A former top immigration official in Nuevo Leon is being closely investigated by federal authorities after his inner circle was exposed for maintaining a working relationship between the National Immigration Institute (INM) and cartels.
As Breitbart Texas reported, an investigation into a massacre where Tamaulipas state police officers killed and incinerated 19 individuals, including 16 Central American migrants, helped uncover the ties between top officials in Mexico’s INM and cartels. The link was an SUV discovered at the scene of the massacre–which was previously seized during the apprehension of 66 other migrants in Nuevo Leon.
Breitbart Texas consulted with U.S. law enforcement officials operating in Mexico who confirmed that five migrants were part of the original group but managed to escape before the bloodshed. After reaching Texas, those migrants described to U.S. authorities a relationship between Mexican law enforcement and the cartels in control of human smuggling. That information has since been shared with Mexico City as part of an investigation into INM corruption. Breitbart Texas obtained exclusive access to some of the documents from the probe.
As of now, eight INM officials in Nuevo Leon were removed from their posts. Due to the pending status of the investigation, more job removals and potential arrests could follow. The top officials whom were fired are all part of the inner circle of Daniel Torres Cantu, the former regional head of INM in Nuevo Leon who left his post in October–just weeks before the massacre–to run for mayor of Guadalupe representing the nationally ruling MORENA party.
Torres Cantu took the helm of INM in Nuevo Leon in 2019 despite multiple criminal charges lodged against him in the past decade. The cases against him at the state and local levels include assault, forgery, and the use of forged documents, as seen in a criminal complaint from 2018 (Case # 1904/2018) and another from 2015 (Case# 2239/2015). Torres Cantu also faced additional criminal charges in 2013 that include physical assault-striking (Case# 6197/2013) and physical violence (Case# 1064/2013).
When Torres Cantu left his post, right-hand man Jesus Gilberto Rodriguez took the position. Rodriguez has since been fired in connection with the investigation. Rodriguez is a former federal congressman with Mexico’s Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) and is currently helping Torres Cantu in his mayoral bid.
One of the issues mentioned in the documents points to widespread cooperation between cartel-connected human smuggling organizations and INM agents. Authorities have also learned about the sale of travel documents and extortion schemes targeting migrants at international land and air ports of entry.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.
Gerald “Tony” Aranda is an international journalist with more than 20 years of experience working in high-risk areas for print and broadcast news outlets investigating organized crime, corruption, and drug trafficking in the U.S. and Mexico. In 2016, Gerald took up the pseudonym of “Tony” when he joined Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project. Since then, he has come out of the shadows and become a contributing writer for Breitbart Texas.