Mexican Mayor Arrested in Connection With Cartel Training Camp Where Human Remains Found
During a May 5 presentation,
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum
The Jalisco New Generation Cartel, a violent drug trafficking group, has been accused by Mexican authorities of operating the Rancho Izaguirre in Jalisco state to train newly recruited gunmen.
Santiago was arrested on May 3 as part of an investigation by government prosecutors into probable omissions or complicity of local authorities with the Jalisco New Generation cartel, a federal source told the AFP wire service on May 3.
Relatives searching for missing family members were tipped off by an anonymous source about the site in March, and went to the ranch, where they reported finding bone fragments and hundreds of pieces of clothing. Many said the ranch could have been a
mass killing site
.
However, Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero told the media last month he could not confirm there were human remains at the site besides the initial body found there by National Guard troops last September.
Related Stories
5/3/2025
3/22/2025
He also said that the state Human Rights Commission had formally informed local authorities of the ranch in 2021, but no action was taken.
According to the Jalisco state prosecutor's office at the time, authorities arrested 10 people, freed two hostages, and discovered one body, describing the ranch as a cartel training site.
Investigators, armed with a backhoe, dogs, and devices to search the grounds, had attended the ranch to investigate, but the operation stalled without explanation.
After receiving the anonymous tip, t
he Jalisco Search Warriors group visited the Teuchitlán ranch in March, which sits about 37 miles from Guadalajara, to search for missing members of the community, according to news reports. Abductions remain a problem in Mexico due to cartel violence and crime, with many people disappearing or found dead.
The group said they found backpacks, dozens of shoes, piles of clothing, and what appeared to be human bone fragments.
The disturbing findings sparked outrage within Mexico, prompting Mexico's federal government to get involved in the investigation.
Following public pressure, the Jalisco state prosecutor's office agreed to publish online photos of the shoes and other clothing items found at the ranch so that families searching for relatives can see them. Manero said that the pieces of evidence will also be made available to relatives.
However, members of the Jalisco Search Warriors have expressed disappointment at Manero's public statements and response, saying they had sufficient evidence that bodies were burned at the site.
A group member, Raúl Servín, also said late April that a compatriot in the group, María del Carmen Morales, had been killed following their discovery in March.
The discovery came as President Donald Trump intensified pressure on Mexico through designating several Mexican criminal organizations as terrorist groups, while imposing tariffs in an effort to secure the U.S. southern border and counter fentanyl trafficking.
In February,
the U.S. State Department designated the Jalisco New Generation, Sinaloa, Gulf, United, and Northeast cartels and La Nueva Familia Michoacana as foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists.
Policy analysts in the United States have said that the cartels operate as a shadow government within Mexico, making them difficult to dismantle.
Trump recently offered
to send U.S. troops into Mexico to help combat the drug cartels—an offer that Sheinbaum
The Mexican president said she was willing to work with Trump to counter the cartels but drew the line at allowing U.S. troops on Mexican soil.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Post
10 hours ago
- New York Post
Shocking footage shows illegal-migrant driver make outrageous rogue U-turn, killing 3: officials
Terrifying video shows the moment a minivan ploughed into a tractor-trailer making an outrageous rogue U-turn on a Florida highway last week — with all three people in the van killed and the truck's illegal-migrant driver now charged with homicide. The roadway horror happened around 3 p.m. Tuesday on the Florida Turnpike near Fort Pierce when the tractor-trailer driven by suspect Harjinder Singh made a hard left turn across the highway and attempted to cross the median through an 'official use only' pass, authorities said. The truck's trailer blocked all of oncoming traffic's lanes as it nosed over the median — with footage from inside its cab showing a black minivan driving toward it with no time to stop and nowhere to turn to avoid a collision. Within seconds, the minivan slammed into the trailer at full speed and became wedged underneath. Photos from the wreck showed the minivan obliterated — with its contents strewn across the highway after apparently bursting from the van's side, while the roof was shorn back and crumpled over the trunk in a twisted mess of metal. Inside the truck's cab, Singh appeared completely unmoved by the violence unfolding on the highway. He looked out the cab window and watched as the minivan flew down the highway into the trailer, and when it collided and the truck was sent shuddering, his face remained unchanged as he calmly put his vehicle into park and turned the engine off. 4 Illegal-migrant driver Harjinder Singh calmly maneuvers his tractor-trailer across the highway in a highly illegal U-turn, cops said. gurubatth5/TikTok 4 Singh appears calm as he watches a black minivan plow into the side of his truck after he blocked the highway. gurubatth5/TikTok Additional footage from alongside the truck after the wreck — as rescue crews used jacks to lift the trailer from the van and extricate the passengers' remains — showed Singh standing by and watching the operation with his arms at his side and no expression on his face. Two passengers in the minivan were killed instantly, while the driver clung to life and was pulled from the wreck. The driver was later declared dead at a nearby hospital. The victims' names have not been released, but were confirmed to be a 37-year-old Pompano Beach woman, a 30-year-old Florida City man and a 54-year-old Miami man, Treasure Coast Newspapers reported. Singh was charged with three counts of vehicular homicide and is in Florida custody. 4 The minivan appeared to have burst upon impact and became wedged under the tractor trailer. St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office 4 Singh watches as rescue crews rushes to extract the victims from the ruined minivan. St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office An Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainer also was put out for him after it was determined that he'd been in the US illegally since 2018, when he crossed into the country over the Mexican border, CBS12 reported. It remains unclear what country Singh is originally from. He had been driving with a California commercial driver's license. If found guilty of homicide, Singh will likely serve his sentence in Florida and then be deported. 'Three people lost their lives as a result of his recklessness, and countless friends and family members will experience the pain of their loss forever,' said the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles' executive director, Dave Kerner. 'Harjinder Singh is in custody on state vehicular homicide charges and immigration violations. He will no longer be able to damage and destroy the lives of Floridians and visitors,' he added, according to CBS 12.
USA Today
21 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."
Los Angeles Times
21 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.'
