The bodies of eight men slaughtered by a gang were dumped along a popular migrant route to the US border Sunday — a chilling message from one cartel to another as they war over human trafficking, sources told The Post.
The victims had multiple stab wounds, showed signs of torture and had been shot according police, who found them semi-naked along the side of the highway between Chihuahua City and Juarez, the El Paso Times reported. Those killed have yet to be identified.
A note was pinned to one of the bodies with a knife including the line “Chihuahua tiene dueño,” which translates to “Chihuahua has an owner” — a phrase used by one cartel to assert their dominance in the area.
Victor Avila, a retired agent for Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), told The Post the area surrounding El Paso, is “one of the most coveted trafficking corridors from Mexico that exist” and the business of migrant smuggling has become the biggest cash cow.
People smuggling into El Paso is controlled by three cartels, Sinaloa, La Linea and La Empresa, according to sources.
“Just a few years ago, the cartels never dealt with humans, not human trafficking or human smuggling. You had human trafficking organizations and human smuggling organizations that’s all they did, and the cartels did the drugs and other things,” said Avila, who was shot in the line of duty by a Los Zetas cartel member.
“But that’s what has completely changed. The cartels saw the amount of potential money to be made with the human [smuggling] and they’ve now taken over.”
“These human trafficking organizations and human smuggling organizations now have been incorporated and answer to the cartels and that’s where a lot of the struggle is because, yes, the cartels do want that money to be paid to them.”
Two more people were located burned inside a vehicle a little further up the road to the border on the same day, both citizens of the Mexican state of Sinaloa, Chihuahua Attorney General Cesar Jauregui told reporters.
Officials think they were connected to the eight bodies by the side of the road, but could not say if they were killed by a rival gang or their own cartel to cover their tracks.
“We found a burned vehicle [18 miles] to the north that could be related to this event. They used it to move the bodies,” State Public Safety Director Gilberto Loya told a Border Report camera crew.
“We have a precedent of homicides committed in that area directly related to human trafficking.”
Those paying ‘coyotes’, as they are known, to be smuggled over the US border are not just those poverty stricken and displaced from Central and South America anymore.
In the last year there has been an explosion of thousands from China, India, the Middle East, Eastern Asia and African nations paying up to $15,000 each to be smuggled into the US over the Southern Border, fuelled by loose border policies which have allowed millions in to seek asylum.
Kyle Williamson, retired El Paso Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) leader, told The Post the Sinaloa cartel — formerly headed by notorious kingpin Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, who is now in prison — has risen to dominate Chihuahua, while La Linea’s influence has been on the decline.
“La Linea is not what they used to be,” he said of the faction, which started out of Juarez, the state of Chihuahua’s biggest city, and was originally made up of corrupt cops who worked as hitmen.
“Sinaloa has the biggest footprint geographically and plaza control in Chihuahua,” he explained, adding another cartel, Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), has also been on the rise in the area recently.
Adding even more fuel to the already highly dangerous mix, experts warn of South American gangs also expanding their influence in the area.
La Empresa — a cartel from Colombia — is now said to be operating in the western region of Chihuahua, Hudspeth County Constable Robert Beltran, who runs a private security company in Juarez, told The Post.
Border Patrol and then New York Police Department have also been raising the awareness of Venezuela’s deadly El Tren De Aragua gang which is already operating in the US.
The Post recently identified migrants who had snuck across the border into El Paso tagged with the gang’s tattoos, which include a five pointed crown on the neck, tattoos of assault rifles, and a silhouette of Michael Jordan with 23 underneath.
Internal federal documents previously obtained by The Post revealed the alleged murderer of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, Jose Ibarra, was a member of the violent Venezuelan crew.
Over 2.4 million people — equivalent to the population of Chicago — were apprehended attempting to cross the US-Mexico border in fiscal 2023, which ended last Sept. 30.
Critics squarely blame Biden’s lax policies which allow most into the country for years if not decades at a time for allowing it to happen.
“[Biden’s] enriched the human traffickers because of his lack of enforcing the border,” Tom Homan, former acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, previously told The Post.
“They’re making record amounts of money moving record amounts of people because of his intentional un-securing of the border.”