Court Sentences Mexican ‘Narcotrafficker' To 20 Years In Prison
41-year-old Jorge Humberto Perez Cazares – or 'Cadete' – was a 41-year-old 'leader and organizer of a transnational drug trafficking organization' from Sinaloa, Mexico, according to a June 9 press release. He shipped 'multiple tons' of cocaine into Mexico for distribution in Los Angeles, California. Cazares 'worked with a close affiliate of the co-leader of the Sinaloa Cartel.'
'This sentence marks the downfall of a trafficker who fueled violence and addiction on both sides of the border,' said Jose Perez, assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Investigative Division, in a release. 'The FBI and our law enforcement partners will continue to target the command structure of these cartels and dismantle their operations.'
American police targeted Cazares' L.A.-based distribution network, raiding three 'stash houses' – seizing $1.4 million and more than 70 kg of cocaine – in February 2014, according to the release. Close to that time, Cazares 'personally negotiated' a $23 million cocaine deal with a Guatemalan drug trafficker.
Just 'days later,' Guatemalan police arrested Cazares while he was in a truck with 514 kg of cocaine, the release said. He was known for using 'violence to protect his narcotics shipments.' Due to a 'provisional arrest warrant' from America, police arrested Cazares again in Mexico in June 2016.
'Jorge 'Cadete' Perez Cazares wasn't just moving multi-ton quantities of cocaine — he was fueling a criminal empire. Perez Cazares funneled substantial amounts of narcotics into the United States and profited off the pain of addiction,' said Robert Murphy, acting administrator of the DEA, in the release. 'The government proved he was no middleman — he was a leader. And now, justice is delivering a sentence worthy of the destruction he caused.'
Cazares was extradited to the U.S. in July 2021, according to the release. In April 2024, he pleaded guilty to one count of 'conspiracy to import five kilograms or more of cocaine into the United States.'
The FBI's Washington Field Office investigated the case, while DEA Miami and DEA Guatemala 'provided critical assistance,' according to the release. Cazares' case is part of Operation Take Back America, which aims to 'repel the invasion of illegal immigration, achieve the total elimination of cartels and other transnational criminal organizations, and protect our communities from the perpetrators of violent crime.'
Federal officials recently charged a father and son, who operated a South Texas oil business, with supporting the violent 'Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación' (CJNG), as The Dallas Express reported at the time. Also recently, Customs and Border Protection officers seized multiple large cocaine shipments at the Texas-Mexico border.
Texas was among the states with the most Mexican cartel presence in 2024, as The Dallas Express previously reported. Cartels including Sinaloa, Los Zetas, Los Caballeros Templarios, the Beltran-Leyva Organization, and CJNG have historically operated in the DFW metroplex.
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Miami Herald
an hour ago
- Miami Herald
To dodge federal rule, immigrants moved from Florida jails - and sometimes moved right back
ORLANDO, Fla. - Four Guatemalan siblings, detained as undocumented immigrants after a traffic stop, spent several days last month at the Orange County Jail before being picked up in a van and driven around for hours. Finally they reached their destination, their attorneys say: Right back at the Orange County Jail. This directionless odyssey - similar to what some other detainees across Florida have faced in recent months – happened because of rules limiting the number of days an undocumented immigrant can be held in a local facility before federal officials must take custody. With the Trump administration's push for "mass deportation" filling federal detention beds, detainees are being transferred from facility to facility because the switch restarts the clock and gives federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents more time to pick them up. Multiple immigration attorneys described the shuffle to the Orlando Sentinel, and law enforcement leaders in Orange and Pinellas County confirmed the practice. But the attorneys say it's a maddening tactic that often leaves them struggling to locate the immigrants, and denies detainees access to family members and due process. Even though his clients - three brothers and a sister - wound up in the same place they started from, Orlando-based immigration attorney Walker Smith said he couldn't find the siblings because their previous inmate numbers were changed upon their return, leaving him and their family unsure of their whereabouts. He said the two youngest siblings in the family, 26 and 18, had valid work permits. "If they're just holding people indefinitely, holding people by sending them from facility to facility, or worse, sending them out of one facility and back to the same one under a different number … It's gaming the system at its finest," Smith said. The youngest brother has since been moved again - this time to Alligator Alcatraz, the state's new detention center in the Everglades. The way a detained immigrant's custody clock works is complicated. Under the Intergovernmental Service Agreement, or IGSA, that governs the relationships between ICE and the handful of Florida jails like Orange County's that temporarily hold detainees, undocumented immigrants without criminal charges can be held up to 72 hours before ICE must come to pick them up. But if the immigrant is arrested for a separate criminal offense, the 72-hour clock may not start until the other offense is charged or dropped - for all arrestees, state law prescribes a two-day time limit for that - or bail is granted and paid. "After the 72-hour period is up, there's no more authority for whatever agency or jail or entity to continue to hold those people," Smith said. "So . . . they should be released." And prior to the Trump administration, immigrants with an ICE hold often were released if time expired with no action. Now, some of them are simply relocated, whether to a different jail, or for a brief ride. It remains unclear how often the scenario occurs. In a July 15 meeting of the Board of County Commissioners, Orange Corrections Chief Louis Quiñones described a shuffle involving "a large amount of individuals" in early July. He was responding to questions from Commissioner Maribel Gomez Cordero, who had been told about the practice by advocates pressuring commissioners to terminate the IGSA with ICE. "Right around the [July 4] holiday, we had a large amount of individuals who were reaching the 72 hours and ICE had to come get those individuals and they were going to attempt to send them to another location," he said. "That did not go as they had planned, so they brought them back to Orange County Corrections." One reason the issue irks some county officials is that it costs about $145 per day to keep somebody in the jail, and the federal government only reimburses Orange County about $88 per day to house detainees. Shuffling people in and out of the jail prolongs their stay and runs up the bill. The county is in the midst of trying to renegotiate its agreement with ICE for a better reimbursement rate, but so far hasn't come to a deal. Quiñones didn't say how many people were impacted by the transfer, and the county didn't make him available for a requested interview with the Orlando Sentinel. But Smith said he was skeptical of Quiñones' description. "He tried to make it seem like it was a one-off," Smith said. "So I was very intrigued that the [Guatemalan] guy that I went to go talk to had also encountered the same situation." Danny Banks, the county's Public Safety Director, also said the shuffle has occurred only as "an isolated incident" so far. "Largely, ICE has been transporting their inmates within the 72-hour timeframe indicated in the IGSA agreement," he said in a text message. However, the Orlando Sentinel has been told of multiple other instances. One of the most elaborate involved Cuban native Michael Borrego Fernandez, who was transported to multiple different facilities before ending up at Alligator Alcatraz, where he has been since July 5. In June, Borrego Fernandez was arrested for violating his release terms after being charged with grand theft for bilking homeowners to pay for swimming pools up front but not finishing the work, which his mother Yaneisy Fernandez Silva said was because he "unwittingly" worked for a businessman operating the scam. Borrego Fernandez, who lived in South Florida, was taken to the Seminole County Jail to serve ten days in jail, she said. Following the completion of his sentence, he was taken to Orange County Jail on an ICE hold, then three days later shuttled to Pinellas County Jail. Three days after that, he was again transported back to Orange County Jail, his mother said. Roughly four days later he called his mother saying he had reached Alligator Alcatraz. Only his calls offered clues that let Fernandez Silva search for her son in jail databases, she said. "It's clear what the counties are doing, they're trying to create a legal loophole to a constitutional obligation to not hold people for more than the 72 hours," said Mich Gonzalez, a South Florida-based immigration attorney who called the transfers "alarming." Gonzalez said conditions for inmates who move around are different than for those housed in a single jail. "They're shackled, they're handcuffed, sometimes they're also waist-chained," Gonzalez said. "They're not provided proper food like when they're in custody at a county jail, where there are … general rules that you're going to get three meals a day and access to water. But when you're being transported and transferred, that goes out the window." In June, a Mexican man was arrested while his boss, a U.S. citizen, was driving him and his brother to a construction site. Both were passengers in the car and both had permits to work in the U.S., said the wife of one of the brothers. She spoke with the Sentinel on the condition of anonymity as she worries her comments could make her a target of immigration authorities. For weeks after her husband's arrest she did not know where he was. He would call from an Orange County number but he did not appear in the correction system's database. He told his wife he was put into a van and taken somewhere, but returned the next day to Orange County Jail. "I didn't hear from him for three days … I was so scared," She said in Spanish. "He spent so much time in Orange County Jail that when he returned he knew it was the same place." Advocates for the family met with officials at Orange County Corrections in early July to help find him. Six hours later, he was finally located in a county jail cell, they said. He had been given a different inmate number upon his return, which contributed to the confusion. Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri confirmed there has been some shuffling involving his facility but defended it, saying it stems from "a capacity issue" that can prevent detention centers from accepting detainees when their 72-hour clock ticks down. "If the transportation system is overloaded or there's no room at Krome … that's when it backs up and they have to put them into the IGSA jails" such as Orange, Gualtieri said. Gualtieri serves on Florida's Immigration Enforcement Council, which has sounded an alarm that federal detention space can't keep up with the pace at which Florida law enforcement agencies are arresting undocumented immigrants. The board has called on the federal government to allow more local jails to house detainees, rather than send them to the seven jails in Florida with IGSA agreements while they await ICE detention. Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
Los Angeles Times
4 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
This Mexican city had one of the world's highest homicide rates — so it fired most of its police
CELAYA, Mexico — On a sunny spring day last year, a young attorney named Gisela Gaytán kicked off her campaign for mayor in this gritty Mexican city. Under her blouse she wore a ballistic vest. Celaya had become the epicenter of a bloody cartel war, with one of the highest homicide rates in the world, and a local police force that appeared powerless to stop it. 'We must recover the security that we so long for,' Gaytán, 38, wrote on social media before setting out that day. As she shook hands at an event on the outskirts of town, a man approached, raised a gun and shot her in the head. After her funeral, where a priest lamented 'a death caused by murderers who believe they control society,' local Morena party leaders picked a new candidate: Juan Miguel Ramírez Sánchez, a bespectacled former university rector who had worked on Gaytán's campaign. Ramírez believed that one of Celaya's most urgent problems was its police, who instead of fighting organized crime appeared to be involved in it. His son-in-law had been killed in a case that was still unsolved, and officers had demanded bribes and obstructed the investigation. Police misconduct was well documented: Local cops were prosecuted for abusing detainees and participating in kidnappings and even homicides. Ramírez won the election. And in his first act as mayor, he fired 340 of the roughly 600 officers on the force. Then — as officials across Mexico have been doing for nearly two decades now — he called in federal troops. Mexican President Felipe Calderón first deployed soldiers into the streets to fight drug traffickers in 2006, promising then that the military would stay only until police could be reformed. In the years since, leaders across the political spectrum have repeatedly vowed to better train and root out corruption among the country's cops — a step that security experts agree is essential to reducing crime and violence. But with the exception of Mexico's capital and a few other major cities, those efforts have lost steam. Officials have slashed funding for state and local police forces, and disbanded the federal police altogether. Cops continue to be near-universally reviled, with federal surveys showing that 9 out of 10 Mexicans don't trust the police. At the same time, Mexico has vastly expanded the military's role in public security. There are now more soldiers, marines and members of the national guard deployed nationally than state and local police officers, according to an analysis by the Citizen Security Program at the Universidad Iberoamericana. In most parts of the country, there are fewer state and local police today than there were when the drug war began in 2006. 'The police have been abandoned in favor of militarization,' said Ernesto López Portillo, a researcher who leads the Iberoamericana program. There is little evidence that the strategy has worked. Homicides remain persistently high, although they have dipped slightly in recent years. And cartels have only expanded their reach, with a U.S. military analysis finding that criminal groups control more than one-third of Mexico. Yet officials continue to embrace militarization as the country's primary security strategy. That even includes leftists who once fiercely warned of the dangers of ceding public security to soldiers, including President Claudia Sheinbaum and her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The mayor's abrupt decision to summarily replace most of the police force in Celaya, a patchwork of farmland and factories in central Guanajuato state, is a case study in why Mexicans have lost faith in local law enforcement — and what happens when soldiers take over. Celaya used to be a tranquil city. Its location along a highway and railroad that stretch 600 miles to the United States drew Honda and other automakers to build plants here. For years, a local criminal group called the Santa Rosa de Lima cartel quietly stole fuel from the major oil pipelines that cross the region. It wasn't until the notorious Jalisco New Generation Cartel edged in several years ago that violence exploded. The groups battled for control of pipelines but also drug trafficking, extortion rackets and theft of cargo trucks. Celaya became synonymous with violence as criminals gunned down shopkeepers who refused to pay extortion fees, drug users who couldn't pay their dealers and everyday citizens who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They carried out massacres at hotels, bars and even funerals. By 2024, Celaya had a homicide rate of 87 killings per 100,000 people — 17 times the rate in the United States. It had long been clear that the city's police force was, at best, not up to the challenge — and, at worst, deeply corrupt. The 600 cops on the force in Celaya, which has a population of around half a million, were half of the 1,200 that the United Nations recommends for a city of its size. Officers were poorly trained and badly paid. That made them easy targets for criminals who offered cash in exchange for intelligence, muscle or simply looking the other way when a crime was committed. When police didn't cooperate — or didn't cooperate correctly — they were often killed. In 2024, a cop here was 400 times more likely to be killed than one in the United States. Fanny Ramírez, the daughter of a street vendor and a maid, was 21 when she enrolled in Celaya's police academy. After eight years with the force, she earned just $900 a month, little more than a worker on an assembly line. Her boyfriend was also a police officer in Celaya. Fanny warned her family to steer clear of the cops, said her sister, Elisabeth. After Elisabeth's husband witnessed a triple homicide several years ago, Fanny instructed him: 'Go inside and say you don't know anything.' 'The police are supposed to take care of you,' Elisabeth said. 'But here, we have to protect ourselves from the police.' Mayor Ramírez wasn't the first local politician to try to clean house. Previous leaders had made a show of purging dozens or even hundreds of police officers that they claimed were rotten. But with most mayors serving just a single three-year term and scant public funds, reform efforts gained no traction. Experts say change takes time and requires concrete action to raise salaries, improve recruitment criteria and strengthen oversight. On the national level, the approach to policing was inconsistent. Before he was elected president in 2018, López Obrador criticized his predecessors for replacing police with soldiers. 'We can't use the military to make up for the civilian government's shortcomings,' López Obrador insisted, vowing to send soldiers 'back to their barracks.' On taking office, he changed his tune. Facing record high homicide rates, he released a security plan that argued that taking soldiers off the streets would be 'disastrous' because cops were 'controlled by organized crime and moved by self-interest and corruption.' He dismantled the federal police, a famously corrupt force whose longtime leader was convicted in the U.S. of taking bribes from the Sinaloa cartel. And López Obrador steered money once destined for local and state law enforcement to create a 120,000-officer-strong national guard, a force he vowed would be 'incorruptible' and civilian-led, and which was supposed to take over the investigative functions of the federal police. In fact, nearly 90% of the members of the national guard are former soldiers, and few have been trained to carry out investigations. In Celaya, violence continued to spiral. And policing never improved. Last year, about a month before the mayoral candidate was cut down with bullets, Fanny set out to drop her 6-year-old daughter off at child care before starting work. She was driving a sedan that belonged to her boyfriend. Assailants opened fire. She and her daughter died on the spot. A few months later, Fanny's boyfriend was gunned down, too. Neither case has been solved, but Fanny's sister believes the deaths were connected to the boyfriend's ties to organized crime. Shortly after he was elected mayor in June 2024, Ramírez said he was approached by cartel members who asked for positions in his government. He said he rebuffed them, but was shaken. 'I've been afraid like all citizens,' he said. He met with Mexico's top public security official and told her he had no confidence in Celaya's police. 'Not all of them were bad,' he said recently, 'but most were.' She pledged to send him 500 members of the national guard. The mayor's mass firing of police faced criticism from his political opponents. Mauro González Martínez, the top security official in Guanajuato state, a former federal police officer and member of an opposition party, said national guard troops and other members of the armed forces were not equipped to fight crime. 'The army is trained for war,' he said in an interview. 'A police officer investigates. A soldier kills.' Nancy Angélica Canjura Luna, an analyst at a think tank called Causa en Comun, said that while soldiers are seen as less corruptible than police because they typically come from other parts of the country, that means they know little about the region they are supposed to be protecting. 'They are always new,' she said. 'They don't know the criminal dynamics and they don't know the territory itself.' But others in Celaya, exhausted by years of violence, welcomed the troops and two high-ranking military officers loaned to the city to lead its new security force as a show of strength. Army Col. Pablo Muñoz Huitrón and Lt. Col. Bernardo Cajero rode into town in an armed convoy, dressed in camouflage fatigues. As they strode into City Hall, they were flanked by soldiers. Muñoz was quickly sworn in as Celaya's secretary of public security, a role traditionally occupied by civilians, but which in many cities is now filled by current or former soldiers or marines. Cajero was tasked with leading the officers who had survived the purge and the guardsman who now worked alongside them. When Cajero switched from his olive green army fatigues to a blue police uniform, he was startled by how differently people treated him. 'My first realization was how much people hate the police,' he said. The pair, who had served in cartel hot spots like Tamaulipas and Michoacán, devised a plan. The city's remaining police would patrol alongside members of the military to reduce opportunities for corruption. Security forces would focus on improving response times for 911 calls and increasing the number of checkpoints around the city to make sure drivers weren't carrying guns or drugs. Celaya's leaders say crime rates have fallen. Between January and June, there were 158 homicides in the city, according to the local government, down from 257 during the same time last year. But high-profile acts of violence continue. Cajero was patrolling on a recent night when the radio crackled with a report of a homicide. His convoy raced to an intersection where a taxi lay overturned. The driver had been shot. His 12-year-old daughter, who had been in the passenger seat, survived but was in shock. 'Take me to my father,' she wailed as a paramedic tended to her wounds. Earlier this year, the mayor's bodyguard was shot to death outside his own home. Ramírez, who cries while remembering him, said the perpetrators were likely criminals angry about his new security plan. 'Obviously it was to send me a message,' Ramírez said. Some locals have bristled at the presence of federal forces in their streets. Alejandro, a 24-year-old Uber driver who did not give his last name because of fear of reprisals, said he had been stopped frequently by national guard members, and treated as roughly as by police while they reviewed his car and identity. 'They're all the same,' he said. This summer, 11 members of the national guard were charged with theft after they were caught extracting fuel from an illegal tap not far from Celaya. 'How can we trust people who are robbing from us?' Alejandro said. 'That's not logical.' Sheinbaum won the presidency last year in part on a promise to replicate the security strategy she had embraced as mayor of Mexico City, which focused on improving investigations, professionalizing cops and implementing community policing models developed in U.S. cities such as Oakland. But as president she has taken few steps toward police reform, and she recently pushed a constitutional amendment that puts the national guard permanently under military control. The lack of federal help has made it challenging for Celaya's efforts to rebuild its police force. On a recent afternoon at the city's aging police academy, young officers rappelled down walls and simulated hand-to-hand combat. They practiced wielding guns but not actually shooting them because the cost of bullets was too high. One recent graduate, 29-year-old Jose Francisco Hernández Herrera, decided to join the police after his brother, a merchant, was killed by criminals. Hernández said instructors rarely discussed how police should handle bribery offers from organized crime, even if it may be only a matter of time before he is approached. 'You're never 100% prepared,' he said, adding that he would refuse to cooperate for his brother's memory, and because he wants his son to live in a city where he can trust police. 'If you really want to change your society, you have to make the right decision, even if it's the more complicated one.' Ramírez has touted young officers like Hernández as the future of Celaya. But the academy is graduating fewer than 20 officers a month, and is struggling to recruit new officers. Pay starts at just $800 a month. Recently, the city put out a call to current and former soldiers, asking them to take jobs on the force. Estefania Vela, a human rights lawyer at a think tank called Intersecta, worries militarization is near-sighted. 'Nobody disputes that the police have problems,' she said. 'But what are you doing to fix those problems?' Officials say the new force is not intended to be permanent. But how long will they stay? And what happens when they leave? 'It's necessary today,' said Muñoz, the colonel in charge of the deployment. 'Tomorrow, who knows?'
New York Post
6 hours ago
- New York Post
Aussie running for Boston suburb mayor says there's ‘no chance' he'll change his name despite Jeffrey Epstein comparison
He's not name-dropping. An Australian man named Geoffrey Epstein is running for mayor in a Massachusetts town — and he rejects any comparisons to the convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, according to a report. Epstein, who goes by 'Geoff,' said he wasn't afraid of the overt homophonic resemblance his name bears to that of the notorious, dead sex trafficker. Advertisement 3 Geoffrey Epstein attends the Framingham Democrats summer barbecue on July 27, 2025. Geoff Epstein for Mayor/Facebook 'That other one is a dead American and I am a live Aussie,' Epstein, who is seeking office in Framingham, a Boston suburb, told HuffPost Tuesday. 'But, of course, there is all the horrifying criminality and darkness of the other guy,' the aspiring pol said, adding, 'I have lived my life trying to be straight up and improving things.' Advertisement Epstein said there was 'no way' he would change his name to avoid association with the degenerate criminal, who officials said committed suicide in a Manhattan lockup in 2019. 'I like my name and I am proud of my family,' he said, adding his family proudly fought in World War II. The Aussie, who noted he was born on September 11, further stands apart from his doppel-namer by way of holding a Ph.D. in theoretical physics, whereas Jeffrey Epstein dropped out of Cooper Union before attaining a degree. He is not the first politician to fight off associations with the infamous sex trafficker. Advertisement 3 Epstein, who goes by 'Geoff,' said he wasn't afraid of the overt homophonic resemblance his name bears to that of the notorious, dead sex trafficker. Geoff Epstein for Mayor/Facebook 3 Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in a mugshot after his arrest in 2019. Kypros New York State Assemblyman Harvey Epstein was mocked on Saturday Night Live last year for having a name that recalled not only Jeffrey Epstein, but convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein. Advertisement 'It was a total surprise,' Epstein told The Post the day after the show aired. 'Imagine if you were watching SNL and there was a parody about you.' 'Your name is your name. It is what it is. Both [Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein] are horrific,' the pol added.
