A complete fleet of vehicles used by criminal organizations was seized in Agua Prieta, Sonora, early Monday morning, the state prosecutor’s office reported. The vast majority, authorities detailed, had been reported stolen in the United States.
“As a result of the firm and coordinated work led by Governor Alfonso Durazo Montaño, through the State Peace and Security Council, 24 vehicles were seized, 18 of which had been reported stolen in the United States, in addition to several armored vehicles, including a ‘monster’ truck, directly weakening the criminal cells operating in the border region,” the official statement reads.
According to the prosecutor’s office, the operation was carried out at 2:40 a.m. Monday after obtaining a search warrant. The vehicles, some of which are high-end models, were turned over to the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Although this border region is of great interest to criminal groups, both those under the command of Los Chapitos and those answering to the sons of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, key players in the war that has been raging in the northwest of the country for over a year, official figures tell a different story.
According to the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System, not a single intentional homicide was registered in the border city between January and November of this year, while only one investigation file related to this type of crime was opened in all of 2024.
The history of illegal vehicle trafficking on the Sonora border, however, is not new: declassified files from the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) show that cross-border criminal activity has been present in the region for more than 40 years.
The documents related to Ervil LeBaron, who was the leader of a polygamous fundamentalist organization involved in a history of criminality, mainly within what has been described as a “sect”, state that this group controlled the traffic of illegal vehicles from north to south across the border from their “safe ranch” located about “80 miles south of Caborca”.
Source: proceso
