Prison Escape: El Neto, Jefe of Los Mexicles

“Mica” for Borderlandbeat.com

“El Neto”, capo of Los Mexicles, fled the CERESO of Cd. Juárez.

One of the 27 escaped inmates, on January 1, 2023, from the Center for Social Rehabilitation (CERESO) Number 3, in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, would be Ernesto Alfredo Piñón de la Cruz, alias “El Neto”, 32 years old, appointed as the leader of the criminal group Los Mexicles, a cell of the Sinaloa Cartel that operates in that municipality bordering the United States.

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“The hardest and most heartless narco of the criminal group of the Mexicles, ‘El Neto’, a substitute for ‘El Lalo’, escaped today from the Cereso of #CdJuárez aided by an armed commando. He has been one of the generators of the greatest violence in the City since the prison, and now he returns to the streets,” Javier Corral Jurado, governor of Chihuahua, wrote on his Twitter account, from October 4, 2016 to September 7, 2021, predecessor of the current state president, María Eugenia Campos Galván, both militants of the National Action Party (PAN).

“El Neto” was arrested in 2009 and since that date he was detained in CERESO Number 3, in Ciudad Juárez. He is accused of several kidnappings and homicides, crimes for which he was sentenced to 224 years in prison. He is considered one of the main generators of violence in this entity.

In 2007, when he was 18 years old, Piñón de la Cruz was known for leading a gang dedicated to kidnapping. According to security experts, cited by the newspaper El Universal, “El Neto” continued to operate inside the prison, from where it ordered a series of attacks and riots that were recorded in recent years in that city bordering the United States.

Piñón de la Cruz is also reported as responsible for the riot that took place on August 11, 2021, which ended with 11 people killed. That day the violence spread to the streets of Ciudad Juárez, leaving at least 10 people dead and more than 15 citizens injured.

Then the escape of leaders of “La Empresa” was reported, identified as Óscar Eduardo Vargas Romo, alias “El Negro”; Jaime Tovar Carrillo, “El Jimmy”; Víctor Arriaga Aguilar and Luis Santiago Elías Cardozo, “El Miclo”.

About The Mexicles
“The Mexicles” has been associated, at different times, with “La Línea”, the armed wing of the Juárez Cartel, and, in others, with “New People”, of the Sinaloa Cartel. This organization is led by Sergio Armando Arguijo Rosales, alias “El Checo”, and its operators are Jorge Rodríguez Luján, Francisco Lucio Juárez Hernández, Isaac Rodríguez Armendáriz and Salvador Martínez Solano.

On the other hand, there is “La Empresa”, which is mainly dedicated to kidnapping and drug trafficking, which is made up of a faction that separated from the original “The Mexicles” and joined a group that moved away from “The Aztecs”, called “The New Aztecs”.

This split from “Los Mexicles”, known as “Mexicles Special Forces”, was led from CERESO No. 3 of Ciudad Juárez, by Ernesto Alfredo Piñón de la Cruz, alias “El Neto”, and Jesús Eduardo Soto Rodríguez, alias “El Lalo”, imprisoned since 2009.