or threaten me,” the outspoken Manzo declared on social media in June. “But the people who are sick of extortion, of homicides, of car thefts — they will demand justice.”
He added, “There is an enraged tiger out there — the people of Uruapan.”
That rage was on dramatic display last week, as tens of thousands marched through the streets of Uruapan and elsewhere in violence-plagued Michoacán state to denounce the slaying of Manzo, 40. He was gunned down Nov. 1 amid a crowd of revelers, including his family, at a Day of the Dead celebration, in a killing that reverberated nationwide and beyond.
The assassinations of other public figures in recent years have also triggered outrage and dismay in the country, but Manzo’s death has unleashed something else: A divisive aftermath that has seen many questioning Mexico’s very ability to confront the rampaging cartels in places like Michoacán, where organized crime has a forceful grip on government, the economy and people’s daily lives.
“This structural control of organized crime is deeply worrying for the entire country,” said Erubiel Tirado, a security expert at the Iberoamerican University in Mexico City. “It speaks of a crisis of legitimacy in terms of the government’s ability to function.”
Legislators from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) placed hats painted like blood on their seats in condemnation of the murder of Uruapan Mayor Carlos Manzo during a session in the Chamber of Deputies on Nov. 4, 2025, in Mexico City.
(Luis Barron / Sipa USA via Associated Press )
Mexico, wrote columnist Mariana Campos in El Universal newspaper, “is fractured into zones where criminals set the rules, administer justice, charge taxes and decide who can be the mayor, who can be a businessman.”
Less than two weeks before Manzo’s killing, police in Michoacán found the battered body of Bernardo Bravo, a renowned leader of regional lime growers who had pushed back against cartel extortion demands. Bravo was shot in the head and his corpse showed signs of torture, authorities said.
For months, the government of President Claudia Sheinbaum has rolled out statistics showing nationwide reductions in homicides and other offenses, along with the arrests of hundreds of organized crime figures — among them dozens expelled to face justice in the United States.
Yet polls consistently show many Mexicans remain unconvinced. The death of Manzo — who cut a national reputation by insisting that officials coddled criminals — only heightened a pervasive sense of vulnerability, especially in places like Michoacán.
The picturesque region of verdant hillsides, pine-studded mountains and wild Pacific coastline has long been a hub of cartel violence. In 2006, then-President Felipe Calderón chose Michoacán as the place to declare Mexico’s ill-fated “War on Drugs.”
That came a few months after an especially macabre incident in Uruapan: Cartel gunmen tossed five severed heads onto a nightclub dance floor.
During the War on Drugs, the military was deployed to combat cartels, but the strategy backfired, significantly escalating violence nationwide and raising concerns about the militarization of the country and the trampling of human rights.
Relatives pull the coffin of Mexican journalist Mauricio Cruz Solis during his wake in Uruapan, Michoacan state, on Oct. 30, 2024. Cruz was shot dead Oct. 29 in western Mexico, a local prosecutor’s office said, in a part of the country hit hard by organized crime.
(Enrique Castro / AFP via Getty Images)
According to many in Uruapan and across the country, things have only gotten worse since then.
“Broadcast it to the entire world: In Mexico the narco-traffickers govern,” said Arturo Martínez, 61, who runs a handicraft shop in Uruapan, a city of more than 300,000 at the heart of Mexico’s multibillion-dollar avocado industry. “What can any average person expect if they kill the mayor in front of his family, in front of thousands of people? We are completely at the mercy of the criminals.”
It is a frequently voiced viewpoint that meshes with President Trump’s comments that cartels exercise “total control” in Mexico — a charge denied by Sheinbaum, though others say the breakdown in Michoacán exemplifies a broader lack of control.
Uruapan “has become a mirror of the country, a microcosm where the ability to govern goes off the tracks, [and] fear substitutes for the state,” Denise Dresser, a political analyst, told Aristegui Noticias news outlet.
Manzo, an independent, broke with Sheinbaum’s ruling Morena party more than a year ago and charged that the central government had ignored his pleas for additional police firepower and security funding to confront organized crime.
Following the mayor’s slaying, Sheinbaum ruled out a return to the militaristic War on Drugs, which cost tens of thousands of lives and, according to Sheinbaum and other critics, did little to halt drug trafficking.
Police officers stand guard as protesters demonstrate against the assassination of Uruapan’s mayor at the Government Palace in Morelia, Mexico, on Nov. 3. The Mexican government reported Nov. 2 that the mayor of Uruapan, Carlos Manzo, who was killed the previous night during a public event in the western state of Michoacan, had been under official protection since December.
(Jordi Lebrija / AFP via Getty Images)
Manzo was the latest of scores of Mexican mayors and local officials assassinated in recent years, as cartels seek to control turf, trafficking routes, police departments and municipal budgets, while also bolstering extortion schemes and other rackets. Manzo’s death stood out because of his provocative media presence, as he demanded that authorities beat criminals into submission — or kill them.
“In many places criminal groups control the police chiefs, the local treasuries, the mayors,” noted Víctor Manuel Sánchez, a professor at the Autonomous University of Coahuila. “Then there are mayors like Carlos Manzo who seek to break this circle — and they end up dead.”
Sheinbaum assailed opposition critics who have blamed what they call her lax policies for the killing. She condemned the “vile” and “cowardly” attack on Manzo, and vowed to bring the killers to justice.
The 17-year-old gunman who fatally shot Manzo was killed at the scene, according to police, who say two other suspects were arrested. Authorities call the operation a well-planned cartel hit, though there has been no official confirmation of which of the many mobs operating in the area was responsible. Also still unclear is the motive.
In the wake of the mayor’s killing, the president is unveiling a “Plan Michoacán” in a bid to improve security. Many are skeptical.
“It’s the latest of many such plans,” noted Tirado of the Iberoamerican University. “None have worked.”
Taking over as mayor of Uruapan was Grecia Quiroz, the widow of Manzo, who vowed to continue her husband’s fight against cartels. As Quiroz lifted her right hand last week to take the oath of office, she cradled her husband’s trademark white hat in her left arm.
“This hat,” declared the new mayor, “has an unstoppable force.”
White hats have been a common sight at demonstrations denouncing his death, and a white hat graced Manzo’s coffin at his funeral.
His widow’s well-choreographed swearing-in amid extra-tight security did little to alter the predominant mood of anguish and gloom in Uruapan. Hope is a commodity in short supply for the town’s despondent and fearful residents.
“It’s the narcos who run things here, not the mayor, not the president,” said Martínez, the shop owner. “Carlos Manzo only wanted to protect his people. And look what happened to him.”
Times staff writer Kate Linthicum and special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in Mexico City contributed to this report.
A 16-year-old soccer player from the youth academy of Independiente del Valle was fatally shot when he was struck by a stray bullet at home in the port city of Guayaquil, police in Ecuador said Wednesday.
Miguel Nazareno was at home “when he unfortunately became a victim of the insecurity affecting our country,” the soccer team said in an Instagram post, citing a wave of criminal violence began in Ecuador almost five years ago.
“We extend our most sincere condolences and all our support to his family, friends, and teammates during this difficult time,” the team’s post added.
Nazareno, who played as a midfielder and forward, was the victim of a stray bullet, according to police.
Nazareno became at least the fourth soccer player killed by gunfire in Ecuador this year.
In September, Maicol Valencia and Leandro Yépez, both from Exapromo Costa, and Jonathan González, from 22 de Junio, were killed. Both Exapromo Costa and 22 de Junio are second-division squads.
Last month, Ecuadoran soccer player Bryan “Cuco” Angulo was shot in the foot when attending a training session.
Nazareno played for Independiente del Valle’s Under-18 team. Several Ecuadorian national team players who play for European clubs, such as Moisés Caicedo (Chelsea) and Piero Hincapié (Bayer Leverkusen), came up through the ranks at Independiente del Valle.
Playing soccer in Ecuador can be deadly, with match-fixing mafias part of a global criminal empire that earns gangs some $1.7 trillion per year, according to a recent United Nations estimate.
Surging violence in Ecuador
Since 2021, Ecuador has experienced growing criminal violence by gangs operating in coordination with Colombian and Mexican cartels involved in drug trafficking.
Strategically located between Colombia and Peru, two of the world’s largest cocaine producers, it has become a major transit hub for narcotics.
President Daniel Noboa has deployed troops to combat the violence — to little effect.
In the first half of this year, homicides in Ecuador increased by 47% compared to the same period in 2024, according to the national Observatory of Organized Crime.
Just last week, an Ecuadoran judge was killed while walking his children to school. Provincial police chief Colonel Giovanni Naranjo told reporters the Los Lobos gang — designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States — was suspected of the attack.
Also in October, authorities in Ecuador reported two attacks that left 14 people dead and 17 wounded, with some of the victims showing signs of torture.
Criminal gang violence continues unabated following the recapture in June of the country’s biggest drug lord, Adolfo Macías after his escape from a maximum-security prison in 2024. In July, the Ecuadoran government extradited Macias to the United States, where he faces multiple drug trafficking and firearms charges.
LA CIÉNEGA, Mexico — Barreling down the highway at 100 mph, a convoy of state police vehicles blew through speed bumps as it entered a small town in the Sonoran desert. Blasting over them was hell, but Alejandro Sánchez knew that slowing down was too risky: Here, locals call them “death bumps,” because reducing your speed gives cartel snipers a better chance of taking you out.
Sánchez and the officers protecting him had left Hermosillo, the capital of the state of Sonora, before sunrise on June 23 and by 7 a.m. had arrived in Altar. There’s not much pedestrian traffic because the town sits in the heart of a cartel war zone, and anyone who walks the streets risks being caught in crossfire.
Still, it was a place to gather reinforcements, so the convoy stopped under the town’s welcome arch and officers wielding AR-15 semiautomatic weapons found high ground to watch for threats. Within minutes, four more patrol trucks raced up to join the security detail.
Their destination: a gold mine. Sánchez, the officers knew, was key to the mine’s future and keeping it out of the hands of a major cartel.
For three years, Sánchez had worked to revive the mine, encountering corrupt officials and cartel operatives. He once had to dive for cover during a firefight. But now he was close to resuming operations at the mine with deposits worth billions.
“Let’s go!” Sánchez said. And they were off.
A cigar lounge in Newport Beach
Four years ago, Sánchez was enjoying a Cuban cigar in an elegant cigar lounge in Newport Beach when the manager introduced him to a friend, Nicah Odood, who had a problem. The manager knew Sánchez had contacts in Mexico — top businessmen and politicians. Maybe he could help.
Alejandro Sánchez, at La Ciénega in June, sometimes carries a U.S. flag to remind people he is an American. He was hired to help reclaim the gold mine from a cartel.
(Félix Márquez / For The Times)
Odood was partial owner of a gold mine in Mexico that had been taken over by the four sons of the notorious drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
Odood wanted to hire Sánchez to be his fixer — to persuade the police and military to drive out the sons known as “Los Chapitos.” Sánchez declined. He had no interest in mining and no experience confronting the Mexican underworld.
But Sánchez did have a personal connection to Sonora, where the mine is located. He was mostly raised in an orphanage in Hermosillo.
Odood then made an offer: Help reclaim the mine and the orphanage would reap 1% of the profits.
“The orphanage really helped me a lot in many ways,” Sánchez recalled. “And it just dawned on me, ‘What is it that I have done in return to repay them?’” He told Odood he’d do it. Sánchez set to work in January 2022.
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“I thought it would just take a few phone calls and the problem would be resolved,” he said. By his own admission, Sánchez went into the job incredibly naive. What Sánchez didn’t realize was that the mine lay in the path of a key narcotics-trafficking route into the United States, and that taking back the mine also meant cutting off the Chapitos not just from the gold, but millions in drug profits.
The orphanage
Sánchez was born in 1971 in Mexicali, Baja California, to the maid of a wealthy banker. As a single mother, she couldn’t afford to raise him, so she sent him first to an orphanage in Mexicali, but she didn’t like how he was treated there. Then the wife of the banker recommended the Kino Institute in Hermosillo, where Sánchez’s mother sent him when he was 5.
At the orphanage, Sánchez was especially fond of the prefect, Francisco Fimbres. “He gave me that affection that I was lacking because I never had a father figure,” Sánchez said.
Sánchez sits inside the Kino Institute, an orphanage in Hermosillo, where he lived as a boy because his mother could not afford to raise him on her own.
(Koral Carballo / For The Times)
When Sánchez’s mother couldn’t afford to buy him shoes, Fimbres would give him a pair. Fimbres taught him how to pray the rosary and Sánchez remains a devout Catholic. From Fimbres and other teachers, he developed a strong sense of right and wrong.
“He was strict with me,” Sánchez recalled. “But not as strict as with the other kids.”
It was a painful time in Sánchez’s life. He felt abandoned by his mother and didn’t know his father. He was lonely during those years, especially when the other boys left to visit relatives. Sometimes, Fimbres would invite him over for dinner, and Sánchez remembers the home-cooked meals vividly. Fimbres’ wife made the best wheat tortillas and black beans.
It was during those summer breaks when Sánchez missed his mother most. She sometimes visited him in Hermosillo — or had him come to Mexicali, where she then lived. But such visits were rare.
The priest had told him he could talk to God in time of need, so the boy would walk down to the chapel, kneel in the pews and ask why he couldn’t be with his mother. God didn’t give him an answer. Still, it felt good to talk to someone about it.
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1.Children play at the Kino Institute.2.Students line up in the dining room at the orphanage, which can house 200 boys.3.Sánchez, with students at the institute, joined the effort to reclaim the mine when told some of the profits would go to the orphanage.(Koral Carballo / For The Times)
His mother later married an American citizen, and when Sánchez was 17, she secured U.S. citizenship for herself and her son.
Sánchez would eventually settle in Newport Beach and study business administration at Rancho Santiago Community College, but he dropped out and hawked perfume, enticed by promises that he could get rich quickly. Sánchez soon realized he couldn’t make ends meet.
Disillusioned but undaunted, Sánchez determined he would one day live the American dream. And he did. He married the daughter of Cuban exiles and they had a son. An introduction from his brother-in-law led to a job with a company selling mortgages.
To his new job, he brought the discipline and perseverance he had learned at the orphanage. He rose through the ranks quickly, thanks in part to his personality; he can be firm and direct one moment, and crack a joke at his own expense the next. Eventually, he struck out on his own, representing U.S. companies launching ventures involving debit cards in Latin America.
Sánchez traveled to some of Mexico’s biggest cities and met powerful bankers, senators and tycoons as he promoted the debit cards. But until he joined the fight for the mine, Sánchez had not returned to Hermosillo in 38 years. The cartels weren’t so prominent back then. “Now you see guns, drugs. I didn’t grow up in this Mexico,” he said.
The gold and narco road
As Sánchez would learn, Spaniards discovered gold in 1771 in a desolate area 50 miles south of what is now Arizona. They called the place La Ciénega, a corruption of an Indigenous word and an incongruous name — the swamp — in a desert wasteland.
Though “mine” implies tunnels, the prospecting at La Ciénega took place over a vast area — about 14,000 acres — largely near the surface. The mine shut down in 1905 when it appeared the surface gold reserves had been exhausted, but later owners would try to extract La Ciénega’s hidden riches.
Sánchez and mine workers in La Ciénega inspect the remnants of a sluicing operation, where a cartel used water to wash away soil and reveal gold nuggets.
(Félix Márquez / For The Times)
A mine worker points out the location of La Ciénega on a map left by cartel members. (Félix Márquez / For The Times)
Sánchez walks near a backhoe the cartel used to dig for gold. (Félix Márquez / For The Times)
Odood, a real estate agent from California who had been investing in mining in Mexico for a few years, entered the picture in 2015. He negotiated with the mine’s owner to purchase mining rights to La Ciénega.
The region at that time was dominated by the Caborca cartel, run by the infamous narco-trafficker Rafael Caro Quintero, but soon, rival cartels were battling to control parts of Sonora. Los Chapitos invaded Caborca territory and, in time, more than 3,000 people would be killed in the war.
By 2022, when Sánchez agreed to help Odood, the Chapitos had forged an alliance with yet another criminal organization, the ultra-violent Deltas, famed for their paramilitary tactics and penchant for .50-caliber weapons firing rounds the size of cigars. The Deltas took the mine from a weakened Caborca cartel at gunpoint.
The Deltas also commandeered at least 200 ranches in the region, driving out families and transforming their homes into outposts and lookouts. They stole thousands of head of cattle, slaughtering some for food, selling the rest to fund their war. They now controlled not only the mine, but also a crucial drug-trafficking route to the U.S.
The general’s warning
Sánchez made his first trip to Mexico City on Odood’s behalf in 2022 and met with a few retired generals he knew from his business dealings. Over dinner in a wealthy neighborhood — he picked up the tab — Sánchez made his pitch. “I need you to connect me with the local general so we can kick these guys out,” he said. The generals weren’t so sure.
“You’ll not only need the Minister of Defense, you’ll also need the Marines,” one told him. The cartel forces, he warned, were “literally an army.”
“Holy moly,” Sánchez later recalled thinking. “So it’s not that easy.”
A family enjoys the sunset at La Campana, the lookout point in Hermosillo, the capital of the state of Sonora.
(Koral Carballo / For The Times)
Traffic moves along the highway in Hermosillo. The city was Sánchez’s base of operations as he worked to reclaim the gold mine. (Koral Carballo / For The Times)
This playground in Hermosillo was one of the places Sánchez’s mother would take him when she returned to the city to visit him while he lived at the orphanage. (Koral Carballo / For The Times)
Sánchez traveled to Hermosillo, around 100 miles from La Ciénega, and saw a geologist who had worked at the mine. He was even more pessimistic than the generals.
But to Sánchez, there had to be a way. He was divorced by now and threw himself entirely into the project, spending most of his time in Hermosillo. He quickly built up a network of people who knew about the mine.
He next met the general who commanded the regional battalion, and persuaded him to provide a military escort so Sánchez could see the mine for himself. He brought along anxious shareholders who had invested in Odood’s project.
Sánchez and his team rode in a convoy of around 12 Humvees, accompanied by soldiers in tactical gear armed with high-powered weapons.
The convoy stayed away from the main base of cartel operations and, to their relief, faced no resistance. Perhaps the Deltas didn’t feel threatened, or didn’t dare defy the show of force. The investors walked around the property and a geologist collected soil samples.
Then, in November 2022, an apparent breakthrough. The husband of a powerful Sonoran politician introduced Sánchez to a top police commander over a steak dinner in Hermosillo. Sánchez laid out his conundrum.
“Don’t worry,” the commander replied. “I can take care of your problem for you.”
The next morning, the commander laid out the solution: All the cartel needed was a cut of the profits, and a percentage for himself, for the trouble.
Along with his deep-rooted belief in the rule of law, Sánchez had adopted a motto: Never negotiate with terrorists, and to him the Chapitos were terrorists.
He thanked the commander and left.
A new owner
Sánchez would later learn that Odood was not the only one with mining rights to La Ciénega.
The other owner was Jonathan Cooper, a Colorado entrepreneur of diverse ventures who had bought into the mine in 2020. Cooper had kept a hands-off posture, leaving the Mexican side of operations to Odood.
By winter of 2022, Sánchez was becoming disillusioned with the project. Though the Chapitos controlled the mine, there was still planning and research to be done for when operations could resume. Bills went unpaid, Sánchez said, and his lobbying was getting nowhere. He decided to track down Cooper.
Entrepreneur Jonathan Cooper, at his home in Broomfield, Colo., teamed up with Sánchez to win back the gold mine from “Los Chapitos.”
(Benjamin Rasmussen / For The Times)
“You don’t know me, but I am working on your mine in Mexico,” Sánchez told Cooper. The operation was in disarray, he said, and most important, a cartel had seized the mine. Cooper had heard none of this.
At this point, Cooper and Sánchez believed they would be able to get on-site because the military seemed prepared to help. They just needed food and lodging at the mine to do it.
There would be much back and forth between Cooper and Odood, and before the year was out, the owner of the mining rights before Odood took them back. (Odood could not be reached for comment.) Cooper then bought the entire rights to the mine. He made Sánchez a part owner, and Cooper said he too would donate to the orphanage.
Sánchez soon discovered that he and Cooper shared a visceral disgust of corruption. Cooper had heard some police in Mexico were crooked, but he never imagined the government would ignore the takeover of a gold mine. What would it take to get the Mexican military to act?
A kilo of gold a day
As 2023 unfolded, it became clear to Sánchez that the military barracks near Hermosillo lacked basic technology needed to gather intelligence on the cartels, so the company donated 15 drones — at $15,000 each — along with night-vision goggles, satellite phones and even a large flat-screen for a war room.
Still, no progress. But one night in Hermosillo, over yet another of the meals expected for any business to be conducted, came a possible lead. A Sonoran politician told him he had arranged a meeting with the generals in charge of northern Mexico. On one condition.
“For the meeting to happen,” he said. “The generals will need a million dollars.”
A gold nugget from Cooper’s mine.
(Benjamin Rasmussen/For The Times)
Sánchez, furious, declined. He began to wonder if there were any clean officials in the country. By then, Sánchez had developed a network of informants who told him the cartel had strengthened its presence at the mine. About 50 workers were extracting up to a kilo of gold a day, guarded by 150 sicarios, or hit men.
In December, Cooper flew to Mexico City to see a Mexican entrepreneur who wanted to invest in La Ciénega.
He told Cooper he had done him a huge favor. The entrepreneur had spoken to cartel leaders, he said, and Cooper’s crew could move onto the mine immediately, provided he gave the cartel 15% of his profits.
“You don’t even need the military,” he said, beaming.
“I will absolutely not accept,” Cooper said.
“You’re an idiot,” the flummoxed entrepreneur replied. “This is how things are done in Mexico.”
The torture chamber
Again and again, just when it seemed Mexican authorities might intervene, complications arose. More demands for bribes. More equipment needs. More reasons not to act.
Troops couldn’t launch a raid that December because of Christmas. March 2024 was out because soldiers were needed to patrol beach towns filled with American spring breakers. But perhaps in April.
That month, Sánchez texted Cooper saying there was no money left for salaries and he was getting desperate. “I am right there with you, brother,” Cooper replied. “I am literally selling a part of my wine collection.” Already, he had taken a $600,000 loan, using as collateral a signed Michael Jordan jersey the basketball great wore when he played on the U.S. Olympic “Dream Team.”
This all played out as the Chapitos and their allies, the Deltas, battled other cartels to control Sonora. “You have six cartels fighting for territory plus fighting for your gold project,” Sánchez texted Cooper.
A convoy of state police vehicles pauses at the entrance of Pitiquito, one of the desert villages between La Ciénega and Hermosillo.
(Félix Márquez / For The Times )
Near the mine was a hamlet, also named La Ciénega, and overrun by the cartel. At least one home had been turned into a torture chamber. Sánchez was with authorities when they later found bloodstains on the walls and pieces of fingers on the floor.
By June, Sánchez’s informants told him the mine was operating 24/7. Using more than 30 backhoes and bulldozers, miners dug up 1,500 metric tons of earth a day, leaving in their wake a trail of environmental destruction.
Dump trucks carried the soil to an immense sluicing operation, where water from two reservoirs washed away dirt to reveal gold nuggets.
“Just received news that the bad guys pulled in the month of April a little over 17 kilos of gold,” Sánchez wrote Cooper. “They are taking all your gold.” It was worth $1.4 million.
Then, Sánchez met an informant who changed everything.
The informant and the sex workers
The informant was an ex-military commander who had developed his own network of informants. Their tips had helped authorities arrest various drug traffickers. Introduced to Sánchez by a law enforcement official, the informant said he would turn his attention to La Ciénega.
“We’re going to totally eliminate the cartels,” he told Sánchez. “Trust me.”
The informant began sharing intelligence that Sánchez passed on to Sonoran state police.
By then, an enterprising police chief, Víctor Hugo Enríquez, had taken the reins of the state police at the behest of the governor of Sonora, Alfonso Durazo. The governor, who has made a broadside effort to reduce crime in his state and attract U.S. investment in the region, brought Enríquez on board to root out drug traffickers and restore safety for the hundreds of ranchers near the mine.
Enríquez got to work, taking down drug lords, one after another, sometimes guided by information Sánchez passed on from the informant.
He was soon texting Sánchez about cartel strongholds, sometimes attaching Google Maps images of buildings marked with red crosshairs.
“The base for the Deltas armed forces,” he wrote to Sánchez of a site near the mine. “They’re the top target. There are five sicarios here, armed with .50-caliber Barretts.”
The informant’s secret weapon: sex workers the cartel had brought to La Ciénega pueblo to service mine workers. He paid the women $100 each to learn all sorts of things: names, where cartel members lived, what cars they drove. The Chapitos had installed a furnace, the sex workers said, to melt the gold into ingots.
One sex worker identified the mine manager as Erick Cabrera, who also led a special forces team for the Chapitos. His wife managed the gold shipments to the states of Jalisco and Sinaloa, the sex workers said. In September, the informant sent Sánchez a video of Cabrera, dressed in a military-style uniform, firing a Kalashnikov. After squeezing off 10 rounds, he flashes a peace sign.
The informant also sent Sánchez a video of a Cessna landing on a rudimentary airstrip near the mine. It was dropping off AK-47s and picking up a load of gold bars.
The informant provided more information on yet more targets, firing off dozens of texts in the space of a few minutes. “I expect you’ll act on it as soon as possible,” he wrote.
Within days police arrested a Delta assassin, who filmed himself smoking a joint and wearing a gold chain from which hung a gold-encrusted Saint of Death, who is believed to provide safe passage to the afterlife.
Three days later, police arrested two more sicarios. But the informant became increasingly impatient for the military to act.
“You have to move faster,” he wrote Sánchez.
The raid
By the fall of 2024, the Mexican government finally agreed to move on La Ciénega. The operation would involve scores of troops, similar to U.S. Marines, and more than 100 Sonoran police.
“I am preparing everything for the move-in,” Sánchez texted Cooper. “Waiting for another helicopter to arrive from the south.”
On Sept. 24 officials told Sánchez the operation would launch the next day at 2 a.m.
“Safe journey, my friend,” Cooper texted. “Amazing job getting us here.”
Sánchez tried to get some sleep, but it was a fitful rest. At 1:30 a.m. he donned a uniform to blend in with the troops and joined the 70 tactical vehicles, patrol trucks and armored vehicles.
The governor ordered that Sánchez be taken in an armored truck. The convoy took off, accompanied by two helicopters — one of them a Black Hawk — and a T-6 Texan warplane.
A convoy of state police vehicles, staffed by heavily armed officers, transports Sánchez through the Sonoran desert to La Cienega. (Felix Marquez/For The Times)
The forces blasted through the mine’s front gate and agents jumped out of their vehicles, weapons drawn. They fanned out across the property, searching a small cave for a weapons cache and cautiously casing sleeping quarters. But there was no bloodshed, no sicarios — just a few frightened dump truck drivers.
Sánchez would later learn why the mine was nearly deserted. The Chapito in charge of the mine, Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar, had been tipped off. Guzmán is a top target of U.S. law enforcement, which learned he had called the mine manager, from his hideout, around the time Sánchez was putting on his uniform.
“The government’s coming with everything it’s got,” Guzmán said. “Don’t confront them. Get out.”
Sánchez texted Cooper that the mine was once again his.
The reveal
The governor established a police base, with 30 officers and an intrepid commander at the helm. Word spread to Cooper’s investors and new capital started rolling in. That evening Cooper texted Sánchez. “Just got $40k committed.”
Two weeks after the raid, the informant approached Sánchez. “It’s time to sit down with the jefes,” he said. The bosses. Sánchez was confused.
That’s when the informant revealed that he had been working for the Salazar cartel. “It’s time,” he said, “to pay the new bosses in exchange for security.”
Sánchez thought back over his relationship with the informant. He had shared useful intelligence, but it was almost always about the Deltas or Chapitos. He rarely mentioned the Salazar cartel, one of the region’s oldest criminal organizations.
Thanks in part to the informant and his stream of tip-offs, the Salazares had regained territory they had lost to the Chapitos. The cartel wanted 15% of the mine’s profits.
Sánchez gave him a flat no.
The Salazares later sent a threat to Cooper through an intermediary: Give us a cut or else.
“I need you to relay the following message to them verbatim.” Cooper told the messenger. “Go f— yourself.”
State police officers pause outside an abandoned ranch house near the mine. Many ranching families fled the region when it was overrun by cartels.
(Félix Márquez / For The Times)
The firefight
Though the Chapitos had surrendered the mine, they had not abandoned the region, so in November, about a month after the raid, the Ciénega base commander warned a convoy with six officers and Sánchez to stay alert as they headed toward a nearby ranch. “Keep your eyes peeled,” he radioed.
An officer prepared Sánchez for the worst. “If we get shot at,” he said. “Get out of the truck, leave the doors open and get behind the back wheel well.”
Minutes later they heard gunfire. The convoy stopped and fired back.
“Get out!” the officer yelled at Sánchez, who reached fruitlessly for his helmet. He had forgotten it. Sánchez jumped out and crouched behind the back left tire.
Sánchez heard a whistling sound pass above him, and 10 more after that. A sniper was firing a .50-caliber weapon, capable of taking down a helicopter, from a hilltop lookout.
When the shooting finally stopped, the commander had killed one sicario and captured four others. Two more sicarios fled in an armored car.
A state police truck keeps watch at the gold mine.
(Félix Márquez / For The Times)
Return to the mine
On the day they blew through the “death bumps,” June 23, Sánchez’s convoy rolled through the mine’s front gate. The base police commander walked up to greet him.
“The narcos are terrified of this man. They surrender just looking at him,” Sánchez said, grinning as he put his hand on the shoulder of the chubby-cheeked cop. The officer chuckled.
That afternoon, the commander and officers went to scout lookouts still used by the cartel. On one hilltop they found empty tuna cans and .50-caliber shells strewn about a fire pit.
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1.Graffiti in a trailer, with “GNZ” referring to “Gente Nueva Salazar,” the Salazar cartel.2.Sánchez inspects the remains of a makeshift camp set up by cartel members at the mine.3.A state police patrol comes across the remnants of a battle between rival cartels.4.The truck incinerated in the battle was riddled with bullet holes.(Félix Márquez / For The Times)
On some nights the Salazar cartel sent drones to surveil the base, and cartel members recently scrawled their acronym on a camp trailer.
The Salazares and other cartels continue to war on each other. The police patrol came across remnants of a recent battle — a truck and a Toyota 4Runner, both incinerated. Bullet holes riddled the vehicles. It was a crime scene no one would investigate.
There were about 30 workers preparing the mine for production, including a 17-year-old Sánchez hired from the orphanage. In the fall, Sánchez is sending him to college. Sánchez also hired a former valet from his favorite Hermosillo restaurant; it turns out the young man studied engineering and is a whiz at electrical work.
Another recent hire had just been deported from Phoenix, where he worked as a chef. He runs the mess hall.
Workers pause at the end of the day at La Ciénega. Thirty workers were preparing the mine to resume production.
(Félix Márquez / For The Times)
Since the Chapitos were expelled, a number of ranchers returned to the area, but at least one refused. He doesn’t believe peace will hold. And he may be right.
In May, Enríquez, the relentless security chief, had resigned abruptly after a lack of coordination from other law enforcement agencies, according to people close to him. Days later, his replacement reduced the number of officers on the base from 30 to six, and then a month later ordered they abandon the mine base altogether. Sánchez staved off the departure with a call to the governor. Cooper is building a private security force to eventually protect the mine.
Mining recently resumed, and as new investors come on board, their contracts specify that 1% of their profits go to the orphanage.
A chapel without bells
In Hermosillo the evening after visiting the mine in June, Sánchez stopped at a convenience store on his way to the orphanage to buy the kids drinks and cookies.
The facility, once in immaculate condition, was now in disrepair. Funds had dried up, and it showed. The bathrooms smelled of sewer, and the boys used the same bunk beds Sánchez slept in more than 40 years before.
The chapel where Sanchez had prayed was gutted, and an iron gate blocked the entrance. Thieves had stolen the church bells.
Sánchez looks at the old chapel where he prayed as a child while he was a boarder at the Kino Institute.
(Félix Márquez / For The Times)
Sánchez says he’ll work at the mine until the orphanage is renovated and funded. He’s doing it for the boys, but also for himself and a need to reconcile his past, both his indebtedness to the place, and the painful memories it stirs.
“We all have a mission,” he said, looking through the iron bars to the chapel. “Maybe mine is to find myself, close those doors to the pain and suffering that I experienced, and then continue on with my life.”
This article is based on government documents and extensive interviews with U.S. and Mexican government officials, mine workers, Jonathan Cooper and Alejandro Sánchez. Fisher is a special correspondent.
MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum ruled out a new “war on drugs” as a response to the assassination of a regional mayor who was shot at a Day of the Dead celebration, a brazen killing that has sparked national outrage.
“Returning to the war against el narco is not an option,” Sheinbaum told reporters Monday, referring to the bloody anti-crime offensive launched almost two decades ago. “Mexico already did that, and the violence got worse.”
The president spoke as the nation was reeling from the killing Saturday of Carlos Manzo, mayor of Uruapan in the west-central state of Michoacán, which has become an organized-crime battleground. She condemned the assassination as “vile” and vowed to track down his killers.
While Mexican mayors and other local officials are frequent cartel targets — scores have been assassinated in recent years as gangs fight for control of city halls, budgets and police forces — the killing of Manzo struck a nerve nationwide.
A crowd in Uruapan, Mexico, mourns Mayor Carlos Manzo, who was fatally shot over the weekend during a Day of the Dead celebration in the city.
(Eduardo Verdugo / Associated Press)
Manzo, 40, gained notoriety as an outspoken proponent of taking a hard-line against the cartels that have overrun many regions of Mexico. According to Manzo, police and prosecutors coddle criminals ill-deserving of legal protections.
Manzo’s unyielding stance won him considerable popularity in a nation where polls show security remains citizens’ major concern — despite Sheinbaum’s frequent citing of official figures showing that homicides and other violent crimes are decreasing.
“The murder of the mayor is a clear signal of what we all know but what the government of President Sheinbaum denies: The country is governed by narco-traffickers,” Felipe Rosas Montesinos, 45, a flower salesman in Mexico City, said. “And if anyone challenges el narco, like the mayor of Uruapan did, they will kill him.”
Added Gilberto Santamaría, 37, a mechanic: “This makes one feel defeated, losing hope that anything will ever change.”
Manzo — who split with Sheinbaum’s ruling, center-left Morena party — was among a number of voices across Latin America who have called for more aggressive tactics to combat crime. Some labeled Manzo the “Mexican Bukele,” after Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who has locked up tens of thousands of alleged gang members, many without due process, according to human rights advocates.
The mayor’s killing “feels like a terror movie in which the bad guys win,” said María Guadalupe Rodríguez, 51, a nurse. “The sad part is that it’s not a movie: It’s what we live with in Mexico.”
A day after Manzo’s killing, protesters filled the streets of Uruapan and Morelia, the capital of Michoacán state. Many condemned Sheinbaum and her Morena party for what they called a permissive attitude toward crime.
While the protests were mostly peaceful, authorities said, some demonstrators broke into the state government palace in Morelia and trashed offices and other installations. Police responded with tear gas and arrested at least eight vandalism suspects.
Manzo was shot multiple times Saturday at a candlelight Day of the Dead festival that he was attending with his family in downtown Uruapan. One suspect was killed and two accomplices arrested, police said.
The killing was a well-planned cartel hit, Security Minister Omar García Harfuch told reporters. The suspects managed to circumvent Manzo’s contingent of bodyguards, García Harfuch said. Authorities were investigating which of the area’s many mobs were behind the slaying.
Uruapan, a city of more than 300,000, is situated in the verdant hills of Michoacán, where most of Mexico’s avocados are grown. The lucrative industry — “green gold” generates $3 billion annually in exports to the United States — has for years been the target of a patchwork of armed groups who extort money from growers, packers, truckers and others.
Almost 20 years ago, then-President Felipe Calderón chose Michoacán as the launching pad for a nationwide war on drugs, deploying troops to combat the growing power of cartels. That strategy is widely believed to have had the unintended consequence of increasing violence: Gangs acquired ever-more powerful weapons to match the firepower of the armed forces, while cartel infighting accelerated as police captured or killed capos.
Upon taking office in 2018, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador promised a different approach, saying the military deployment had turned Mexico into a “graveyard.” He instructed troops to refrain from direct confrontations with cartels, when possible, and vowed to attend to poverty and other underlying social-economic social forces behind the violence.
Critics labeled López Obrador’s “hugs not bullets” strategy a disaster, as violent crime spiked.
Sheinbaum, a protege of López Obrador, embraced her predecessor’s approach but sought to improve Mexico’s intelligence-gathering and investigatory powers and strengthen the rule of law. Her government has aggressively arrested thousands of cartel suspects, several dozen of whom were sent to the United States to face trial.
For Manzo, however, Sheinbaum’s strategy was a rebranded incarnation of “hugs not bullets.”
The war on drugs, experts say, did nothing to cut the flow of cocaine, synthetic opiates like fentanyl and other substances to the United States, the world’s major consumer. And Mexico’s cartels, by all accounts, have only gotten stronger in recent years, despite the take-down of numerous kingpins.
Special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed.
MEXICO CITY — Carlos Manzo was famous in Mexico for saying what few other politicians would: That cartels operated with impunity and needed to be confronted with brute force. The mayor of a city in an avocado-growing region beset by crime and violence, Manzo suggested authorities should beat criminals into submission — or simply kill them.
It was a provocative message that resonated in some sectors of a country long afflicted by drug war bloodshed. Many here viewed Manzo, with his trademark white cowboy hat, as a hero.
But his iron fist rhetoric and criticism of the federal government’s security strategy also earned him enemies. Manzo acknowledged as much, saying he knew he could be targeted by organized crime. “I don’t want to be just another murdered mayor,” he said last month. “But it is important not to let fear control us.”
Manzo, 40, was gunned down Saturday night as he presided over a public celebration of Day of the Dead in a central square in Uruapan, a city of 300,000 in the western state of Michoacán. One suspected gunman was killed and two others arrested.
The slaying, captured on video, provoked outcry throughout Mexico and in Washington.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, with whom Manzo often sparred on issues of security, mourned an “irreparable loss.” U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau posted a photograph of Manzo smiling and holding his young son just moments before the attack. “The U.S. stands ready to deepen security cooperation with Mexico to wipe out organized crime,” Landau wrote.
On this All Souls’ Day, my thoughts are with the family and friends of Carlos Manzo, mayor of Uruapan, Michoacán, Mexico, who was assassinated at a public Day of the Dead celebration last night. The US stands ready to deepen security cooperation with Mexico to wipe out organized… pic.twitter.com/hf8XObasHf
Manzo was a part of a new wave of leaders throughout the Americas who have called for a hard line against criminals.
It’s a club that includes President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, who has locked up tens of thousands of people accused of gang ties, with little to no due process, and President Trump, who has pushed a more militaristic approach to combating cartels, saying the U.S. should “wage war” on drug traffickers.
The U.S. military has killed 65 people in recent months who it alleges were smuggling drugs in the Caribbean and the Pacific, including several attacks off Mexico’s coastline. Trump administration leaders have warned of the possibility of U.S. attacks on cartel targets on Mexican soil.
Calls for a violent crackdown on organized crime are at odds with the security strategy embraced by Sheinbaum and her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Both emphasized the need to address root causes of violence, including poverty and social disintegration.
López Obrador, especially, vowed to break with the confrontational approaches of past Mexican administrations, whose military operations he said failed to weaken cartels and only fueled violence. What Mexico needed, López Obrador often said, was “hugs, not bullets.”
Manzo — who got his start in politics as a member of López Obrador and Sheinbaum’s Morena party but later became an independent — fiercely criticized that mantra.
“Hugs … are for Mexicans who live in extreme poverty,” Manzo said. “Criminals, assassins … they deserve beatings and the full force of the Mexican state.” He encouraged police officers in Uruapan to use lethal force against criminals who resist arrest.
The mayor frequently criticized Sheinbaum for not doing more to confront cartels, even though there has been a decrease in homicides and an uptick in drug seizures and arrests since she took office. Sheinbaum has said that security in Mexico depends on reinforcing the rule of law, including giving suspects a fair trial.
The son of a community activist, Manzo became mayor of Uruapan in 2024. The city has been the site of some of Mexico’s worst drug war atrocities — kidnappings, bombings, bodies hung from highway overpasses — as a volatile mix of criminal groups battle for control of trafficking routes and profits from the lucrative avocado industry.
Manzo appeared Saturday with his family at a crowded public event in Uruapan’s central plaza to mark the Day of the Dead holiday. He posed for photographs with fans and broadcast the candle-lighting event live on social media, sending “blessings to all.”
When a journalist asked about security at the event, Manzo responded: “There is a presence from different levels of government. We hope everything goes well, is peaceful, and that you enjoy the evening.”
Minutes later, shots — then screams — rang out. Manzo lay on the ground, bleeding. Nearby lay his white cowboy hat.
Security consultant David Saucedo, who said Manzo was accompanied at the event by local police and 14 members of Mexico’s national guard, described the killing as a “kamikaze attack,” saying it was clear the shooter would be killed.
Manzo, Saucedo said, had been “brave but reckless” in his quest to confront organized crime. “Carlos lacked the human, financial, and material resources to defeat the cartels,” Saucedo said. His killing “makes it clear that even with political will, defeating the cartels at the municipal level is an impossible mission.”
The mayor’s slaying was the latest in a string of violent incidents in Michoacán. Last month, officials announced they had discovered the body of Bernardo Bravo Manríquez, the head of a lime growers association who had repeatedly denounced extortion demands against agricultural producers.
Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in The Times’ Mexico City bureau contributed to this report.
A Mexican journalist who covered drug trafficking has been murdered, officials told AFP on Monday, the latest casualty in a country notoriously dangerous for reporters.
The reporter, Miguel Angel Beltran, had previously worked in print media and was now covering crime-related issues on social media, according to local reports.
Beltran’s body was found on Saturday along a stretch of highway that connects the northwest state of Durango with Mazatlan, a resort hub in the neighboring state of Sinaloa, local press reported. Local media reported the journalist’s body was found wrapped in a blanket, with a message that read: “For spreading false accusations against the people of Durango.”
His death was confirmed to AFP by the Durango state prosecutor’s office.
Beltran had reported from TikTok accounts, under the handle Capo, and on Facebook, on the page La Gazzetta Durango, AFP confirmed.
In one of his last posts, on October 22, Beltran reported on the arrest of a leader of a crime gang called Cabrera Sarabia, which operates in Durango and is a rival of the powerful Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generacion cartels.
Mexico is considered one of the most dangerous countries for journalists, with more than 150 media workers slain since 1994, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
Beltran and other murdered journalists worked in areas where drug cartels were active, and they published their work in local media or on social media, generally in precarious employment conditions.
Media workers are regularly targeted in Mexico, often in direct reprisal for their work covering topics like corruption and the country’s notoriously violent drug traffickers.
A record number of journalists were killed worldwide in 2024, the Committee to Protect Journalists said in a report released earlier this year, including five in Mexico.
Mexico had its deadliest year for journalists in 2022, with 13 killings, according to CPJ and Articulo 19, an organization promoting press freedom in Mexico. Since 2000, Articulo 19 has documented 174 murders and 31 disappearances of journalists in Mexico.
All but a handful of media workers’ killings and abductions remain unsolved.
