Seven bodies were reportedly found near the United States-Mexico border, authorities said on Wednesday.
Prosecutors in the Mexican border state of Sonora said the bodies were found just off a road near the town of Puerto Peñasco, on the Gulf of California, about 60 miles south of the border with Arizona, the Associated Press reported. The victims were all men wearing military-style gear and had all been shot to death.
Prosecutors identified one of the dead men only by his alias, "El Pía," and said he was the local leader of a faction of the Sinaloa drug cartel who had operated primarily in the border city of Mexicali. Different factions of the cartel have been fighting for trafficking routes in the area, according to the AP.
The grim discovery came as five other bodies were found piled in a bulletproof SUV in the Mexican state of Jalisco. The state prosecutor's office said a caller reported the vehicle on Tuesday, the AP reported.
The car was found on a road in Villa de Corona, south of Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco state. Inside, police found the bodies of five men "with visible signs of violence." The office did not say how the men were killed.
It comes as Republicans have used the recent killing of a 22-year-old nursing student in Georgia to claim migrants commit more violent crimes and heap blame on President Joe Biden's immigration policies. Jose Ibarra, the man charged with murdering Lake Riley, is a Venezuelan citizen who immigration authorities say unlawfully crossed into the U.S. in September 2022.
Immigration has emerged as a major issue ahead of the 2024 presidential election, which is set to be a rematch between Biden and Donald Trump. The former president recently gained enough delegates in the primary elections to become the Republican Party's presumptive nominee.
Trump has repeatedly linked illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border with violent crime and vowed to secure the border if he wins back the White House in November.
Biden, meanwhile, has called out Republican lawmakers for sinking a bipartisan border bill last month that sought to tamp down the number of illegal crossings at the southern border.
Crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border skyrocketed last year, with arrests for illegal crossings reaching a record high of 250,000 in December. However, the number of arrests fell by half in January.
Update 3/21/24, 8:31 a.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.
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