She’s been called a “baby trafficking ringleader” but it’s far worse than that, and perhaps worse than you can imagine. Known as “La Diabla,” Martha Alicia Mendez Aguilar was arrested in Juarez, Mexico, earlier this month through a joint operation that involved multiple U.S. federal agencies and Mexican law enforcement officers.
Aguilar is accused of leading a baby trafficking network that, among other things, lured pregnant women to remote locations and then performed C-section procedures against the women’s will, harvested the organs from the mothers’ dead bodies, and sold the newborns to couples in the United States. Federal authorities say Aguilar charged American couples up to $14,000, or roughly 250,000 pesos, for the babies.
The vile ringleader was reported to be in the upper echelon of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, also known as CJNG, which has been labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.
Female cartel member ‘La Diabla’ busted for running horrific baby trafficking, organ harvesting rings https://t.co/GTROYcxa1m pic.twitter.com/nhPsZG2Dxy
— New York Post (@nypost) September 25, 2025
The joint operation that led to the arrest of Aguilar involved the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and its National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which provided intelligence that supported the U.S.-Mexican interagency operations. These agencies tracked Aguilar’s movements and then worked with U.S. intelligence and Mexican authorities in the capture and arrest of the cartel leader.
NCTC Director Joe Kent commented in a statement that the trafficking ring is an “example of what terrorist cartels will do to diversify their revenue streams and finance operations.”
Other agencies involved included the U.S. Marshals Service, the FBI, the Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, along with Mexican law enforcement.
Federal officials said that at the moment, Aguilar is in Mexican custody, and that the investigation into her and the alleged cartel trafficking activity is ongoing. The Homeland Security Task Force (HSTF) coordinated counterterrorism operations on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border.
Earlier this year, President Trump signed an executive order that enabled the U.S. Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security to create the HSTF.
Right after taking office in January, the president signed an executive order that directed the State Department to designate cartels and transnational gangs as foreign terrorist organizations. In February, the State Department publicly identified eight gangs to be designated as terrorist organizations. One of them was CJNG.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has directed NCTC to focus its resources against those terrorists and terrorist organizations that traffic lethal narcotics into the U.S. But as the La Diabla case reveals, the cartels are responsible for much more violent and terroristic activity than most Americans realize.
As a result, the U.S. is working to disrupt cartel activities in Mexico, which then spread to America in the form of death and violence.
The NCTC revealed that U.S. intelligence has added over 21,000 cartel members and associates to its classified terrorist database. It has since “created over 35,000 identities related to the 10 newly designated FTOs that have been shared with law enforcement partners.” The NCTC says this has led to 6,525 terrorists being denied entry into the U.S.
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