Mexican Immigration Officials Fired After Top Level Extortion Scheme Goes Public

Two immigration officials in Mexico lost their jobs after the country’s National Migration Institute (INM) was unable to cover up their arrest. The officials were arrested as part of an investigation into a large-scale extortion scheme where the officials allegedly targeted migrants.

The case revolves around top officials with INM in Tijuana using their position to extort money from migrants in order not to deport them. Sometimes, the victims had travel permits and visas and still had to pay the corrupt officials. The initial reaction of the INM was to cover up the incident, but after the arrest of two officials and a raid at the home of a third top official, the institute announced that they had begun firing people.

The case first began in late February when Mexican federal authorities raided the house of David Perez Tejeda, the regional delegate for INM in Baja California. Since then, INM authorities tried to cover up the case and the allegations of deep-rooted corruption.

During the raid, authorities found more than one million pesos (approximately USD $60,000) and $27,000 (USD) hidden in a safe. Authorities also found some ammunition rounds and a series of notebooks with the names of migrants. It is believed that those notebooks were used to document the migrants that had been extorted.

Perez Tejeda, who was a former senator in Mexico, has not been arrested but is currently one of the targets under investigation in the case, law enforcement sources revealed to Breitbart Texas.

At the time of the raid, authorities arrested INM Supervisor Agent Marte Antonio Camacho and Perez Tejeda’s secretary Maria Elizabeth Paredes. The two had been in federal custody until this week. On Wednesday afternoon, Mexican Federal Judge Oscar Saul Cortez Ortiz ordered that Camacho and Paredes be released, claiming that their arrest had been illegal, Mexico’s La Jornada reported.

After their release and in response to an expose by Tijuana’s Punto Norte, the INM issued a short prepared statement announcing the firing of a secretary and an INM agent but did not identify Camacho or Paredes by name.

Breitbart Texas spoke with a director-level INM official who revealed that while the institute statement claimed that Camacho was assigned to the Chaparral sentry box, he also worked as a high INM official at the Tijuana airport and ordered his agents to extort travelers. Breitbart Texas previously published exclusive photographs from the Tijuana airport where Camacho’s agents are seen extorting travelers.

Within the INM, Camacho was protected by Rebeca Merino Ordonez, the under-director of the INM surveillance center in Mexico City. The INM official who spoke with Breitbart Texas claimed that Merino Ordonez had previously blocked internal affairs investigations targeting Camacho and allowed him to enter the highly secure surveillance center at will.

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.     

Williams Cortez from Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles contributed to this report