A raid by state and federal forces on a warehouse being used to hold more than 360 migrants revealed that local police in the state of Nuevo Leon ignored the case and refused to provide assistance. The warehouse is linked to a human smuggling network belonging to the Gulf Cartel.
The raid took place on Tuesday afternoon in Cadereyta when a group of state investigators were looking into an unrelated homicide and encountered a large group of migrants along one of the main avenues in that city, U.S. law enforcement sources operating in Mexico tell Breitbart Texas.
The state investigators spoke with the migrants and learned that a large number of them were being kept in a nearby warehouse. The agents called in the location to their supervisors and learned there were already calls and tips about a smuggling operation in Cadereyta which went ignored by local authorities. Cadereyta is one of the suburbs of the Monterrey metropolitan area and is controlled by the Gulf Cartel.
The state investigators then called for support from federal and local authorities and raided the warehouse. Approximately 40 to 50 migrants managed to run away toward one of the main avenues in Cadereyta. Local police did not respond to the scene to assist.
Authorities managed to detain 327 migrants, including 120 minors. During the raid, the group told police they did not have food or water and some of them were feeling ill from the intense heat.
Authorities had medical personnel check some of the migrants and turned them over to Mexico’s National Immigration Institute. The migrants were from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.
The raid is being billed by Nuevo Leon authorities as the largest in recent years. The increase in human smuggling there comes as the state police force called Fuerza Civil and federal authorities have abandoned immigration checkpoints along the routes used by Mexico’s Gulf Cartel.
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.
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