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In response to
"It's paywalled and I want to know how it ended!"
by
Mop
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ugly C&P inside
Posted by
decline (aka Decline)
Jun 3 '22, 09:45
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Story by Kevin Sieff
Photos by Luis Antonio Rojas for The Washington Post
June 3, 2022
2
ENSENADA, Mexico — The fugitive could have been anywhere, so Ivan kept his
voice down.
“We know he’s probably armed,” he told the members of his team.
Moises, with the Baja California International Liaison Unit, stands on a beach in the village of San Felipe,
Mexico, while searching in October for a fugitive American couple.
A U.S. murder suspect fled to Mexico.
The Gringo Hunters were waiting.
They had pulled into a parking lot near the cruise ship terminal, a semicircle of
undercover Mexican police officers, handguns hidden in the waistbands of their
jeans.
If anyone asked, they were just friends on their way to the beach on a cloudless
morning. But behind their sunglasses, their eyes darted between possible
suspects. They were searching — as always — for an American.
“Another guy who thinks he can create a new life in Mexico,” Ivan said.
Information had trickled in from the U.S. Marshals Service in the case of
Damion Salinas, a 21-year-old accused of killing a man after a traffic accident in
Fresno, Calif.
But the intelligence was weak. Salinas appeared to have crossed the border into
Mexico. He might be working as a barber in Ensenada. Or he might be in
Tijuana. Or in any of the expat hideouts in between along the rocky coastline.
Authorities had lost track of him more than a year earlier.
The cops knew this feeling well. Their cases almost always began the same way
— with a sense that the gringos could be anywhere.
There are a lot of them: Americans on the run from U.S. law enforcement who
have slipped into northern Mexico. They include fugitives on the FBI’s “Ten
Most Wanted” list, serial killers, billionaires accused of securities fraud.
[3,134 miles, 18 pairs of sneakers, multiple cartel checkpoints: A run across
Mexico]
Here in Baja California, there’s one small unit of state police — 10 men and two
women — assigned to catch them. Officially, they’re the International Liaison
Unit. But they’re known by another name: the Gringo Hunters.
Pursuing American fugitives in Mexico might seem like the punchline of an
unwritten joke, a xenophobic stereotype inverted: Donald Trump’s “bad
hombres” in reverse.
This is, after all, the Baja Peninsula, a dagger of land jutting into the Pacific, with
deserted beaches and sprawling cities that nurture anonymity. Among its most
popular tourism campaigns? “Escape to Baja.”
“Another guy who thinks he can create a new life
in Mexico.”
— Ivan
The unit now catches an average of 13 Americans a month. Since it was formed
in 2002, it has apprehended more than 1,600. Many of those suspects were
Members of the liaison unit, or Gringo Hunters, gather in southern Baja to discuss their pursuit of the fugitive
couple.
inspired by one of America’s oldest cliches: the troubled outlaw striding into a
sepia-toned Mexico in the hope of disappearing forever.
“I’m goin’ to Mexico,” Susan Sarandon says in “Thelma & Louise” after her
character kills a man.
“Way down to Mexico way,” Jimi Hendrix sang. “Ain’t no hangman gonna — he
ain’t gonna put a rope around me.”
Ivan knows the stereotypes — all the ways life imitates art in Baja — because he
apprehends versions of the same misguided fugitive every other day.
“We find them everywhere,” he said. “And almost always, they have no idea
we’re looking for them. They think: ‘We’re in Mexico. We’re home free.’ ”
A woman rings the doorbell of a nightclub in Tijuana on a Sunday afternoon in April. Many fugitives have been
found in downtown Tijuana.
People stand on a street in Tijuana known for its sex trade.
Here’s an incomplete list of where Mexican officers have found
American fugitives:
In beach resorts. Dangling from parasails. In remote mountain
cabins. In fishing boats. At a nightclub called Papas & Beer. In drug
rehabilitation centers. In trailer parks. Tending bars. In cars with prostitutes. In
Carl’s Jr. parking lots.
Some were on crystal meth. Some had undergone plastic surgery and acquired
new names they couldn’t pronounce. Some were found dead.
There were former Playboy models, Catholic priests, professional athletes, C-list
celebrities, ex-Marines.
So when the case of Damion Salinas crossed the Gringo Hunters’ desk, it seemed
pretty straightforward. Then again, so had other cases.
It was late March. The unit had been busier than at any other time in its history.
While politicians in Washington argued over whether there was a crisis at the
border, it felt to the Gringo Hunters that crime was spilling over in the opposite
direction.
“Honestly, I think it’s all the drugs over there,” said Moises, the liaison unit’s
commander. Like other unit members, he spoke on the condition that his last
name be withheld so he can continue to work undercover.
[The war next door: Conflict in Mexico is displacing thousands]
In its office, the unit keeps a whiteboard with the month’s apprehensions tallied
by name, date and charge. In the first three weeks of March, there were eight
A dog rests on his bed in a neighborhood of Tijuana near the border wall.
accused of drug trafficking, two of murder and one of pedophilia.
The Salinas case was another one that seemed to reflect something rotten across
the border. On Aug. 16, 2020, Salinas allegedly arrived at the scene of a traffic
accident involving his girlfriend. Several people argued over who was
responsible for the crash. Within minutes, authorities say, Salinas pulled out a
handgun and shot 36-year-old Joshua Thao at close range.
“He never saw it coming because he shook the killer’s hand thinking everything
was fine,” the victim’s sister, told a local TV news reporter.
Nineteen months later, Baja police received a tip that Salinas was cutting hair at
the Teximani barbershop in Ensenada, a small black storefront painted with
murals of boxing champions.
The bulletin from U.S. authorities was emblazoned with Salinas’s photo.
“DANGEROUS,” it warned in bold.
“Remember,” Ivan told his team at the outset, “don’t take any unnecessary
risks.”
One of the younger undercover officers, a lanky man with braces named Carlos,
went into the barbershop and sat down for a haircut.
“Just a little off the sides,” he said, and looked around for Damian.
[In Cuba, a desperate search for milk]
The Gringo Hunters are trained to spot the ways Americans make themselves
conspicuous in Mexico. They wear more shorts and more flip-flops. Many speak
little Spanish. One officer swears he can identify how long a gringo has been in
Mexico by the depth of his tan.
Luis, one of the Gringo Hunters, stands in the parking lot of their office in Mexicali, Baja's capital, at the end
of an October workday.
Carlos had studied the photos of Salinas from his Facebook profile. He was 6
feet tall and 185 pounds, an amateur rapper. He wore his hair in dreadlocks.
“Forever West Coast" was tattooed on his right arm.
“This guy is going to stand out,” Carlos thought.
Scanning the shop, he didn’t see Salinas. But there was an apartment upstairs
and a steady flow of clients. He called for backup.
That’s how three unmarked cars, each with two or three heavily armed agents,
came to be sitting outside the barbershop. I was in the back of one of the cars,
behind Ivan and his colleague Abigail.
Spring-breakers were taking selfies along the bay. New copies of the biweekly
Gringo Gazette — with its tagline “No Bad News” — had recently been delivered.
Ivan turned up the Bad Bunny song on the radio. He squinted through the
windshield.
“Where are youuu, Damion?” he said, to no one in particular.
[Devouring the rainforest: How America's love of beef is helping to destroy the
Amazon]
Ivan, like the rest of the team, had grown up along the border. He prefers “thank
you” to “gracias." He worked for years in construction and then as a bodyguard.
In 2010, he was recruited by the Gringo Hunters.
The unit’s existence surprised him.
“I was like, wait, you chase Americans?”
He shuddered when he learned that fugitive pedophiles often settle near primary
schools. He noticed the mark the job was beginning to leave on him — the way
he triple-checked that his front door was locked when he got home, or
reproached his wife for sitting in the car too long outside their home.
“You’re raising our profile,” he insisted.
He learned that the dumbest fugitives were often the most violent. There was the
Oregon man running from rape charges who worked as a surfing instructor with
a LinkedIn profile (“High performing, results oriented”). There was the
California murder suspect found in Tijuana after he posted a music video for a
song called “Stay Gangsterific.”
Ivan’s job flickered between humor and danger, suddenly and without warning.
On his phone, he saved the photos of dozens of American fugitives he’d caught,
like a digital trophy gallery. One recent photo showed the body of Anthony
“Lucky” Luciano.
The police had been surveilling Luciano last year as he cruised downtown
Tijuana. He was wanted for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Los Angeles.
Hours into the mission, Luciano leapt from the car, spraying bullets. Then he
hijacked a Mini Cooper with a woman in the back seat and continued shooting at
the police. Ivan was hit in the foot.
The officers fired back. Luciano died of his wounds.
“I was like, wait, you chase Americans?”
— Ivan
Parked in front of the barbershop, Ivan read through the WhatsApp group
“DAMION SALINAS.” It included a map showing Baja barbershops where the
target might be working.
“This guy must know people here,” Ivan said, scratching a chin covered by a few
days of stubble. “Someone’s got to be hiding him.”
[We traveled deep into the Amazon to investigate deforestation. A grisly
discovery awaited us.]
For decades, fugitives fleeing to Mexico have posed a profound challenge for
U.S. law enforcement officers, who cannot operate independently on this side of
the border. They rely instead on Mexican police to make apprehensions on their
behalf. It isn’t extradition, which involves a formal request by the United States
and a court process in Mexico. Technically, the gringos are deported for
violating Mexican immigration law.
“Without the Mexicans able to do this for us, no one is going to get caught," said
Scott Garriola, a former FBI agent who led a fugitive task force in Los Angeles
until 2019.
U.S. officials pass intelligence on to Mexican police. Sometimes it comes from
tracing U.S. wire transfers to rural Mexican banks. Sometimes it’s from phone
records of relatives in the United States. Sometimes it’s a tip, prompted by U.S.
reward money.
After big cases, U.S. officials send plaques, FBI apparel and gift certificates to
their Mexican counterparts. They invite the Mexican agents to training sessions
across the United States and ply them with drinks and dinners.
“A lot of it boils down to keeping the jefes happy,” Garriola said.
Ivan and the others say they have a different motivation.
“We don’t want a bunch of criminals in our community,” Ivan said.
Moises rides an ATV toward where other unit members think they saw the fugitive couple in southern Baja.
Ivan observes a beach near an enclave of foreign residences during the October operation.
T
he Gringo Hunters had been sitting in front of the barbershop for
about an hour when the U.S. marshals called again.
Ivan picked up his phone and nodded. His eyes widened.
“He’s not here,” Ivan told a colleague. “It looks like he’s in Tijuana.”
The team sped north, the ocean on their left. The sun above was parchment
white. A string of gated communities sat perched along the cliffs. Many of the
signs and billboards were in English.
“Last Corona for 25 miles.”
“Your home from $134k.”
“Thong and Tequila Party.”
A view of the enclave from a unit pickup truck.
[Small children are climbing 60-foot trees to harvest your açaí]
It was a Mexico bent to the contours of a foreigner’s fantasy. Abigail sped
through it at 90 miles an hour. She gripped the steering wheel with one hand
and held her phone with the other, firing off voice memos to headquarters.
“That’s the telephone number of the target,” she said in one. “Check to see if it’s
registered.”
“Find out who has the deed to the barbershop,” she said in another.
“This is a homicide case,” she advised gently. “It’s a little bit urgent.”
Abigail was the only woman on Ivan’s team. She wore blue jeans and had
straight hair down to her shoulders.
Unit members gather in March in the parking lot of an Ensenada restaurant where they had just breakfasted
to plan the capture of a fugitive. (Luis Antonio Rojas For The Washington Post)
She, too, had grown up on the border, in Tijuana, secretly dreaming of becoming
a police officer. Her mother begged her not to. Abigail waited until her own
daughter was 2, and then signed up.
A few years later, she transferred to the Gringo Hunters and immediately helped
make several major arrests. Still, even when her colleagues praise her, the
compliments can sometimes be loaded.
“She can do anything,” Ivan said. “She’s like a man in a woman’s body.”
Abigail says she isn’t bothered. She rose to the top position in the liaison unit’s
Tijuana field office.
She became known for finding ways to capture fugitives without engaging in
high-speed chases or shootouts. When a former Texas police officer, wanted for
sexually assaulting a child, fled to Rosarito, she tracked his Facebook account
until he posted to a local expat group, looking for a woman to show him around.
Abigail created a fake profile and contacted him to offer a tour. When he showed
up, freshly coifed and wearing cologne, the team arrested him.
“You expect these guys to be smarter than that,” she said.
The team quipped about her having a “woman’s sixth sense” — and maybe there
was something to that, she thought.
“As a woman, I knew how to hook him.”
She half-joked about migrating to the United States to increase her salary,
roughly a thousand dollars a month.
“I could apply a lot of blush and tell them I’m Ukrainian,” she said.
But the more time she spends in the unit, the less appealing the United States
has come to seem. Is it possible to arrest a nonstop procession of gringo
criminals without feeling a little less enthusiastic about their country?
Last year, during my first trip with the unit, we followed a couple accused of
murder in Hilmar, Calif., to the small fishing village of San Felipe, near the
southern tip of Baja California.
Members of the team drove along the beach in ATVs, pretending to be tourists
while doing their reconnaissance. Afterward, they barbecued carne asada on the
beach. Their pistols were visible at their waists. At times, the team seemed to
exhibit more swagger — the power trip that came with arresting dozens of
Americans a year — than tactical prowess.
[Accused in deaths of innocents, a former colonel confronts his shame]
It was Abigail who seemed to do the job most effectively — and without the ego.
She worked her phones from the beach, checking with police contacts in the
United States and Mexico. She interviewed potential witnesses and
collaborators, inching closer to the couple. They were eventually detained off a
desolate beach road. They asked: How’d you find us?
If that wasn’t enough to win her colleagues over, it was Abigail who had shot
Anthony “Lucky” Luciano in Tijuana.
Abigail climbs onto the back of an ATV as unit members look for the fugitive couple in southern Baja.
Abigail has breakfast with other unit members in San Felipe while seeking the couple in October.
I
t was noon when Abigail parked across the street from Bunker Cuts in
Tijuana.
The U.S. marshals believed Salinas might be living in the apartment above
the barbershop. Abigail could see a rack of clothes left to dry on the patio.
They waited, air conditioning blasting, staring through the windshield. The
conversation turned — as it always did — to speculation about the fugitive’s life
on the run. Which version of the Baja outlaw life had Salinas chosen, they
wondered. Was he parasailing? Was he in a mountain hut, protected by cartel
gunmen?
[Ana Estrada is fighting for a right to euthanasia. But she doesn't want to die.]
Some fugitives have lived in Mexico for decades without being caught. Others
last only a few days. Baldomero Barrientos Banuelos, who allegedly stabbed his
wife to death in North Hollywood, Calif, has been at large for 29 years.
“Some of these guys are really gifted at blending in,” Ivan said.
Abigail went to the store next to the barbershop, bought a plastic cup of potato
chips dipped in chili and came back shaking her head.
Abigail speaks on the phone beside the back of a pickup while surveilling a street in Ensenada in March.
“Nothing,” she said.
To pass the time, they talked about old cases: the alleged pedophile who tried to
stab himself when he was apprehended, the ex-football star who was so strong
that it took the entire team to detain him.
The call came out of nowhere, another officer on the walkie-talkie.
“That looks like him. In the beige Honda Accord.”
Abigail and Ivan turned on a siren and took off, tearing through two lanes of
traffic. It took them about 15 seconds to cut off the Accord. They pulled a tall,
thin man out of the car.
He didn’t look much like the picture of Salinas I’d seen, grimacing at the camera.
He was gangly, with a bowl haircut and a wispy mustache. He wore a pair of Air
Jordan sandals. He looked like he’d just woken up from a nap.
“I don’t think it’s him,” Ivan said.
But when Ivan took a wallet out of the man’s pocket, there it was: a California
driver’s license with the name “Damion Ariza Salinas.”
“Pon las manos atras,” one of the agents shouted.
It became clear Salinas didn’t understand, so the agent repeated the words in
English.
“Put your hands in the back.”
“Do you speak Spanish?” Ivan asked.
“Muy poco,” Salinas responded.
[The last bullfight? Mexico City weighs a ban.]
Traffic had halted. Pedestrians gawked. A few faces peered out from the
barbershop and then ducked back inside.
“Who should we give the key to the car to?” Abigail asked.
Salinas looked confused.
“Well I’m going …” he began.
“You’re not going anywhere,” she said. “You’re coming with us.”
An officer approaches Salinas after the unit cut him off in traffic in Tijuana.
An officer holds Salinas as he makes the arrest.
An officer leads Salinas away to one of the unit's vehicles.
T
he agents handcuffed Salinas and led him to the back seat of one of
the unmarked cars.
They agreed to let me sit in the back with him, if an agent sat between
us, ready to restrain Salinas if he lunged. But he didn’t. He looked calm.
I told him I was a journalist.
“That’s a badass job,” he said.
He’d been watching “Narcos,” the Netflix series, which includes a journalist
character.
First he told me that he had no idea why he’d been apprehended. When he
shrugged, his handcuffs jangled.
“I’m just chilling,” he said. “I came out here for a better life.”
“You seem pretty relaxed,” I said.
“Inside I’m freaking out,” he said.
[Haiti's assassination probe has stalled. The U.S. one is advancing.]
Abigail was weaving through traffic on the way to the police intake center. Ivan
called his colleagues in the United States.
“We got him,” he said.
A few minutes into our conversation, Salinas hung his head. His tone changed,
as if he had realized that playing a bemused tourist wasn’t going to work. He
acknowledged fleeing to Mexico to hide from U.S. law enforcement.
“I knew they were looking for me,” he said.
Salinas started describing his year in Mexico as if it were a semester abroad. At
first, he said, he was careful, changing motels almost every night. But as the
months passed, he took more chances.
He’d spent some time on a Jet Ski. He’d picked up a few women at bars. He’d
visited hotels on the beach.
“You know, resort trips,” he said.
[Tourist drug demand is bringing cartel violence to Mexico’s most popular
resorts]
When cops pulled Salinas over for traffic infractions, he would pay them off with
small bribes.
Other times, he watched officers from a distance, and assumed they were
looking for him.
“I’d look at them and be like, ‘Look at those dumbasses. They hit the wrong
spot.’ ”
But over time, the life wore on him. He tired of keeping constant watch for the
police. He got lonely. He would wake up covered in sweat.
“I thought about just crossing back over the border, turning myself in,” he said.
He refused to talk about the killing. But when I asked about his efforts to hide,
he beamed.
“I was always 10 steps ahead. I just stopped trying after a while.”
I was always 10 steps ahead. I just stopped trying
after a while.
— Salinas
I asked why he hadn’t tried to go farther south, away from the border.
“That’s too deep, bro. I don’t know what’s out there.” Tijuana, he said, “is kind of
Americanized in a way.”
Ivan put “Gangsta’s Paradise” on the stereo and turned up the volume. He asked
me to ask Salinas if he was a rapper. Salinas smiled and said no.
Ivan then pulled up a video on his phone of Salinas rapping.
“Oh,” Salinas said, getting his first glimpse into the manhunt that had led to his
apprehension.
The car pulled up at the police station and the agents escorted Salinas inside.
They were still struggling to communicate across the language barrier.
“You really need to learn Spanish,” Ivan told him.
“Everyone tells me that,” Salinas responded, blushing a little.
Ivan and Daniel, another Gringo Hunter, use a webcam to photograph Salinas at a state police station in
Tijuana.
Unit members hold one of Salinas's arms as a photo is taken of a tattoo. It reads: "Forever West Coast."
A
fter Salinas had been processed — his fingerprints taken, his tattoos
documented — the next stop was a small immigration office.
A poster enumerating “A Foreigner’s Rights and Duties in a
Migratory Station” was posted on the wall in English.
“Am I being extradited?” he asked me. I asked Ivan to answer.
“Tell him he’s being deported by Mexican immigration,” he said.
I asked Salinas what he thought.
“Does California have the death penalty?” he asked.
I said I didn’t think so.
“Then I’ll be good,” he said.
[Separated at the U.S.-Mexico border by Trump, a mother and daughter try to
reconnect]
Salinas in the provisional jail of the state police after his arrest.
We got back in the car. The sun was setting as we drove to the border.
Abigail passed the first sign for San Diego. Then the encampment of recently
arrived Ukrainian refugees.
She parked the car. We walked toward the plaque that marks the boundary
between the United States and Mexico. Salinas’s feet were now shackled, too. He
walked slowly with his head down.
A group of U.S. agents was waiting. One stood up straight, as if preparing to give
chase if the fugitive ran.
Unit members arrive at the San Ysidro border crossing to deliver Salinas to U.S. authorities.
A Mexican agent took the handcuffs off Salinas’s wrists and a U.S. agent
immediately replaced them with a different pair of handcuffs. The exchange had
the feeling of a ceremony without an audience. Then Salinas was gone, escorted
by a team of agents in tactical gear into a maze of government buildings. On May
19, he pleaded not guilty to a charge of murder.
The Gringo Hunters walked away from the border crossing, California at their
backs. If the image felt familiar, it’s because I’d seen it before, a Hollywood
cliche now turned on its head: the protagonists, tired but triumphant, striding
into Mexico.
Their next assignment had already popped up in a WhatsApp message. A
California woman had been accused of kidnapping and drugging a 5-year-old
girl. The report said she was living in a trailer park near the beach west of
Tijuana.
Abigail and Ivan exchanged a fist bump and set a time to meet the following
morning.
The next day looked to be another long one.
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Spoils
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Beryllium
Jun 3, 09:50
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