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By Brendan Cole
Senior Reporter
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The remains of dozens of people, some of whom had been dismembered, were discovered in graves in a Mexican town near the U.S. border, reports say.
Newsweek has contacted the Chihuahua Attorney General's Office for comment.
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Why It Matters
The remains were discovered near Casas Grandes, an area known for clashes between drug cartels. Upon his return to office, President Donald Trump announced an emergency at the U.S. southern border and issued an executive order declaring foreign cartels as terrorist organizations.
What To Know
On Thursday, the Chihuahua Attorney General's Office said clandestine graves with bodies and skeletal remains had been found over the previous week near the town of Casas Grandes, in the northern Mexican state.
Border Report, a news outlet that covers stories about the frontier between Mexico and the U.S., said the remains of 41 people had been discovered.
U.S. outlets reporting the story said Casas Grandes is located within a drug corridor disputed by two transnational criminal organizations, although there has been no official statement linking the discovery of the remains with drug cartels.
State police officers tasked with finding missing persons discovered the graves and began digging with the help of members of Mexico's National Guard, according to the outlet WNCT Greenville.
Officials found bodies in a forested area known as "El Willi" near Casas Grandes, which is about 70 miles south of Columbus, New Mexico. The area is also known as an archaeological site.
On January 15, the task force found a grave with four corpses, according to Border Report. On Tuesday, 10 bodies were found and another 19 the next day. On Thursday, authorities recovered five full sets of skeletal remains and bones they believed belonged to three other people, the news outlet added.
Casas Grandes is 40 miles east of Bavispe, Sonora, where members of the La Linea cartel shot nine Americans dead on November 4, 2019, after mistaking their vehicles for those of rivals from the Sinaloa cartel.
More than 20 people were arrested, and in 2022, a federal judge in North Dakota awarded relatives of the victims $4.6 billion in damages, which has not been paid, Border Report said.
What People Are Saying
The Chihuahua Attorney General's Office said in a news release: "Search operations carried out by the State Attorney General's Office in 'El Willy,' in the municipality of Casas Grandes found five complete sets of bones and three incomplete sets of bones in 10 graves."
What Happens Next
State forensic anthropologists removed the remains from the ground, and they were transported to a coroner's office in Juarez for autopsies and analysis.
Meanwhile, Trump's designation of criminal gangs and drug cartels as "foreign terrorist organizations" means the U.S. State Department must decide which groups are added to the list.
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