Stolen Cars Turned Up in Mexico Packed With 3,000 Pounds of Explosives. Feds Charge 13 for Running U.S. Cars to Cartels

Federal prosecutors in El Paso have charged 13 people with running stolen American cars and trucks across the border to Mexican cartels. At the announcement, the top federal prosecutor in West Texas added a detail that isn't in his office's press release: stolen vehicles have turned up in Mexico packed with explosives.

U.S. Attorney Justin Simmons said it in answer to a reporter's question at the Oct. 26 press conference. "I will say three stolen vehicles that were found in Mexico ... probably within the last month or two, that were not included in the 29 that I mentioned today, found with 3,000 pounds of explosives inside," Simmons said. "Two stolen from the U.S., one stolen in Mexico."

"What the ultimate use for those explosives were by the cartels, I don't know," he added. One of them, he said, was a Chevy Tahoe. He did not say where in Mexico they were found or who found them.

The case

The investigation is called Operation Southbound Takedown. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Texas, it began this spring when agents and prosecutors spotted a pattern: privately owned cars and rental cars stolen across the Southwest, driven to El Paso and delivered across the border to people tied to cartels, "now designated as terrorist organizations."

So far agents have recovered 29 vehicles worth about $1,137,000. Simmons said 22 were seized in the United States and seven in Mexico. The photos his office released include a bullet-riddled white SUV recovered in Mexico, an armored black SUV and an armored black pickup.

All 13 defendants are charged with interstate transportation of stolen property, which carries up to 10 years in federal prison. Eleven are U.S. citizens. Two are Mexican nationals: Pablo Frias, who holds a green card, and Pilar Bernabeth Mendez Rivas, who holds a border crossing card. Two of the Americans, Kimberly Aguilar and Marty Gerardo Jr., are in state custody. The other 11 were indicted and arrested between July 22 and Oct. 19. The charges are allegations, and every defendant is presumed innocent.

Who drove the cars, and why

Simmons said the cartels were "recruiting U.S. citizens and those otherwise able to legally cross from the United States into Mexico." In other words, people who could roll through a port of entry without drawing a second look.

Asked who the drivers were, he said many were already tied to crime. "Some of them are directly connected to cartels themselves. Some of them are drug users who are doing it for drug money," he said. They are not all locals: the cars came "from all over the country," and agents worked with police in Phoenix, Denver and Orlando. Homeland Security Investigations' deputy chief in El Paso told reporters agents are seeing "a major increase in California plated vehicles," with thefts spanning "from California to Florida up to Chicago."

Simmons named two of the groups he says use the cars: La Línea and the Sinaloa cartel, which operate around Ciudad Juárez, across the river from El Paso. "They use these vehicles to facilitate murder and the disposal of their own countrymen, to smuggle humans, including children, into the United States," he said, as well as to move guns south and drugs, including fentanyl, north.

"These are not isolated property crimes," Ryan G. McRae, the special agent in charge of HSI El Paso, said in the release. FBI El Paso's acting chief, Coult W. Markovsky, put it more bluntly: "To individuals assisting the cartels, Justice will find you!"

Why El Paso, and why now

Simmons said the smugglers go wherever the border is weakest that month. "When things are maybe tighter in one place, they'll try to move to another," he said. "So right now, El Paso is the spot they're hitting."

The problem is much bigger than one case. In 2023 a single Arizona unit, working with Mexican police, located 798 vehicles stolen from across the U.S. inside Mexico, worth more than $23.2 million, according to the Arizona Automobile Theft Authority. Of those, 476 were recovered and brought back. The agency says many come back "with bullet holes and occasionally with biohazard concerns," stripped of parts, and that cartel interference sometimes makes recovery impossible. Nationwide, the National Insurance Crime Bureau says its foreign operations unit found more than 3,400 stolen vehicles outside the country in 2025 and brought back 2,331.

What's next

Every defendant so far faces a property charge. Simmons said that may not be the ceiling. Because the Sinaloa cartel and others are now designated foreign terrorist organizations, his office is looking to add charges of providing material support to them. "If we can prove it, we will hit you with those charges," he said. He told reporters the bigger change is what a jury gets to hear: instead of one stolen car, prosecutors could lay out "all of the operations" of the cartel the defendant was serving.

The task force behind the case was created under President Trump's January 2025 executive order "Protecting the American People Against Invasion." HSI says the investigation is still open. "This work is ongoing," McRae said. "We're not stopping here."