A U.S. Murder Suspect Fled to Mexico. The Gringo Hunters Were Waiting Kevin Sieff - The Washington Post
go to original June 5, 2022

Moises, with the Baja California International Liaison Unit, stands on a beach in the village of San Felipe, Mexico, while searching for a fugitive American couple. (Luis Antonio Rojas/The Washington Post)

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.

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.”

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 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.’ ”

Read the rest at The Washington Post

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