The family behind La Luz del Mundo Church allegedly facilitated sexual abuse of children and women for decades
Since its inception nearly 100 years ago, La Luz del Mundo Church has been a family affair even as it spread from Mexico to the US and around the world.
Eusebio “Aaron” Joaquín Gonzalez, who founded the Guadalajara-based Christian church, was succeeded by his son, Samuel Joaquín Flores, upon his death in 1964.
Continue reading...President announces 100% tariffs on imported branded drugs, 25% on heavy-duty trucks and 50% on cabinets
Donald Trump on Thursday announced a new round of punishing tariffs, saying the United States will impose a 100% tariffs on imported branded drugs, 25% tariff on imports of all heavy-duty trucks and 50% tariffs on kitchen cabinets.
The US president also said he would start charging a 50% tariff on bathroom vanities and a 30% tariff on upholstered furniture next week, with all the new duties to take effect from 1 October.
Continue reading...Alfredo Juarez Zeferino spent a harrowing few months in Ice jail – and, under threat of deportation, chose to leave
Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino spends much of his days outdoors, harvesting bananas and hiking vast, bramble-laden trails. But for more than a quarter of 2025, he barely saw the sun. After being arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in March, the farm-worker activist was placed in a detention center in Washington state, where he remained until he agreed to voluntarily leave the US.
“I probably would say five times, in the three months and a half I was in there, they offered me to go outside,” he explained on a Zoom call from his family farm in Guerrero, Mexico, where he has been for over a month.
Continue reading...Two-year-old boy dies and homes buried as remnants of Tropical Storm Mario bring downpours and thunder
Flash flooding and landslides led to the death of a two-year-old boy in California in the US last week, after heavy rainfall followed on the heels of Tropical Storm Mario further south. The storm skirted the Pacific coast of Mexico with minimal disruption, eventually dissipating to the west of Baja California on Tuesday, but the remnants went on to cause havoc on Thursday. Residual moist air from the tropical storm was drawn north-east towards California, bringing heavy downpours and thunder to central and southern counties.
The heaviest rainfall was in the mountains of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, where up to 68mm (2.67in) fell in a few hours. Further north, Death Valley – famously one of the driest places on Earth – received 15mm of rain, triple the average rainfall for September and a full quarter of the yearly average.
Continue reading...Report links Arizona-Sonora smuggling to rising homicide and overdose deaths in both countries
A new “golden triangle” of fentanyl and gun trafficking between Mexico and the US ties together the homicide and overdose crises of the two countries, according to a a new study.
The triangle spans Baja California, Sinaloa and Sonora – the three states where almost all fentanyl seizures in Mexico take place – and connects to Arizona through a quieter part of the US-Mexico border that has become a hotspot for trafficking in both directions.
Continue reading...Conservationists hope that in 15 years species will no longer be at risk of extinction in Mexico – but challenges remain
In 2010, Gerardo Ceballos and a group of other researchers set out to answer a burning question: how many jaguars were there in Mexico? They knew there weren’t many. Hunting, loss of habitat, conflict with cattle ranchers and other issues had pushed the population to the brink of extinction.
Ceballos and his team from the National Alliance for Jaguar Conservation (ANCJ) thought there were maybe 1,000 jaguars across the country. They decided to carry out the country’s first census of the animal to find out exactly how many there were. They found 4,100.
Continue reading...Senators Alejandro ‘Alito’ Moreno and Gerardo Fernández Noroña fought in the senate after heated discussion
Mexico’s senate devolved into violence this week as two of the country’s top politicians shoved, grabbed and shouted at each other after a heated discussion over the presence of foreign troops in the country.
Alejandro “Alito” Moreno, head of the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party (Pri), grabbed at Gerardo Fernández Noroña, the senate president from the ruling Morena party, after lawmakers finished singing the national anthem to mark the end of the day’s session on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Ismael Zambada was co-founder of Sinaloa cartel led by Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, now imprisoned in US
The Mexican drug lord Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel, pleaded guilty to federal racketeering charges as well as running a criminal enterprise on Monday, more than a year since he was arrested in Texas after what has been described as a kidnapping.
“I recognize the great harm illegal drugs have done to the people in the United States and Mexico,” the 77-year-old Zambada said in court through a Spanish-language interpreter. “I apologize for all of it, and I take responsibility for my actions.”
Continue reading...US officials did not say who had the 16th-century page that was missing from Mexico’s archives for decades
Nearly five centuries after Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés signed it and decades after someone swiped it from national archives, a priceless manuscript page has been returned by the FBI to Mexico.
The document contains a detailed accounting of the logistics related to Cortés’s journey to what eventually became New Spain – a territory that stretched from Central America to modern-day Washington state.
Continue reading...Perhaps not coincidentally, the timing of tariff discussions was closely followed by the transfer of wanted criminals
Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has denied that the transfer of 26 alleged cartel members to the United States was part of any kind of deal with Washington and was instead about her country’s own security priorities.
This week’s expulsion marked the second time Mexico had sent top criminals to the US this year: in February, Mexican authorities handed over 29 cartel members, including druglord Rafael Caro Quintero, who was responsible for the murder of a DEA agent in 1985. The latest transfers took place after US authorities vowed that prosecutors would not seek the death penalty in any of the cases.
Continue reading...Mexico’s president says ‘there will be no invasion … it’s absolutely off the table’ after news reports of order
Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has rejected the idea that the US might invade Mexico after news reports suggested Donald Trump had authorized the use of military force targeting drug cartels deemed terrorist organizations in Latin American countries.
“The United States is not going to come to Mexico with their military,” she said during a daily news conference on Friday. “We cooperate, we collaborate, but there will be no invasion. It’s off the table, absolutely off the table.”
Continue reading...Mexican president said citizens held at controversial Florida immigration jail ‘should be repatriated immediately’
Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has said that the country is demanding the repatriation of at least 30 of its citizens currently being held in the controversial Florida immigration detention center known as “Alligator Alcatraz”.
The Mexican leader said on Wednesday that a note had been sent to US authorities “demanding that any Mexicans who might enter this detention center should be repatriated immediately”.
Continue reading...Jaime Alanís, 57, died a day after falling off a greenhouse roof during an immigration raid of a cannabis farm
The farm worker who died from injuries he sustained after falling from a greenhouse roof during an Ice raid of a California cannabis farm was a “hard-working, innocent farmer” and the sole provider for his wife and daughter, his family says.
Jaime Alanís died a day after a frenzied immigration raid of Glass House Farms in Ventura county where authorities arrested at least 200 workers. The 57-year-old, who was from the town of Huajúmbaro in Michoacán, Mexico, is the first known person to die during the Trump administration’s enhanced immigration enforcement operations in southern California.
Continue reading...Kevin Hassett says talks are ‘ongoing’ after US president announced 30% tariffs on goods from EU and Mexico
Donald Trump has seen some trade deal offers and thinks they need to be better, Kevin Hassett, the White House economic adviser, said on Sunday, adding that the president will proceed with threatened tariffs on Mexico, the European Union and other countries if they don’t improve.
“Well, these tariffs are real if the president doesn’t get a deal that he thinks is good enough,” Hassett told ABC’s This Week program. “But you know, conversations are ongoing, and we’ll see where the dust settles.“
Continue reading...The president made the announcement on social media, even as the EU was hoping for a trade agreement
Donald Trump announced on Saturday that goods imported from both the European Union and Mexico will face a 30% US tariff rate starting 1 August, in letters posted on his social media platform, Truth Social.
The tariff assault on the EU came as a shock to European capitals as the European Commission and the US trade representative Jamieson Greer had spent months hammering out a deal they believed was acceptable to both sides.
Continue reading...Deportees include two people from Myanmar, two from Cuba, and one each from Vietnam, Laos and Mexico
War-torn South Sudan has said it is holding a group of eight men controversially deported from the United States.
Only one of them is from South Sudan. The rest comprise two people from Myanmar, two from Cuba, and one each from Vietnam, Laos and Mexico.
Continue reading...Team of firefighters and first responders volunteer along Guadalupe River after mass flooding in show of solidarity
A contingent of firefighters and first responders from Mexico arrived in Texas over the weekend to aid in search and rescue efforts following the devastating flooding of the Guadalupe River in a show of solidarity with their northern neighbors.
“When it comes to firefighters, there’s no borders,” Ismael Aldaba, founder of Fundación 911, in Acuña, Mexico, told CNN on Tuesday. “There’s nothing that’ll avoid us from helping another firefighter, another family. It doesn’t matter where we’re at in the world. That’s the whole point of our discipline and what we do.”
Continue reading...Prosecutors say Chávez treated gang rivals ‘like a punchbag’ after Ice arrested the former world champion in California
The Mexican boxer Julio César Chávez Jr was a henchman for the Sinaloa drugs cartel and used his skills to pummel rival gang members “like a punchbag” before his recent arrest in the US, prosecutors in Mexico have alleged.
Chávez, 39, son of legendary world boxing champion Julio César Chávez Sr and himself a former middleweight titleholder, was arrested in California on Tuesday by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents, who cited cartel affiliations, multiple criminal convictions and an active arrest warrant in Mexico for weapons trafficking and organized crime.
Continue reading...President exceeded his authority and his proclamation of an ‘invasion’ at southern border is unlawful, court rules
A federal court has ruled that Donald Trump’s proclamation of an “invasion” at the US-Mexico border is unlawful, saying that the president had exceeded his authority in suspending the right to apply for asylum at the southern border.
As part of his crackdown on immigration, Trump abruptly closed the southern border to tens of thousands of people who had been waiting to cross into the US legally and apply for asylum, signing a proclamation on the day of his inauguration that directed officials to take action to “repel, repatriate, or remove any alien engaged in the invasion across the southern border of the United States”.
Continue reading...Program mirrors earlier successful mission to fight new world screwworm fly, whose larvae can infest living tissue
The US government is preparing to breed billions of flies and dump them out of airplanes over Mexico and southern Texas to fight a flesh-eating maggot.
That sounds like the plot of a horror movie, but it is part of the government’s plans for protecting the US from a bug that could devastate its beef industry, decimate wildlife and even kill household pets. This weird science has worked well before.
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