March 20th, 2025: Grisly Cartel ‘Extermination Camp’ Uncovered & Houthi Leaders Go Into Hiding
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What grisly discovery was made in Mexico?
It's Thursday, the 20th of March. Welcome to the President's Daily Brief. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. We'll start things off with a grisly discovery in Mexico. Volunteers searching for missing loved ones uncovered what appears to be an extermination site used by drug cartels, complete with burned remains and underground cremation ovens. We've got the details. Later in the show, the U.S. military launched another round of strikes on Houthi strongholds in Yemen. Now, the attacks have forced Houthi leaders into hiding, cutting off communications as they scramble to respond. Plus, President Trump engages in a, quote, very good call with Ukrainian President Zelensky, with the pair discussing steps toward a ceasefire.
Again, and not to beat that dead war horse, but this ceasefire talk with Zelensky only means something if Putin decides that he wants to stop waging war on Ukraine. And in today's back of the brief, the European Union is unveiling a new initiative to cut reliance on U.S. military supplies. With intelligence warning that Russia could be ready for war in five years, the EU is making moves to bolster its own security. But first, today's PDB Spotlight. We'll begin in Mexico, where the violence and depravity of the nation's drug cartels is once again on display following the gruesome discovery of what authorities are calling an extermination camp. Mexican authorities recently descended on the Izaguirre Ranch in the western state of Jalisco after a group of volunteers searching for their missing loved ones received a tip about a mass grave hidden at the abandoned ranch just outside of Guadalajara.
When they arrived at the ranch, officials found underground cremation ovens, burned human remains, bone fragments, hundreds of pairs of shoes, discarded clothing and children's toys. That's according to a report from The New York Times. They even found multiple figurines of Santa Muerte, the Mexican folk saint of death, revered by criminals and drug traffickers throughout the country. As the investigation progressed, authorities also uncovered at least 96 shell casings of various calibers and metal gripping rings likely used to bind the victims. The grisly discovery has raised fears that the New Generation Jalisco Cartel, which previously operated the ranch, likely carried out mass killings at the property.
It's unclear how many people died at the ranch, and authorities have yet to identify any of the remains, but the more than 700 personal items found scattered across the property hint at a disturbingly high number of victims. Even for a country that is sadly acclimated to episodes of brutal cartel violence, the images send shockwaves through the community, with local media outlets referring to the site as a, quote, extermination camp. The discovery grabbed the attention of Mexican President Claudia Scheinbaum, who directed the state attorney general's office to take over the investigation over concerns that local officials may have engaged in a cover-up. The findings also provoked outrage among cartel victims' families and human rights groups, who renewed their demands that the Mexican government make cracking down on the cartels their top priority.
A security analyst based in Mexico City told the New York Times, quote, the number of victims that presumably could have been buried there is enormous, and it resurfaced the nightmarish reminder that Mexico is plagued with mass graves. According to the government, more than 120,000 people have been, quote, forcibly disappeared in Mexico since 1962, when record-keeping first began, though the families of victims warn that number is likely far higher. While the government has not officially determined who is behind the mass killings on the ranch, suspicion, as mentioned, has fallen on the new generation Jalisco cartel, which first emerged in the early 2010s. They've since garnered a reputation as one of the most violent criminal groups in Mexico, and frankly, that's no small feat, given their competition from groups like the notoriously brutal Sinaloa cartel. The New Jalisco Generation Cartel is a major trafficker of the deadly opioid fentanyl, as well as meth, but have since diversified their criminal schemes to include large-scale human trafficking.
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