IA family in uniform

This investigation documents the operations of a transnational criminal network led by the Uscanga Cueto family and operated at its executive core from within Mexico's National Guard. The network moves an estimated one billion eight hundred million dollars annually through four parallel business lines executed simultaneously on each captured victim: charging for the U.S. crossing, extorting family members in U.S. territory, selling migrants to the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación, and forced use of persons as fentanyl drug mules. Each of these streams is documented in signed witness statements before the Nuevo León State Attorney General's Office, case file FGJNL-022476/2019, and in federal rescue operations executed between 2019 and 2022.

The central indictment of this report is not the existence of the cartel. It is the fact that the cartel's operational head — Juan José Palacios Maymon, alias Palacios or El Tío, born July 28, 1986 — and his brother-in-law, José Vicente Uscanga Cueto, born April 3, 1991, are active members of the National Guard, assigned to Monterrey airport since the Federal Police era. They wore the uniform of the Mexican State's armed corps while ordering executions, taking bribes, controlling safehouses, and directing the air trafficking of fentanyl into the United States.

The strategic leader is Erika Lizbeth Uscanga Cueto, alias Karla, born March 13, 1986, wife of Palacios and sister of José Vicente. Identified in signed witness statements as the operator who collects payments, authorizes executions, and personally dictates threats to victims' family members in the United States. The financial architect of the scheme is Esperanza Cueto Migliolo, born July 6, 1966, mother of Erika Lizbeth and José Vicente, residing at Allende Norte 287, Colonia Miguel Alemán, Veracruz.

IIThe chain of command

The criminal operation of the Uscanga Cueto family was made possible because three specific figures, at three distinct levels of the Mexican federal apparatus, allowed it. The Presidency built the institution without background screening. Intelligence ignored the financial scheme. The armed corps protected its own members.

Level 01 · The Presidency

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, President of Mexico from December 1, 2018 to September 30, 2024, founded the National Guard on June 27, 2019 through constitutional reform, absorbing the former Federal Police without background screening or review of pending criminal complaints. Three months earlier, on March 1, 2019, federal forces had rescued seventy-four victims in Apodaca, Nuevo León, in an operation where two of this network's leaders were already named. They were inducted into the new corps regardless.

Under his administration, complaints against these active members were systematically shelved for six years. The Presidency had direct command over the armed corps that harbored those responsible and failed to investigate them. This does not constitute political opinion: it is documented institutional accountability.

Level 02 · The Intelligence

Audomaro Martínez Zapata, appointed by López Obrador as Director of the National Intelligence Center for the 2018-2024 period, headed the Mexican agency responsible for strategic intelligence on organized crime, illicit financial flows, and threats to national security. The CNI has technical jurisdiction to detect networks operating from within the Mexican State. It reports directly to the head of the Executive Branch.

Throughout the entire administration, eight hundred collectors structured remittances via Banco Azteca, Coppel, and Western Union for an aggregate flow estimated at forty-eight million dollars annually. Five hundred active bank accounts, none exceeding two million pesos, all operating below the reporting threshold of Mexico's Financial Intelligence Unit. Ten properties acquired in cash each month via a complicit notary in Medellín de Bravo, Veracruz. One ton of fentanyl introduced into the United States in 2021. Zero alerts issued by Mexican intelligence. Zero detentions of leaders. Zero international designations proposed to the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

Level 03 · The Armed Corps

Juan José Palacios Maymon and José Vicente Uscanga Cueto were inducted into the National Guard from the Federal Police without background review. Assigned to Monterrey airport, they controlled the final crossing into the United States from within the apparatus of the State. They operated the country's airports for migrant and fentanyl trafficking. They personally delivered weekly bribes of one million pesos per location to regional prosecutor offices. They ordered the execution of those who attempted to leave the network. They sold geolocation data and call records to the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación. They were on the cartel's formal payroll while wearing the institutional uniform.

Despite hundreds of shelved complaints against them and federal rescue operations where victims pointed them out directly, none was discharged, investigated by Internal Affairs, or lost his credentials. The Mexican State's armed corps protected the criminal operation of its own members.

IIIThe Uscanga Cueto family

This is not a one-hundred-person organization. It is a family structure of ten members operating across four hierarchical levels. Tier 01 is the mother, Esperanza Cueto Migliolo, financial architect and recruiter of the collector system. Tier 02 are her three children: Erika Lizbeth Uscanga Cueto at the strategic center; Juan José Palacios Maymon, her husband, in operational control of borders; and José Vicente Uscanga Cueto in airport and narcotics control.

Tier 03 are three trusted extra-family operators. Jorge Luis Olvera Uscanga, cousin of the siblings, born May 3, 1990, in charge of transfers and collections, the only member detained in the 2019 operation and released months later through bribes paid by Erika Lizbeth to prevent him from testifying. Miguel Ángel Vázquez, driver and warehouse keeper, identified on social media as TikTok @miguelvazquez553, the only individual with knowledge of all the network's safehouses across the entire Mexican republic. Arturo Ignacio Moreno Cantellán, alias El Rey del Fusil, born September 23, 1985, sole operator of the document forgery workshop located on the third floor of a building at Papaloapan Poniente 295, Hacienda Sotavento, Veracruz, postal code 91698. His personal cellphone is 2291 154155. His operational email is arturoignacio1985 at gmail. His wife, Angélica Montiel Morales, operates as a collector within Esperanza's network.

Tier 04 are three employees executed by the organization for attempting to leave the network. Hugo Ricardo Ramos Silva, originally from Monterrey, Nuevo León, Zumba instructor, operator of a parallel network of more than one hundred collectors in the Monterrey metropolitan area. Ernesto Alberto Jiménez Martínez, born November 7, 1982, driver and warehouse keeper in Villahermosa, Tabasco. Ernesto Muñoz Maymon, born July 27, 1981, cousin of Juan José Palacios Maymon, murdered by his own cousin. His widow, identified in testimony as Yuliana, was forced under coercion to continue operating a line of thirty collectors without compensation following her husband's homicide.

IVThe identity forgery factory

Without the Hacienda Sotavento factory, there are no Viva Aerobus flights, no bus crossings, no safehouse rentals, no trafficked minors, no parallel bank accounts. The factory is the infrastructure piece that supports every node of the system. And none of this document production was detected by the National Intelligence Center under Audomaro Martínez Zapata during six years of continuous operation.

The workshop produces thirteen distinct types of forged documents classified by operational use. Identity category: INE voter ID and driver's license, used for boarding Viva Aerobus flights and ADO buses without questioning. Migration category: National Migration Institute resident card and FMM migration form, issued identical to official ones, allowing free transit through Mexican territory without detention at federal checkpoints. Passport category: multi-country passport available for cases where the crossing involves an international flight or requires solid identity.

Minors category, marked in red within this investigation's internal catalog because it is explicitly linked to child trafficking: minor's CURP, birth certificate, and school ID — the three documents that generate legal identity for a child used for sale to exploitation networks or presentation at border crossings as the legitimate child of any adult. Evasion category: forged pregnancy certificate, with documented specific function of allowing women to carry money strapped to the body in airports without being scanned with X-rays. Vehicles category: forged auto invoice and trailer invoice, to disclaim quickly in case of seizure. Property category: rental identity, documented impersonation to lease the houses serving as safehouses. Banking category: identity for account opening, supporting the structuring system with five hundred active accounts, none over the SAT and UIF alert threshold.

Each document is produced in five minutes. The workshop operates twenty-four hours a day. The maximum theoretical capacity is two hundred eighty-eight documents per day per operator, which translates to approximately one hundred five thousand pieces annually. This documentary capacity is what allows the system to process ten thousand people daily through its safehouses nationwide, feeding all other business lines.

" Having a forgery workshop open twenty-four hours a day has allowed them to consolidate as the only criminal organization selling passage through all of Mexico. · Verbatim quote from consolidated case file

VThe financial scheme

The financial scheme is engineered, not accidental. Each collector receives a maximum of five thousand dollars monthly to remain below the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act automatic reporting threshold. Multiplied by eight hundred active collectors over twelve months, the aggregate annual flow amounts to forty-eight million dollars structured specifically to evade the generation of Suspicious Activity Reports at U.S. financial institutions or their correspondent banks in Mexico.

Collectors are recruited by Esperanza Cueto Migliolo from her residence in Veracruz through coercion of close family members and friends. They operate with five bank accounts each at Banco Azteca, Coppel, BBVA Bancomer, Scotiabank, and Western Union, totaling approximately five hundred active accounts in the network. No account exceeds the historical figure of two million Mexican pesos, the threshold that would trigger automatic reports to Mexico's Financial Intelligence Unit. Each collector receives five hundred pesos for every one thousand U.S. dollars collected. The receiver-victims are physical persons authorized to receive up to five thousand dollars monthly before being blocked and reactivated the following month to simulate a pattern of legitimate family remittances.

The product of the flow is consolidated in central safehouses in Veracruz via physical cash transport on ADO bus lines from Villahermosa, Monterrey, and other locations. Once consolidated, it is laundered through cash property purchases at a complicit notary located in Medellín de Bravo, Veracruz. The documented cadence is ten properties acquired monthly, registered to family members without verifiable income, primarily Esperanza Cueto Migliolo and her husband, José Vicente Uscanga Cueto, and Arnulfo Palacios, father of Juan José Palacios Maymon, a worker at Talleres Navales del Golfo SA de CV in Veracruz, whose formal naval worker salary has no financial capacity to sustain the multiple properties registered in his name. This is a textbook configuration of real estate front man under 18 USC § 1957.

VIThe testimony

The testimonial core of this investigation is the statement signed by a victim rescued on March 1, 2019 in Apodaca, Nuevo León, in the federal operation where seventy-four people were liberated. Marhian Alexa Villalobos Rodríguez, sixteen years old, originally from Honduras, traveled with her aunt Kleymer Ivett Rodríguez Altamirano, twenty-five, and her aunt's daughter Ivett Nicolle Herrera Rodríguez, three years old. The family paid three thousand dollars to the coyote in Tegucigalpa on January 25, 2019 to reach Mexico. They were going to reunite with the child's mother in the United States.

After eight days of captivity in a safehouse in Villahermosa, where personnel from the Hacienda Sotavento workshop produced forged identifications for them, they were transported in a van to the Villahermosa airport and boarded a Viva Aerobus flight to Monterrey with tickets purchased by the network's payroll employee at the Veracruz airport. Upon arrival in Monterrey they were received by network personnel in Mini Van vehicles and transported to a white two-story safehouse in Apodaca. They remained there two days, were moved to another safehouse for five days, and then to the final safehouse where they were rescued.

On day fourteen of captivity, Erika Lizbeth Uscanga Cueto made the first phone call to the safehouse keeper, demanding the group pay a debt of forty-two thousand dollars attributed to coyote Omar, equivalent to thirteen hundred dollars per person. Marhian managed to communicate with her sister in the United States, who deposited three thousand nine hundred dollars the next day. On day sixteen, Erika made the second call demanding four hundred additional dollars per person for food, deposited immediately. On day eighteen, Erika ordered the keeper, identified as Fabricio, to make the third call, this time with the maximum threat documented in the signed statement: if family members in the United States did not pay ten thousand additional dollars, the three-year-old girl's organs would be harvested and sold. Subsequently, Erika demanded ten thousand more dollars for Marhian's release.

Marhian's sister had no more money. She called the victim's husband in the United States so that he could report the case to U.S. authorities. The report was crossed with Mexican federal intelligence and resulted in the operation of March 1, 2019. At the rescue arrived, in addition to Fabricio, a second guardian identified as Jorge. When they saw federal forces approaching, both fled the property. Marhian declared verbatim, in the statement signed before the Nuevo León Anti-Kidnapping Prosecutor's Office, word for word: sometimes a man would come who was Karla's husband, and they said he was the boss, they called him Palacios, he is very white and very robust, approximately one meter seventy-five tall, no beard or mustache, approximately thirty-one years old, his hair is curly dark brown, he always wore a gold watch.

This physical description signed in 2019 appears convergent with descriptions recorded in dozens of testimonies from other case files against the same three leaders during the following five years, including the rescue of August 27, 2019 in Guadalupe, Nuevo León, where fifty additional people including fourteen minors were liberated. No rescue resulted in detention or proceedings against Erika Lizbeth Uscanga Cueto, Juan José Palacios Maymon, or José Vicente Uscanga Cueto. The cousin, Jorge Luis Olvera Uscanga, was the only one formally detained in 2019. He was released months later through bribes paid by Erika Lizbeth to prevent him from testifying against the family.

VIIThe U.S. legal framework

The consolidated complaint filed with Homeland Security Investigations articulates nine U.S. federal statutes under three simultaneous parallel processing tracks. Criminal track through the Department of Justice and HSI: 18 U.S.C. § 1590 and § 1591 on human trafficking with aggravators for involved minors; 18 U.S.C. § 1201 on international kidnapping with documented extortion of family members in U.S. territory; 18 U.S.C. § 1962 on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, where the family's continuous operation of more than ten years with multiple predicates and repetitive financial nexus configures a textbook RICO case; and 8 U.S.C. § 1324 on alien smuggling aggravated by participation of minors and fatal outcome in the Veracruz trailer case of February 4, 2022.

Financial track through the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network: 18 U.S.C. § 1956 and § 1957 on international money laundering with remittances originated in the United States via Western Union, deposited at Banco Azteca and Coppel in Mexico, and consolidated into cash real estate registered to family front men; and 31 U.S.C. § 5324 on willful structuring to evade reports, where the deliberate design of five hundred collectors with a five-thousand-dollar monthly cap configures willful structuring documented textually in testimonies.

Sanctions track through the Department of the Treasury and the Office of Foreign Assets Control: Executive Order 14059 known as the Kingpin Designation Act on significant fentanyl trafficking, where the introduction of one ton in 2021 by José Vicente Uscanga Cueto and Juan José Palacios Maymon in partnership with Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación constitutes primary predicate; and Executive Order 13818 known as the Global Magnitsky Act on serious human rights violations by foreign officials, where the profile of active National Guard officers committing trafficking, kidnapping, and homicide configures exactly the scenario for which the statute was designed.

VIIIOperational recommendation

The consolidated complaint proposes to Homeland Security Investigations a five-step simultaneous detention sequence designed to avoid cross-alerts within the network and within the Mexican State protection apparatus. Step one, simultaneous execution: Erika Lizbeth Uscanga Cueto, Juan José Palacios Maymon, José Vicente Uscanga Cueto, and Esperanza Cueto Migliolo at hour zero, simultaneous locations in Veracruz and Monterrey. Step two, fifteen minutes later: Miguel Ángel Vázquez, before he can alert regional warehouse keepers about ongoing operations.

Step three, also fifteen minutes later parallel to step two: Arturo Ignacio Moreno Cantellán in Hacienda Sotavento, with simultaneous securing of the workshop, its equipment, and the USB drive the operator always carries containing the complete database of human smugglers and complicit authorities. Step four, thirty minutes later: José Roberto Rodríguez Roldán, commander of the Veracruz State Ministerial Police, before the transfer of previous detentions to the ministerial system activates alerts in his protection network.

Step five, parallel to all the above: securing of properties registered to Arnulfo Palacios, Esperanza Cueto Migliolo and her husband, and the company Comercializando El Norte 2019 SA de CV with RFC CND190705G27 and address at Calle 12 number 1168, Fraccionamiento Geo Villas Los Pinos, Veracruz, postal code 91808. Securing of the four units in the Torres JV development and multiple units in the Boca Towers development in Boca del Río, all acquired in cash during the López Obrador administration and registered to family members without verifiable financial capacity.

Closing

This investigation is not a piece of political denunciation. It is a documented institutional indictment, formally filed with Homeland Security Investigations in the second quarter of 2026, articulating each fact with its support from a Mexican public case file, signed witness statement, documented federal operation, or U.S. legal predicate. The Sheinbaum administration inherits this institutional liability without having created it. The operational decisions that now correspond are within Mexican sovereign jurisdiction. The decisions on U.S. federal prosecution now correspond to the jurisdiction of the Government of the United States.