2024-04-16 15:06:17
Text: Viviana Díaz
US courts are working on the case of José Miguel González, known as “El Chupa”, a human smuggler accused of kidnapping and torturing Cubans in Mexico, in order to later extort money from their families in Miami.
According to reports, El Chupa promised to smuggle Cubans into the United States from its border with Mexico, but instead he held them and then asked their relatives for a ransom.
His first appearance in court was last Friday, cited from the testimony of a victim, who paid 3 thousand dollars to arrive on a boat along with 116 other Cubans to Yucatán, Mexico, and from there be transported by land to the United States. . The witness reports that upon arriving in Mexico, they were met by men armed with machetes, who covered their heads with hoods and took them to a compound known as “the Farm.”
After this, El Chupa tried to extort another 7,000 dollars from the immigrant’s family, and when they could not pay, the ringleader had his associates torture him in another complex, known as “the Dungeon.”
The events reported date back to the end of 2018, and show that the migrant was held by El Chupa for more than two months and then thrown onto the streets of a Mexican city without money or identification documents.
The federal investigation showed that González had his mother and his partner as accomplices, who were in charge of collecting extortion money from the victims’ relatives in Florida.
According to reports, it is a criminal organization with alleged headquarters in South Florida and that operates in Cuba and also in Mexico and the federal courts accuse El Chupa of being a high-ranking member of it.
The court documents do not name the group, but sources consulted by US media affirm that it is the El Jabao syndicate, a Cuban organized crime network whose members have been imprisoned for carrying out the largest gold theft in the history of Florida, and that they are suspected of trafficking, kidnapping and extortion of thousands of Cuban immigrants.
If convicted, El Chupa could face a maximum of 20 years in prison for kidnapping and a maximum of 15 years for human trafficking.