How Mexico's cartels recruit children and groom them into killers
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Sol remembers her first kill for a Mexican cartel: a kidnapping she committed with a handful of other young recruits that twisted into torture and bled into murder. She was 12 years old.
Sol had joined the drug cartel a few months earlier, recruited by someone she knew as she sold roses on the sidewalk outside a local bar. She started as a lookout, but rose fast.
The cartel liked her childish enthusiasm for learning new skills, her unquestioning loyalty, and perhaps most importantly, her status as a minor protected her from severe punishment if the cops ever caught her.
"I obeyed the boss blindly," Sol, now 20 years old, told Reuters, speaking from the rehabilitation center in central Mexico where she is trying to patch her life back together. "I thought they loved me."
Sol declined to say how many people she killed during her time in the cartel. She said she'd been addicted to methamphetamine from the age of nine. When she was 16 she was arrested for kidnapping - her only criminal conviction - and spent three years in juvenile detention, according to her lawyer.
Reuters is withholding Sol's full name, and the names of the city where she worked and the cartel she joined, to protect her. The news agency was unable to independently verify the details of Sol's account, although psychologists at the center and her lawyer said they believed it was accurate.
Security experts say children like Sol are a casualty of a deliberate strategy by Mexican organized crime groups to recruit minors into their ranks by preying on their hunger for status and camaraderie.
In cartel slang they are known as 'pollitos de colores' or 'colorful chicks,' after the fluffy baby chicks sprayed with lurid toxic colors and sold at Mexican fairgrounds. They're cheap, burn bright, and don't live long.
Reuters spoke to 10 current and six former child assassins, as well as four senior cartel operatives, who said cartels are increasingly recruiting and grooming young killers.
Their experiences reveal the growing brutalization of Mexican society and the failure of President Claudia Sheinbaum and past governments to address not only the expanding territorial influence of the cartels but their extensive cultural hold too.
Mexico's presidency and interior ministry did not reply to requests for comment.
The news agency contacted active cartel members through Facebook and TikTok. Many shared pictures of themselves holding rifles, one had a cap emblazoned with a cartoon chicken firing off automatic rounds - a reference to the 'colorful chicks.' They were aged between 14 and 17.
Most said they had been recruited by relatives or friends, joining principally out of a desire to belong to something. They usually came from homes wrecked by violence and drugs. Many were already battling addictions of their own to drugs like cocaine or methamphetamine.
"You join with your death sentence already signed," said one 14-year-old child killer who has worked for a cartel for eight months, requesting anonymity to protect themselves. "But it's worth it," they said. Now they're no longer hungry and have a sense of family.
FAILED POLICIES
Although 15 security experts and those within the cartels say child recruitment is becoming more common, a lack of hard data makes the issue difficult to track.
The U.S. government's Bureau of International Labor Affairs estimates that some 30,000 children have joined criminal groups in Mexico. Advocacy groups say the number of vulnerable children prone to being recruited is as high as 200,000. It is not clear how these numbers have changed over time, though experts say child recruits are getting younger.
A Mexican government report into the cartel recruitment of children published last year found minors as young as six have joined organized crime and also highlighted the growing use of technology, like video games and social media, to draw in young recruits.
The report said 70% of adolescents pulled into the cartels grew up surrounded by high levels of extreme violence.
In 2021, Mexican authorities intercepted three boys between the ages of 11 and 14 in the state of Oaxaca who they said were about to join a cartel after being recruited through the violent multiplayer game "Free Fire."
Mexico's National Guard has since issued guidelines on the safe use of video games, while a legislative proposal is currently before the Lower House seeking to criminalize the cultural glorification of crime in music, TV, and video games.
"We see more and more criminal groups co-opting ever younger children," said Dulce Leal, a director at Reinserta, an advocacy group focused on children who have been victims of organized crime. She said this trend has grown alongside the use of new technologies like video games with integrated chat messaging systems.
At the rehabilitation center in central Mexico, another former child killer, Isabel, 19, who is being treated for extreme trauma and depression said her uncle recruited her when she was 14. The uncle helped her murder a former teacher who had raped her, she said, and they then became a couple despite him being 20 years her senior.
He got her pregnant but she miscarried, she thinks because of her heavy drug use.
Reuters was unable to corroborate all of Isabel's account, but her arrest as an unnamed child cartel member was published in news reports at the time.
Isabel had tattoos with her uncle's name removed, but still bears a stencil of his faceless silhouette.
'DISPOSABLE' KIDS
While the youngest kids might only be useful for simpler tasks, like delivering messages or working as look-outs, their loyalty and malleability quickly make them an asset. They're also cheap and easily replaceable. By the time they're eight-years-old, they can usually handle a gun and kill, one cartel member said.
There are some parallels with child soldiers fighting in places like Sudan and Syria, but Mexican cartels differ in their for-profit nature and arguably in the cultural sway they exert. Cases of child killers have emerged in other places too, including Sweden.
"These kids are disposable, they can be used... but in the end, all they await is death," said Gabriela Ruiz, a specialist in youth issues at Mexico's National Autonomous University.
In 2021, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights called on Mexico to combat the forced recruitment of minors after reports of children in the state of Guerrero joining a community defense force to fight criminal groups in the area.
Despite a government focus under former President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and now under Sheinbaum, on combating the social roots of cartel violence--including programs aimed at keeping children away from drugs and crime--little measurable progress appears to have been made, the 15 experts who spoke with Reuters said. There are no specific government programs aimed at rescuing recruited children, they added.
One problem is a lack of clear criminal law banning the recruitment of minors into organized crime. Another is the broader problem of child labor in Mexico.
In 2022, the most recent official data available, 3.7 million children aged between 5 and 17 were already working, about 13% of that total age group in Mexico. By law, children in Mexico can work from the age of 15 if they meet certain criteria, including signed parental approval.
FLEEING FROM DEATH
Daniel was 16 when he joined a cartel in a state on Mexico's Pacific coast in 2021. The group turned up to a party he was at and forced the kids to join at gun point.
For the next three years Daniel worked for the cartel - starting as a lookout, becoming an enforcer collecting protection money, and eventually a cartel killer. Many of his friends died along the way, some at the hands of rivals, some by his own cartel - murdered to set an example, because they refused to follow orders or because they were maneuvering to rise up the ranks.
Last November, he fled the cartel - leaving his partner and three-year-old son behind - and escaped to Mexico's north, applying for a U.S. asylum appointment through the Biden-era government app CBP One. The program was dismantled when Trump took office.
He's now hiding near the border. Afraid for his life and even more scared his old cartel will come after his partner and child. He's saving to pay a smuggler to get him to the United States.
"I have no choice, I'm scared to die," he told Reuters at the migrant shelter where he was staying.
For Sol, her focus is on starting her life over in Mexico. She is studying for a law degree and wants to build a career and stable life away from the death and violence she wrought and suffered as a child.
She hopes to specialize in juvenile law and serve as a mentor for younger children tempted by a life of crime.
"I never thought I would make it to 20, I always thought I would die before," she said, fighting back tears.

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Chicago Tribune
an hour ago
- Chicago Tribune
Column: Caring for the homeless a stressful job that needs all our attention
Attitudes toward the homeless population make Joe Jackson sick. As executive director of Hesed House, Aurora's homeless shelter, he not only has a front row seat to the growing problem – locally and across the nation – Jackson is well aware of the misinformation and lack of empathy so many people have toward this vulnerable population. But it was while watching President Donald Trump on television Monday declare he was moving all homeless people out of our nation's capital that Jackson suddenly became sick — literally. As the president delivered the White House briefing, Jackson's right arm started getting numb. Within a few minutes, his entire right side, including his face, tongue and legs followed. A call to wife Tricia, who is a nurse practitioner, informed him he needed to get to an emergency room as he could be having a stroke. On the way to Rush Copley Medical Center in Aurora – yes, he drove himself, not a good thing – Jackson became more alarmed when, at a red light, he gave himself a quick stroke screening test – he placed both arms out in front and noticed the right arm drift downward. 'That's when I finally realized,' Jackson told me, 'I'm really glad I'm going' to the hospital. Fortunately, testing, which included a CT scan and MRI, ruled out that Jackson had suffered a stroke. And after two days 'of getting poked and prodded' at the hospital, he was sent home with baby aspirin and an appointment with his primary doctor, who advised that counseling would help him figure out ways to deal with the anxiety that brought on this stress-induced episode. The problem is, Jackson takes his job to heart. As he was lying in the hospital dealing with his own health problems, the Hesed House leader posted a compelling Facebook plea that paints a bleak picture of what is happening to the population he's dedicated his career to serving. Declaring that 'I've learned the hard way' how dangerous stress is, he put the focus on record-high homeless numbers, including among families. He pointed to shelters being full across the country, and how funding is running out for offsite hotels for families, which have seen numbers double in a year. He pointed to how the crisis in affordable housing continues to be 'ignored or pushed aside,' and how budgets are eliminating funding for critical social services, which are the safety nets that, among other things, provide desperately needed mental and behavioral health services. Jackson, who himself was on his own at age 18 and couch surfing, deals with these issues both internally and externally each and every day. Which, no doubt, landed him in the hospital. Still, his concern remained on those far more at risk. 'This stress is nothing compared to what people experiencing homelessness or on the brink of losing their homes are going through,' Jackson pointed out in his Facebook post. 'With shelters full, where do I sleep tonight? Where will my next meal come from? Do I pay my sky-high electric bill or let it go to collections so I can put gas in my car this week?' How, he asked, 'do I break it to the kids' all they can take when we leave our home must fit in a duffel bag? 'The need has outpaced the capacity for years and it is getting worse by the minute,' Jackson wrote, a statement that is reflected in a recent report by the Kane County Continuum of Care that highlighted 'urgent housing needs' in our communities. Key findings from this group of nearly 30 local agencies collaborating to tackle the problem noted over 1,700 people experienced homelessness in the county in 2024, with seniors, those with disabilities and families dealing with domestic violence facing significant barriers. And the report declared 'an urgent need for more permanent supportive housing, expanded emergency shelter capacity, increased access to mental and behavioral health services for those experiencing homelessness and workforce development.' Homelessness, of course, is not a new issue here or anywhere else in the country. But what's different now, Jackson told me after he was back at work following his health scare, is that the 'level' and 'the complexity' of the need 'has grown exponentially.' And what's not grown, he quickly added, is 'the public level of education and empathy toward the problem.' It seems more than ever people believe homeless people 'just need to get a job, pull themselves up by their bootstraps,' Jackson continued. 'And most are not taking into account how incredibly traumatic this all is, or how deep the barriers are these days with few resources out there to help.' And it's not just housing, he insisted. 'People are starting to see it is a problem just to get in for an initial psychiatric appointment. With Medicaid, it takes six months-plus for the initial counsel … that's if you can get in at all,' Jackson said. 'And every day not on meds you get worse and worse.' Jackson describes homeless shelters and other social service agencies as 'the safety net for every crack in society.' But the problem, he continued, 'is we are not equipped to be at this level of service … no one is.' It is 'all that together,' he admitted when we spoke, 'that is becoming overwhelming.' And so, as good as Jackson is at verbalizing the problem, this panic attack that landed him in the hospital means he needs to figure out a better way to internalize all he sees, all he deals with. On his Facebook post from a hospital bed and in this conversation with me back at work on Friday, he wants people to know he's OK. But rather than send good wishes or lasagna, his wish is that you contact your elected officials and ask what they are doing to resolve the affordable housing crisis. He asks that you support (donate, volunteer) local shelters and social service groups, which are 'drowning with the overwhelming need' that is out there right now. And he asks that you recognize and reinforce the humanity in the people experiencing homelessness. 'I am worrying about them,' he said of the residents of Hesed House. 'But they are worrying about their survival.'


Los Angeles Times
2 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
How an LAPD internal affairs detective became known as ‘The Grim Reaper'
In a police department with a long tradition of colorful nicknames — from 'Jigsaw John' to 'Captain Hollywood' — LAPD Sgt. Joseph Lloyd stands out. 'The Grim Reaper.' At least that's what some on the force have taken to calling the veteran Internal Affairs detective, usually out of earshot. According to officers who have found themselves under investigation by Lloyd, he seems to relish the moniker and takes pleasure in ending careers, even if it means twisting facts and ignoring evidence. But Lloyd's backers maintain his dogged pursuit of the truth is why he has been entrusted with some of the department's most politically sensitive and potentially embarrassing cases. Lloyd, 52, declined to comment. But The Times spoke to more than half a dozen current or former police officials who either worked alongside him or fell under his scrutiny. During the near decade that he's been in Internal Affairs, Lloyd has investigated cops of all ranks. When a since-retired LAPD officer was suspected of running guns across the Mexican border, the department turned to Lloyd to bust him. In 2020, when it came out that members of the elite Metropolitan Division were falsely labeling civilians as gang members in a police database, Lloyd was tapped to help unravel the mess. And when a San Fernando Valley anti-gang squad was accused in 2023 of covering up shakedowns of motorists, in swooped the Reaper again. Recently he was assigned to a department task force looking into allegations of excessive force by police against activists who oppose the government's immigration crackdown. At the LAPD, as in most big-city police departments across the country, Internal Affairs investigators tend to be viewed with suspicion and contempt by their colleagues. They usually try to operate in relative anonymity. Not Lloyd. The 24-year LAPD veteran has inadvertently become the face of a pitched debate over the LAPD's long-maligned disciplinary system. The union that represents most officers has long complained that well-connected senior leaders get favorable treatment. Others counter that rank-and-file cops who commit misconduct are routinely let off the hook. A recent study commissioned by Chief Jim McDonnell found that perceived unfairness in internal investigations is a 'serious point of contention' among officers that has contributed to low morale. McDonnell has said he wants to speed up investigations and better screen complaints, but efforts by past chiefs and the City Council to overhaul the system have repeatedly stalled. Sarah Dunster, 40, was a sergeant working in the LAPD's Hollywood division in 2021 when she learned she was under investigation for allegedly mishandling a complaint against one of her officers, who was accused of groping a woman he arrested. Dunster said she remembers being interviewed by Lloyd, whose questions seemed designed to trip her up and catch her in a lie, rather than aimed at hearing her account of what happened, she said. Some of her responses never made it into Lloyd's report, she said. 'He wanted to fire me,' she said. Dunster was terminated over the incident, but she appealed and last week a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge granted a reprieve that allows her to potentially get her job back. Others who have worked with Lloyd say he is regarded as a savvy investigator who is unfairly being vilified for discipline decisions that are ultimately made by the chief of police. A supervisor who oversaw Lloyd at Internal Affairs — and requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media — described him as smart, meticulous and 'a bulldog.' 'Joe just goes where the facts lead him and he doesn't have an issue asking the hard questions,' the supervisor said. On more than one occasion, the supervisor added, Internal Affairs received complaints from senior department officials who thought that Lloyd didn't show them enough deference during interrogations. Other supporters point to his willingness to take on controversial cases to hold officers accountable, even while facing character attacks from his colleagues, their attorneys and the powerful Los Angeles Police Protective League. Officers have sniped about his burly build, tendency to smile during interviews and other eccentricities. He wears two watches — one on each wrist, a habit he has been heard saying he picked up moonlighting as a high school lacrosse referee. But he has also been criticized as rigid and uncompromising, seeming to fixate only on details that point to an officer's guilt. People he has grilled say that when he doesn't get the answer he's looking for, he has a Columbo-esque tendency to ask the same question in different ways in an attempt to elicit something incriminating. And instead of asking officers to clarify any discrepancies in their statements, Lloyd automatically assumes they are lying, some critics said. Mario Munoz, a former LAPD Internal Affairs lieutenant who opened a boutique firm that assists officers fighting employment and disciplinary cases, recently released a scathing 60-page report questioning what he called a series of troubling lapses in the LAPD's 2023 investigation of the Mission gang unit. The report name-drops Lloyd several times. The department accused several Mission officers of stealing brass knuckles and other items from motorists in the San Fernando Valley, and attempting to hide their actions from their supervisors by switching off their body-worn cameras. Munoz said he received calls from officers who said Lloyd had violated their due process rights, which potentially opens the city up to liability. Several have since lodged complaints against Lloyd with the department. He alleged Lloyd ultimately singled out several 'scapegoats to shield higher-level leadership from scrutiny.' Until he retired from the LAPD in 2014, Munoz worked as both an investigator and an auditor who reviewed landmark internal investigations into the beating of Black motorist Rodney King and the Rampart gang scandal in which officers were accused of robbing people and planting evidence, among other crimes. Munoz now echoes a complaint from current officers that Internal Affairs in general, and Lloyd in particular, operate to protect the department's image at all costs. 'He's the guy that they choose because he doesn't question management,' Munoz said of Lloyd. In the Mission case, Munoz pointed to inconsistent outcomes for two captains who oversaw the police division accused of wrongdoing: One was transferred and later promoted, while another is fighting for his job amid accusations that he failed to rein in his officers. Two other supervisors — Lt. Mark Garza and Sgt. Jorge 'George' Gonzalez — were accused by the department of creating a 'working environment that resulted in the creation of a police gang,' according to an internal LAPD report. Both Garza and Gonzalez have sued the city, alleging that even though they reported the wrongdoing as soon as they became aware of it, they were instead punished by the LAPD after the scandal became public. According to Munoz's report and interviews with department sources, Lloyd was almost single-handedly responsible for breaking the Mission case open. It began with a complaint in late December 2022 made by a motorist who said he was pulled over and searched without reason in a neighboring patrol area. Lloyd learned that the officers involved had a pattern of not documenting traffic stops — exploiting loopholes in the department's auditing system for dashboard and body cameras. The more Lloyd dug, the more instances he uncovered of these so-called 'ghost stops.' A few months later, undercover Internal Affairs detectives began tailing the two involved officers — something that Garza and Gonzalez both claimed they were kept in the dark about. As of last month, four officers involved had been fired and another four had pending disciplinary hearings where their jobs hung in the balance. Three others resigned before the department could take action. The alleged ringleader, Officer Alan Carrillo, faces charges of theft and 'altering, planting or concealing evidence.' Court records show he was recently offered pretrial diversion by L.A. County prosecutors, which could spare him jail but require him to stop working in law enforcement. Carrillo has pleaded not guilty to the charges. In an interview with The Times, Gonzalez — the sergeant who is facing termination — recalled a moment during a recorded interrogation that he found so troubling he contacted the police union director Jamie McBride, to express concern. McBride, he said, went to Lloyd's boss, then-deputy chief Michael Rimkunas, seeking Lloyd's removal from Internal Affairs. The move failed. Lloyd kept his job. Rimkunas confirmed the exchange with the police union leader in an interview with The Times. He said that while he couldn't discuss Lloyd specifically due to state personnel privacy laws, in general the department assigns higher-profile Internal Affairs cases to detectives with a proven track record. Gonzalez, though, can't shake the feeling that Lloyd crossed the line in trying to crack him during an interrogation. He said that at one point while Lloyd was asking questions, the detective casually flipped over his phone, which had been sitting on the table. On the back of the protective case, Gonzalez said, was a grim reaper sticker. 'And then as he turned it he looked at me as if to get a reaction from me,' Gonzalez said. 'It was definitely a way of trying to intimidate me for sure.'


USA Today
2 hours ago
- USA Today
Deported from US, these social media influencers are now monetizing their misfortune
More than 70,000 Mexicans were deported from the US in the first six months of the year. Now, they're (re)building lives south of the border. Deported and alone, Annie Garcia landed in Mexico with $40 in her pocket, a criminal record in the United States behind her and an unknown future ahead in a country she barely remembered. Fast forward to the present, to a video shared with her more than half-a-million social media followers in August. Her hair blows in the wind as she speeds on a boat through an emerald sea. She tagged the clip: #LifeAfterDeportation. Expelled from the United States, young Mexican immigrants like Garcia, 35, are documenting the aftermath of their deportation online. Their videos – raw grief over what they lost in America, surprise and gratitude for what they've found in Mexico – are rapidly gaining them tens of thousands of followers. At least a dozen of these deportees-turned-influencers, Garcia included, have started over in Mexico's west coast beach gem, Puerto Vallarta. 'If there's one thing I wish my content could embody it's how much life there is on this side of the border," Garcia wrote June 15 on Instagram. "Our countries aren't what they were 20 or 30 years ago when our parents left." Returning to an unfamiliar 'home' More than 70,000 Mexican nationals were deported from the United States to Mexico in the first six months of 2025, according to Mexico's Interior Ministry. That's down from the more than 102,000 deported during the same six-month period in 2024, when people were being deported after crossing the border. Now, the people being deported are more likely to have built lives and families in the United States. With President Donald Trump's aggressive mass deportation campaign underway, Francisco Hernández-Corona feared being detained. So he self-deported to Mexico, accompanied by his husband. He started vlogging. The 30-something Harvard graduate and former Dreamer had been taken to the United States illegally as a boy, he explained on TikTok. Multiple attempts to legalize his status in the United States failed. In June, he posted his migration – and self-deportation – stories online. Between photos of golden sunsets and mouthwatering tacos, he posted in July: "Self-deporting isn't always freedom and joy and new adventures. Sometimes it's pain and nostalgia and anger and sadness. Sometimes you just miss the home that was." 'Life in the pueblo is not easy' Mexico remains a country of extremes, where stunning vistas and limitless wealth can be found in big cities and beach resorts, while hardship and poverty often overwhelm smaller communities. Olga Mijangos was deported from Las Vegas in on Christmas Eve 2024, two years after being charged with a DUI. She returned to the Oaxaca state pueblo she had left when she was 5. Mijangos, 33, has tattoos on her neck, stylized brows and long lashes – all part of her Vegas style. Back in her hometown, she began posting videos of goats being herded through the streets; the community rodeo; the traditional foods she began cooking. She posted videos from her first job: harvesting and cleaning cucumbers, earning 300 pesos a day, or $15. "I clearly understand why my mother decided to take us when we were little. Life in the pueblo is not easy," she said in a video of the cucumber harvest. "There is hard-living. There is poverty." Struggling to make ends meet for her family, including two children with her in Mexico and one in the United States, she moved to Puerto Vallarta where she met Garcia and Hernández-Corona. They began forming an in-real-life community of deportees-turned-influencers and others who left the U.S. They meet up for dinner at least once a month, and they create content. In their videos, they're having fun, drinks, laughs. But they're also celebrating what binds them to each other and to their parents' migration stories before them: their capacity for reinvention, and their resilience. "I'm very proud to be Mexican, and I'm learning to love a country I didn't get to grow up in, but I shouldn't have had to leave the home I knew to find peace and freedom," said Hernández-Corona, a clinical psychologist, in a July post on TikTok. "This isn't a blessing. It's resilience." Spanish skills, savings and support all matter A lot of their content has the draw of a classic American up-by-their-bootstraps success story, with a modern social media twist: from hardship to sponsorship. But the reality is that deportees' experience of building a life in Mexico can vary dramatically, depending on their earning capacity, language and cultural skills, and other factors, said Israel Ibarra González, a professor of migration studies at Mexico's Colegio de la Frontera Norte university. Deportees with savings in U.S. dollars and a college degree, those who speak Spanish and have supportive relatives in Mexico, may have an easier time than those who don't, he said. Others may face life-threatening risks upon their return, from the violence of organized crime to political persecution or death threats. "However much violence they've lived with in the United States, it's not the same as going back to a war zone," Ibarra González said, referring to certain Mexican states where drug cartels are actively battling for territorial control. Wherever they land – with the exception of some cosmopolitan cities – deported Mexicans have faced local prejudices, too. They've often been viewed as criminals, or their deportations as a failure. "Did I feel a lot of judgment? Absolutely," Mijangos said of her return to Oaxaca. "Even though it's my roots, I basically came from a different world. I have tattoos. I lived my life a certain way that they don't. I could feel people talking." But friends back home in Vegas, and new friends in Mexico, started encouraging her to share her deportation journey. It took her a few weeks to work up the courage. She posted a video of sending her U.S. citizen son to a Mexican school. It racked up nearly 14 million views and 2 million "likes" on TikTok, she said. Suddenly, TikTok was asking if she wanted to join the app's content creators rewards program. 'Your criminal record doesn't follow you' By taking their stories online, deported content creators say they are dismantling longstanding taboos around deportation in Mexico, shining a light on their experiences as Mexicans who didn't grow up in Mexico, and on their past mistakes. Garcia speaks openly on her social media about the financial crimes she committed in her 20s, for which she was charged and convicted, and that ultimately led to her deportation. She migrated to the United States when she was 4 years old, "out of necessity," she said. Her mother married an American citizen in Salt Lake City, Utah, and she and her mother both became legal permanent residents. But when Garcia began acting out as a child, the state intervened. "I was taken from my mother at the age of 12 because I had behavioral issues," she told USA TODAY. "I was separated from my family, and I grew up with other juveniles with behavior (problems)." As a young single mother, she would steal from her employers when she couldn't pay the bills, she said. In Mexico she found a clean slate. "Your criminal record doesn't follow you," once you've paid your debt to society in the United States, Garcia tells her followers. "You can pursue higher education. Any debts you had in the U.S. do not follow you here." As Trump's immigration crackdown widens, Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo has been publicly offering moral support to Mexicans facing deportation. She has called them "heroes and heroines" who "have contributed to the United States their entire lives." "We're going to keep defending our brothers and sisters there," she said in a June 25 news conference. 'Maybe … things will change' Garcia's social media accounts have grown so popular that she's earning a living, in part, from content creation. She is doing research on reintegration after deportation for an American university. And she has "tunnel vision," she said, on completing a law degree in Mexico. The pain of her deportation, and the losses it brought with it, are mostly in the past. Except when she catches news of the immigration raids in the United States. The memories of her detention, and her separation from her five children, including an infant, remain fresh. It took Garcia more than a year after her 2017 deportation to win custody of her children, to bring them to Mexico. "It's very, very triggering to me to see what's going on up there," she said. "It's a bittersweet feeling. I feel safe. I feel relief. We're here. It doesn't affect us any more. But it feels heartbreaking to see other families living through it. "When I first started sharing my story my idea was, 'Maybe if I talk about this, things will change'" in the United States, she said. She kept at it, despite facing hate and trolls online. She kept posting, even after losing two jobs in Mexico for openly discussing her deportation and criminal past on social media. She kept sharing, thinking, she said: "This is what is going to change things one day: us putting our stories out there."