“Sol Prendido” for Borderland Beat
The leader of the Zetas, Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales, El Z40, was reported as a missing person in the National Search Commission’s missing persons registry, despite being held in the maximum security prison of Almoloya de Juárez, according to the Secretary of the Interior Luisa María Alcalde.
After reporting on the federal government’s achievements in the identification of people reported missing, the official said that 197 people were located inside the country’s prisons, among them Treviño Morales.
“Here’s the case of a famous character such as Z40. He was listed in the databases as missing, but we all know that this person is being held in one of the country’s highest security prisons,” he said.
Luisa María Alcalde explained that the drug trafficker was entered into the database since 2020. However, the federal government doesn’t know who made the registration, since these procedures can be done anonymously.
“On the one hand, it can be reports from people who enter the page and can upload these reports or they can also come from the state search commissions or from the prosecutors’ offices themselves, but this is a case, let’s say for example, because it allows us to note how it is public that this person is detained and yet when we cross the databases we find him with the missing persons report,” he explained.
It should be recalled that Z40 was arrested in the early morning hours of July 16, 2013 by members of the Secretary of the Navy in the city of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas.
At the time of his apprehension, federal authorities identified him as the person responsible for the deaths of at least 265 migrants in Tamaulipas. The US government offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest.
The National Search Commission database which has helped to physically and digitally locate 35,000 people, has had technical problems such as duplicate records or people who were only identified by a pseudonym.