Federal prosecutors on Wednesday announced terrorism charges against a Mexican hitman who admitted he was a go-to man when the Gulf Cartel needed to dispose of a body.
When Border Patrol agents went through Jose Flores-Flores’ smartphone, they saw a video of him dismembering a corpse, which he stuck in a barrel and incinerated.
Authorities say Mr. Flores-Flores then admitted to operating as a sicario for the Gulf Cartel over the past year.
“When a body needed to be chopped up, Flores-Flores was the guy you called,” said Aaron Reitz, the U.S. attorney for southern Texas.
Mr. Flores-Flores was indicted Tuesday on charges of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization and conspiring to provide material support. He was also charged with illegal reentry.
Mr. Reitz said the charges are possible only because President Trump expanded the foreign terrorist organization category to include Mexican smuggling cartels such as the Cartel del Golfo and international gangs such as MS-13.
Cartel leaders had been charged with terrorism-related offenses under Mr. Trump’s designation, but prosecutors said the title also lets them rope in lower-level cartel operators.
“President Trump unlocked a powerful tool,” Mr. Reitz said. “It now provides my office, alongside federal partners, the ability to smoke out, hunt down and bring to justice some of the most evil people and organizations on the planet.”
The decision to expand international terrorism to include the cartels has drawn criticism from some experts who say it weakens America’s focus on jihadist groups.
But those who focus on drugs and immigration say it’s brought invaluable tools to the fight against organizations that are so powerful they act as de facto governments over territory in Mexico.
The Gulf Cartel is dominant along the U.S.-Mexico border in southern Texas, then extends down the Gulf of America.
Mr. Flores-Flores was first detected sneaking into the U.S. in January 2025, just before the change in administrations.
He was nabbed again on July 10 after crossing the Rio Grande in southern Texas. He was part of a group of three migrants.
Border Patrol Sector Chief Jared Ashby said Mr. Flores-Flores first claimed to be a juvenile, which could have qualified him for more lenient treatment.
Agents were suspicious and began to probe deeper, including asking to see his phone. In the “recently deleted” folder, they spotted the video of him dismembering a body, an image of a burn barrel in flames and another image of a pile of cut-up body parts, including torsos and severed arms and legs.
Geolocation data showed the video and images were created on June 26 near Reynosa, a Mexican border city south of McAllen, Texas.
Mr. Flores-Flores also spoke to agents and told them he was both a barber and hitman. His roles included surveillance of Mexican military and law enforcement communications and taking out targets for cartel higher-ups.
He admitted he was the man dismembering the adult man’s body in the video, saying the man had transgressed cartel rules. He said he sawed the man’s limbs off to make it easier to get into the burn barrel.
Chief Ashby said remains of three bodies were found at the dismemberment site.
Mr. Reitz said it’s not clear what Mr. Flores-Flores, 21, was planning to do in the U.S.
The indictment handed down Tuesday says Mr. Flores-Flores was aware the Gulf Cartel had been designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S.
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