A 17 -year -old girl tortured her last victim on May 12. On that day, the agents of the prosecutors made a descent into a house southeast of Ciudad Juárez, on the American-Mexican border, and found the person he had kidnapped the day before-still alive.
During the operation, the teenager was arrested alongside four other young people, aged 17 to 20, with whom she had formed kidnapping cells earlier. She would have been the leader of the group and was responsible for torture and mutilary victims, as well as the sending of videos of these acts to their families to put them pressure on the ransom, according to the accounts collected by the local and corroborated media independently by the crime of insight.
The case shocked Juárez. But it was not an isolated incident – it was the last in a series of violent acts carried out by young gangs looking for new sources of funding in the city.
Two years earlier, many of these young people had experienced an economic boom working for local criminal organizations such as Empresa and Mexys, which capitalized on the record number of migrants arriving at the border between 2022 and 2024. From the coordination of irregular passages in the United States to the removal, extortion and exploitation of this population, these groups have multiplied their income in a short period.
“We estimated that they generated about $ 100 million a month, even more than they earned from drug trafficking,” said Gilberto Loya, Secretary of Security of the State of Chihuahua, in Insight Crime.
But with the tightening of the American migration policy after Donald Trump took office in January 2025, the number of migrants seeking to cross the border has dropped sharply. The almost empty shelters and many migrants returning to their country of origin, the funds to cover the wage bill of these young people have decreased considerably.
Young kidnappers
In response to this new reality, criminal groups have adapted, allowing members of lower rank to generate income by making the crimes they have committed differently against migrants in the local population. The removal initially seemed to be a promising alternative.
During the first half of 2025, kidnapping reports in Ciudad Juárez reached their highest level in a decade, with 36 cases recorded, according to data from the citizen observatory of competitiveness and citizen -citizan – Fideicomiso para competitivitidad y seguridada – ficosec).
Although in previous years, the actual number of kidnappings was probably higher – because those involved in migrants are rarely reported – recent files show a change in the profile of the victims, with more targeted premises, including business owners, factory leaders, merchants, engines and tourists.
The profile of the authors, however, remained coherent. Most are young and use extreme levels of violence, members of the Ciudad Juárez social reintegration committee for adolescents told Insight Crime.
In another recent case, a group of young people kidnapped a carpooling driver when he arrived at the address where the journey had been requested. To demand a ransom, they sent videos to his family showing him tortured, including the moment when they cut one of his fingers.
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These incidents quickly drawn the attention of local authorities. While many authors had previous experience, in particular in the kidnapping of migrants, Loya said that new gangs are disorganized, not sophisticated and do not necessarily take orders or do not receive direct support from large criminal groups.
“We attract the authors very quickly. These gangs do not last long,” he said.
Between January and June 2025, the local media reported that the authorities had arrested at least 51 people for kidnapping at Ciudad Juárez. In at least four cases identified by Insight Crime, the authors were captured after their victims managed to escape.
The benefits of these gangs also seem limited, preventing kidnappings and extortion from becoming a stable source of income for these young people. Although they initially demanded ransoms in the millions, the amounts they generally received varied from $ 1,000 to $ 2,600, which they divided between the members of each cell, Loya explained. On the other hand, during the boom of the smuggling of migrants, ransom requests could reach $ 10,000 per person.
Return to street medication sales
At the height of smuggling and the kidnapping of migrants, groups like Empresa and Mexiles have devoted most of their resources to these activities, even reaffect members who had formerly worked in other fields, such as the sale of drugs.
But after the collapse of migrant activity and the failure of the alternatives such as the kidnapping of the inhabitants, they chose to reallocate members to the sales of drugs at the street level, a lower risk activity which offers a more stable income.
“When the Empresa has returned its members to drugs after leaving the smuggling and removal of migrants, other groups had already taken them, then they are now fighting to recover them,” said Loya.
Ciudad Juárez has an important internal market, historically controlled by various criminal factions that divide the territory and establish rules on substances that can be sold and which is authorized to sell them.
In central areas and along the border band with Texas – controlled by groups of radiance of the Juárez cartel Like Línea and Empresa, as well as the Gang Barrio Azteca – heroin, crack, marijuana and cocaine dominate the market, while synthetic drugs are limited. On the other hand, in the southern outskirts, factions combined with Sinaloa cartel And the gangs of Asesinos and Mexiles are focused on the sales of methamphetamine.
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Although the income from this market can be substantial, the environment is very violent. Sale in a rival territory or the distribution of unauthorized substances can be deadly, said a distributor to Insight Crime. Disputes over these problems happen so often that the authorities connect most of the city violence to this market.
In this context, recent territorial reshuffles have not been without conflict. Many homicides recorded between January and July 2025 have been concentrated in the border areas between the territories controlled by different groups.
A more sophisticated migrant smuggling trade?
Despite these changes, the smuggling of migrants has not completely disappeared. There is still a small number of people arriving at the border in search of crossing services and willing to pay a higher price, according to officials who work with migrants at Ciudad Juárez and spoke to a crime of insight under the cover of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak publicly.
But smuggling networks no longer work as openly as before, they said, so more details are unknown.
“They used to advertise their services on social networks. Now they keep a very low profile,” they said.
This discretion can be linked to an increase in sophistication of the services offered. For example, officials said they were aware of the recent cases in which migrants were offered “travel packages” other continents, including air transport to Mexico and passages through less complicated and difficult to access points.
The security authorities share this evaluation. During the migration boom, many criminal players sought to capitalize on the opportunity, creating fierce competition and the need to divide profits. Now, however, Loya thinks that the company is concentrated between fewer hands, believing that crossing costs may have doubled.
Steven Dudley contributed the reports.
