Abigail sped through it at 90 miles an hour. It was a Mexico bent to the contours of a foreigner’s fantasy. Many of the signs and billboards were in English. A string of gated communities sat perched along the cliffs. The team sped north, the ocean on their left. The Gringo Hunters had been sitting in front of the barbershop for about an hour when the U.S. A view of the enclave from a unit pickup truck. Ivan observes a beach near an enclave of foreign residences during the October operation. Moises rides an ATV toward where other unit members think they saw the fugitive couple. Luciano died of his wounds.Ī view of the enclave from a unit pickup truck. Then he hijacked a Mini Cooper with a woman in the back seat and continued shooting at the police. Hours into the mission, Luciano leapt from the car, spraying bullets.
He was wanted for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Los Angeles. The police had been surveilling Luciano last year as he cruised downtown Tijuana. One recent photo showed the body of Anthony “Lucky” Luciano. On his phone, he saved the photos of dozens of American fugitives he’d caught, like a digital trophy gallery. Ivan’s job flickered between humor and danger, suddenly and without warning. There was the California murder suspect found in Tijuana after he posted a music video for a song called “Stay Gangsterific.” There was the Oregon man running from rape charges who worked as a surfing instructor with a LinkedIn profile (“High performing, results oriented”). He learned that the dumbest fugitives were often the most violent. “You’re raising our profile,” he insisted. 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. He shuddered when he learned that fugitive pedophiles often settle near primary schools. In 2010, he was recruited by the Gringo Hunters. He prefers “thank you” to “gracias.” He worked for years in construction and then as a bodyguard. Ivan, like the rest of the team, had grown up along the border. “Where are youuu, Damion?” he said, to no one in particular. Ivan turned up the Bad Bunny song on the radio. New copies of the biweekly Gringo Gazette - with its tagline “No Bad News” - had recently been delivered. Spring-breakers were taking selfies along the bay. I was in the back of one of the cars, behind Ivan and his colleague Abigail. That’s how three unmarked cars, each with two or three heavily armed agents, came to be sitting outside the barbershop. But there was an apartment upstairs and a steady flow of clients. Scanning the shop, he didn’t see Salinas. “This guy is going to stand out,” Carlos thought. “Forever West Coast” was tattooed on his right arm. He was 6 feet tall and 185 pounds, an amateur rapper. One officer swears he can identify how long a gringo has been in Mexico by the depth of his tan.Ĭarlos had studied the photos of Salinas from his Facebook profile. They wear more shorts and more flip-flops. The Gringo Hunters are trained to spot the ways Americans make themselves conspicuous in Mexico. “Just a little off the sides,” he said, and looked around for Damian. One of the younger undercover officers, a lanky man with braces named Carlos, went into the barbershop and sat down for a haircut. 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. Among its most popular tourism campaigns? “Escape to Baja.” This is, after all, the Baja Peninsula, a dagger of land jutting into the Pacific, with deserted beaches and sprawling cities that nurture anonymity. 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. But they’re known by another name: the Gringo Hunters. Officially, they’re the International Liaison Unit. Here in Baja California, there’s one small unit of state police - 10 men and two women - assigned to catch them.
They include fugitives on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” list, serial killers, billionaires accused of securities fraud. law enforcement who have slipped into northern Mexico. There are a lot of them: Americans on the run from U.S. Their cases almost always began the same way - with a sense that the gringos could be anywhere. Members of the liaison unit, or Gringo Hunters, gather in San Felipe, Mexico, to discuss their pursuit of the fugitive couple.