

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.
ROCKY MOUNTAIN BOUNTY HUNTERS FAKE SERIAL
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.
