Report: Cartel abducting pregnant women in Mexican border city, trafficking newborns to U.S.

A criminal organization is allegedly kidnapping pregnant women in the Mexican border city of Juárez to obtain their newborns and traffic them into the United States, according to an exclusive report from journalist Katarina Szulc.

The allegations were first reported on Thursday by Szulc, host of Borderland: DISPATCHES. She cited a senior Mexican law enforcement source who described the practice and said investigators have quietly begun to link it to recent homicide cases involving women in Juárez.

Szulc said she obtained photos of victims that, according to her, showed signs consistent with forced C-sections.

Szulc’s investigation is supplemented by reporting from All Source News, the Chief Intelligence Officer of the intelligence company Artorias, and this outlet’s journalist, the author of this article, who reviewed local media coverage in Juárez from July and August.

That review found multiple reports of women killed in disturbing circumstances, but only one case publicly confirmed the victim was pregnant: 20-year-old Leslie Godínez Carrillo of León, Guanajuato, whose remains were discovered in a clandestine grave in the patio of a Juárez home in late July.

Other cases, including the killings of a 17-year-old girl from New Mexico, a woman’s body found partially burned near a Santa Muerte (Saint Death) shrine, and an unidentified woman found in an advanced state of decomposition near where the body of Leslie Godínez Carrillo was discovered, raised questions but lacked publicly available details to confirm whether they were pregnant or connected to the investigation.

Additional information beyond what has appeared in local reporting remains difficult to obtain.

On Thursday, local newspaper El Diario de Juárez published an opinion piece that connected a recent kidnapping to broader concerns about pregnant women being targeted. It recounted how, on August 19, a 21-year-old rideshare driver was abducted in Juárez. His captors demanded ransom before they were arrested, and the victim was rescued by police.

According to the piece, investigators learned during that case of another crime described as “equal to or worse” in nature, allegedly committed by low-level members of the same criminal group operating from inside the state prison.

That crime, it said, involved the kidnapping of vulnerable pregnant women who would be held until giving birth, after which their babies would be sold.

While the opinion column cautioned that police had only partial information and several “suspicious” cases, it noted that state investigators and the anti-kidnapping unit had raised alarms while also trying to confront more “conventional” abduction cases.

Officials in Mexico have not issued public statements confirming the allegations, and details remain under investigation.

The backdrop to these claims is a city long scarred by violence and femicides. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Juárez became notorious for the killings of hundreds of women, many of them young factory workers. Their bodies were often found in the desert or on the city’s outskirts, and the cases drew international condemnation over failed investigations and lack of accountability.

One of the most visible reminders is the Campo Algodonero memorial, where the bodies of eight murdered women were discovered in 2001. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered the memorial in its 2009 Campo Algodonero v. Mexico ruling, which held the Mexican government responsible for failing to prevent the murders and for deficiencies in the investigation.

The site, marked by pink crosses, remains a symbol of Juárez’s femicides and the demand for justice.

See the full video investigation from journalist Katarina Szulc on Borderland: DISPATCHES.