I went contained in the cabin the place cartel kingpin El Mencho was ‘captured’. What I discovered makes me concern Mexico is not telling America what REALLY occurred…
Something is rotten in the state of Jalisco.
On Monday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum responded to President Donald Trump‘s offer to create a partnership between the US and Mexican military to take on the cartels.
‘Just as we formed a coalition to eradicate ISIS in the Middle East, we must now do the same thing to eradicate the cartels at home,’ President Trump declared alongside the presidents of Argentina, El Salvador and other Latin American leaders at the first Shield of the Americas summit on Saturday.
On Monday, Sheinbaum turned Trump down.
‘It’s good that President Trump publicly says that when he has proposed that the United States Army enter Mexico,’ she replied, ‘we proudly continue to say no.’
Sheinbaum says she is safeguarding her nation’s sovereignty, but her refusal to accept America’s help is raising new suspicions over her willingness to fight transnational criminal organizations inside Mexico. And, specifically, it is fueling even more question about the February 22 killing of Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) kingpin Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, infamously known as El Mencho.
Many analysts and journalists are now asking if El Mencho was really taken out by Mexican authorities at all.
For years prior to his death, El Mencho wasn’t seen or heard from in public, stoking theories that he was severely ill or perhaps even dead. Could it be that the Mexican government staged his killing after he had died to make it look like they were waging a war on cartels just to satisfy the Trump administration?
‘Just as we formed a coalition to eradicate ISIS in the Middle East, we must now do the same thing to eradicate the cartels at home,’ President Trump declared on March 7
On Monday, Sheinbaum turned Trump down. ‘It’s good that President Trump publicly says that when he has proposed that the United States Army enter Mexico,’ she replied, ‘we proudly continue to say no’
Ammon Blair, a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, does not rule out that possibility. ‘Due to the cartels’ relationship with the federal government it’s hard to determine the truth and whether this El Mencho raid was just an elaborate ruse,’ he told me.
Indeed, I have my own questions.
Earlier this month, I visited the compound in Tapalpa, Mexico, more than 250 miles southeast of Puerto Vallarta, where the government claims El Mencho was killed in a shootout.
I arrived just more than 48 hours after El Mencho was reported dead. The grouping of cabins sits deep in the hills, reached only by a narrow road that peels off the highway and winds through thick forest.
The surrounding forest had been burned black. The vegetation that once concealed the property was reduced to charred trunks and ash, some patches still faintly smoldered. The ground was scattered with fragments of grenades and bullets.
At the base of the cabin complex, an open parking lot serves as the gateway to the cabins above. When I arrived, the lot still looked hastily abandoned. A white pickup truck sat with a small dark blood stain on the exterior.
Nearby, a motorcycle lay toppled over. Bed sheets, towels, and half-eaten food were strewn across the ground as if people had fled in the middle of routines.
There was a pool of blood on the ground, large enough to mark serious injury, though there were surprisingly few shell casings in the lot itself.
The road then curls sharply uphill, climbing toward the cluster of cabins where Mexican authorities say the 59-year-old kingpin tried to escape on foot.
I visited the compound in Tapalpa, Mexico, more than 250 miles southeast of Puerto Vallarta, where the government claims El Mencho was killed in a shootout
At the base of the cabin complex, an open parking lot serves as the gateway to the cabins above. When I arrived, the lot still looked hastily abandoned
Bed sheets, towels, and half-eaten food were strewn across the ground as if people had fled in the middle of routines
Notably there was curiously little damage done to the actual building where El Mencho was reportedly hiding, which poses a challenge to claims that there was a shootout between CJNG forces and the Mexican military.
Additionally, the government never released a photograph of El Mencho body, either while he was reportedly being flown by helicopter to Mexico City to receive medical treatment or even after his death.
This unproven theory of a Mexican government hoax raises a terrifying scenario – that the CJNG and Mexican government are working in partnership.
It’s a possibility that should strike fears into the hearts of Americans.
While living in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco in 2024, I first began investigating how the popular American tourist destination had become a hub for housing and training CJNG recruits. Then CJNG, the most prolific cartel in Mexican history, was just a part of the cityscape – always operating and seldom disturbed.
Through trusted cartel contacts and sources, I joined a WhatsApp group chat used by active CJNG members. What I found shocked me.
I saw horrific videos of torture, executions, rapes and women being mutilated. Far from horrifying the participants of the chat, it excited them. These potential recruits spoke about the demented lengths they were willing to go to become a member of the CJNG.
But beyond the graphic videos, what stood out to me most were the apparent locations of some chat members who had phone number area codes ranging from California to Alberta, Canada. Based on the language and grammar used by these members, it was clear to me that many of them were not Mexican natives.
Under the leadership of El Mencho, CJNG had spread into every Mexican state – the first to ever do so – and, CJNG recently aligned with the Chapitos faction of the fractured Sinaloa cartel, best-known for its former leader El Chapo.
Screengrab from CJNG chat group image. Translation: ‘Recruitment Puerto Vallarta (CJNG)’
Screengrab from CJNG chat group image. Translation: ‘This group is for people who want to work in the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). For Puerto Vallarta, with travel expenses paid’
Notably there was curiously little damage done to the actual building where El Mencho was reportedly hiding (Pictured: Aerial view of the luxury compound ‘El Mencho’ was reportedly hiding
The cartel also expanded its criminal reach into virtually every major Mexican industry from the drug trade, migrant smuggling and human trafficking to crude oil theft and fuel siphoning, illegal mining and agriculture. CJNG operators are also known to have seized, through extortion and intimidation, thousands of avocado farms, selling the ‘green gold’ to distributors around the world.
And with every additional illicit pursuit comes the need for more manpower to enforce CJNG’s will.
Popular pro-cartel music, known as narco-corridos or cartel ballads, have long been employed as recruitment propaganda, though social media has increasingly become their most effective cartel hiring tool.
Cartel recruiters flood TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and music platforms with polished images of luxury cars, designer watches, stacks of cash, women, weapons and invincibility. And these recruitment channels are spilling beyond Mexico’s borders.
Canadian authorities have publicly acknowledged the presence of CJNG on their soil. In early 2025, Toronto police linked the cartel to a record-breaking cocaine seizure in the Greater Toronto Area. The capture marked, what Toronto officials described as, the first concrete evidence of direct CJNG presence in Canada.
Previously, law enforcement agencies, including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Toronto Police Service, had emphasized that CJNG was not openly controlling territory, but operating through transnational criminal networks and partnering with other local organized crime groups.
There was a pool of blood on the ground, large enough to mark serious injury, though there were surprisingly few shell casings in the lot itself
Burned car in Tapalpa, Mexico near where El Mencho was captured (Pictured: February 25)
While Ottawa has stopped short of declaring Canada a new cartel battleground, officials have made clear that Mexican cartels — and CJNG in particular — now view the country as a lucrative and strategic hub in the global narcotics trade.
Then, last autumn, I reported on how a faction tied to CJNG had partnered with La Linea – a border cartel based in Juarez, Mexico, which lies directly on the US-Mexican border with El Paso, Texas.
This group, linked to CJNG, lured, kidnapped and murdered young pregnant women, extracting their unborn babies to sell on the black market, sometimes to El Paso-based American buyers for 250,000 pesos per child (barely $15,000 US dollars).
Following my reporting, the US announced the arrest of a woman, who went by La Diabla, ‘The she-devil,’ who was allegedly responsible for killing several young women to steal the babies from their wombs.
Driven by the desire to break into new markets and fueled by the ease of social media and digital communications, it seems only a matter of time before CJNG develops a foothold in the United States, unless countered by effective law enforcement. But if they do, it seems there may already be a pool of ready and willing recruits.
