On a recent November evening, residents of Sásabe, a small outpost on the US-Mexico border, received threatening messages warning of an impending attack. The next morning, they awoke to several houses engulfed in flames and dozens of men with high-powered weapons shooting at each other around the main plaza.
Hours later, nearly 100 locals, among them elderly men and women and young children, took off for the US-Mexico border. They found a hole in the border fence, crossed into the United States, and pleaded with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials to protect them.
“People got tired of waiting [for help],” said Dora Rodríguez, co-founder of Casa de la Esperanza, a migrant and community resource center in Sásabe. “It was extraordinary, they had to save their own lives.”
Hundreds more are still trapped. Surrounded by barren desert and mountains in northern Sonora, Sásabe is a small town of less than 1,000 people where the Sinaloa Cartel has long been the dominant criminal actor.
For the last 12 years, the boss of the local Sinaloa Cartel affiliate managing Sásabe left the townspeople alone and allowed them to work, local residents told InSight Crime. That all changed in October, when internal divisions over synthetic drug trafficking came to a head and another cell moved in with backing from the Chapitos, a faction led by several sons of the now-jailed former leader, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, alias “El Chapo.”
SEE ALSO: An Extradition (and a Fentanyl Prohibition) as Mexico Tries a Counterdrug Reset
Since then, two factions of the group have been battling, not over synthetic drug trafficking routes, but control of migrant smuggling through this corridor.
“They’ve fought in the past over drug trafficking routes, control of local authorities, elections, and corrupt security forces, but as far as I know, this is the first time they have fought over migrant smuggling routes,” said David Saucedo, a Mexico-based security analyst.
A Human Smuggling Hub
The internal spat started in Altar, a town located about 100 kilometers south of the US-Mexico border. Human smuggling is big business here, as criminal networks profit off everything from housing migrants to transporting and guiding them north across the desert around Sásabe.
“This area in Sonora is a major human smuggling corridor and that has become a huge money maker for the Sinaloa Cartel,” said Mike Vigil, a former high-ranking Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent in Mexico.
Throughout the 2023 fiscal year, CBP encountered a record 2.47 million migrants across nine sectors along the southwest border, according to agency data. The Tucson Sector, which is divided into nine stations in southern Arizona and covers Sásabe, saw the third-highest number of migrants.
Amid rising insecurity and a variety of economic, political, and social factors pushing migrants from all over Latin America, the Caribbean, and several other nations to flee, restrictive US immigration policies have made clandestine crossings one of the only viable options to enter the country.
And the harder it is to cross the border, the more organized crime groups like the Sinaloa Cartel profit.
SEE ALSO: How US Policy Foments Organized Crime on US-Mexico Border
Asylum seekers from Central America and beyond are paying up to $10,000 per person, according to Rodríguez, while Mexicans are paying between $3,000 and $5,000. As much as half of that can go to the dominant criminal group, sometimes more.
The current conflict comes at a time of uncertainty for the Sinaloa Cartel. In June, the Chapitos outlawed all fentanyl production and trafficking in Sinaloa. That demand reportedly extended to some — but not all — Sinaloa Cartel divisions in Sonora.
It is still unclear how firmly the ban is in place. But, according to Vigil, the recent violence may be the Chapitos’ way of trying to shore up control over other lucrative criminal economies as they wait for increased government pressure over fentanyl to die down.
“Migrants are super important right now because there aren’t really any drugs passing through,” said Melissa,* a local nurse who spoke to InSight Crime on condition of anonymity due to security concerns. “They are paying thousands of dollars to cross.”
No Choice but to Flee
While the Sinaloa factions are fighting over the flow of migrants through the area, residents have found themselves unable to leave.
“Locals are trapped,” said Rodríguez, the humanitarian aid worker. “They cannot go north because of US restrictions, and they cannot go south because cartels are running those roads. Families are terrified that they’ll get caught in the middle.”
During the first weeks of the fighting, one of the only doctors in town fled along with another nurse. They were on edge. They had heard stories of other medics dragged into the middle of criminal conflicts. As the number of supposed criminals with gunshot wounds grew, they feared the opposing crime groups would punish them for unwittingly providing medical care to the enemy.
The two medical workers warned Melissa, the only nurse left, to leave as soon as possible. But she couldn’t just drop everything. She needed a couple of days to organize herself and her three children.
But before she could leave, she got the call she had been dreading.
When her phone first rang, she did not pick up. It rang again. This time Melissa answered. She knew exactly who the two men on the other end of the line were even though they did not identify themselves. They had two wounded people and demanded Melissa’s help.
She refused. The young mother then immediately gathered her children, a few essentials, and bundled them into the car, vowing never to expose them to a situation like that ever again. But as she left town and joined the two-lane highway heading south, she noticed several cars turning around. Active gun battles between the rival Sinaloa Cartel factions along this route had made it too dangerous for anyone to continue.
Melissa returned home and decided it would be her last night. She couldn’t risk having armed men further terrorize her children and potentially force her to treat their wounded.
“I was so afraid of being there with my three children,” Melissa told InSight Crime. “The last night we were there, we slept in the bathroom … because the gunshots wouldn’t stop.”
Civilians in the Crossfire
Days before that November morning when the group of residents pleaded with US border officials for protection, tensions had risen such that the Sinaloa Cartel faction fending off the Chapitos’ incursion turned on the local population in Sásabe. They worried residents were aiding the enemy.
Some of the attacks occurred in broad daylight. On November 6, gunmen shot Rogelio Carillo twice outside of a convenience store. Several locals told InSight Crime he had nothing to do with organized crime groups in the area. With the closest hospital in Caborca, some two hours away, they loaded him into the back of a pickup truck and brought him to the US port of entry to seek medical assistance.
Two Sásabe residents told InSight Crime that US officials refused to help. CBP did not respond to requests for comment on the case or the security situation in Sásabe.
Carillo later died of his injuries.
Other civilians have been forcibly disappeared. Armed gunmen snatched one young man from his truck and set his vehicle on fire simply for passing by at the wrong time, according to multiple residents who know the victim and shared videos of the scene. They said he had no ties to organized crime.
Since the fighting began in October, the crime groups have also clashed with soldiers and state security forces. Mexican authorities say they are working to protect the local population, but residents told InSight Crime they’ve felt abandoned by them and US officials.
Prolonged outbreaks of violence like this related to migrant smuggling have “never happened before” in Sásabe, according to Melissa, whose family has lived there for decades. “Criminal groups might change from one day to the next, but this much violence? Never.”
As the Chapitos attempt to adapt and capitalize on the profits to be made from migrant smuggling, Vigil said this “may just be the beginning.”
*For security reasons, InSight Crime changed the names of those interviewed.