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Texas illegal immigrant stash house found with shrine to cartel ‘Santa Muerte’ saint inside

Texas authorities in El Paso discovered a stash house with 23 migrants and an underworld shrine worshiped by drug traffickers inside, officials said Tuesday.

Special agents with the Texas Department of Public Safety found the home Monday while working on Operation Lone Star, a border initiative started by Texas to curb human smuggling. The home was being managed by a U.S. citizen originally from Mexico, the agency said.

He was arrested and charged with operating a stash house.

Inside the home were 23 migrants from Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala. They were handed over to the U.S. Border Patrol.

Also inside the home was an elaborate Santa Muerte shrine, which shows a female skeletal figure wearing a long robe with a scythe in one hand and the world in another.

The shine is worshiped by Mexican drug cartel members who pray to it for their protection. The underworld saint is associated with the violent drug cartel trade. The presence of the shrine highlights the connection between cross-border human smuggling and Mexico’s drug cartels.

Since Operation Lone Star began, authorities have discovered 261 stash houses and 3,000 illegal immigrants being held inside them.

https://news.yahoo.com/texas-illegal-immigrant-stash-house-235452504.html

More on the cult being imported by the cartel:

Santa Muerte and five more ‘religious’ saints worshiped by drug cartels

Santa Muerte has a fondness for tequila, cigarettes, candy — and human blood.

The saint is a favorite of Mexican and Central American drug traffickers who are known to leave the severed heads of their enemies at improvised shrines, featuring wax effigies and votive candles emblazoned with the skeletal image of the one also known as Holy Death.

Dressed in a flowing white robe and often wielding both a scythe and a globe, Santa Muerte — a cross between the Grim Reaper and the Virgin of Guadeloupe, Mexico’s patron saint — is just one of a rapidly growing religious movement of “narco saints,” worshiped by drug traffickers who pray to them for protection, riches and the silence necessary to mask their underworld dealings.

“The narcos and the gangs all believe in the power of prayer,” said Robert Almonte, a Texas-based security consultant and former deputy chief of the El Paso Police Department who specialized in narcotics. “They believe that the saints will protect them no matter what they do — and that’s dangerous because it emboldens the traffickers who truly believe they can get away with murder and still go to heaven.”

The movement is growing, with estimates of up to 12 million devotees in Mexico and, now, parts of the US. American law enforcement officials struggling under the recent wave of illegal migrant crossings are increasingly documenting altars to the macabre saint — and another, Jesus Malverde — in stash houses in US border communities where Mexican drug cartel members often hold migrants for ransom, Almonte said.

Not that these saints are canonized. The Catholic Church has condemned Santa Muerte worship as “blasphemous and Satanic.” When Pope Francis visited Mexico for the first time in 2016, he condemned the cult, which is one of the fastest growing new “religious” movements in the world, according to the Catholic Herald.

Altars to Santa Muerte are created in private homes, with larger statues erected in public squares in impoverished parts of Mexico. There is also a Santa Muerte sanctuary, with several life-sized effigies of the saint, in an industrial area of Las Vegas.

In some cases, Santa Muerte altars feature bundles of cash offerings, which are considered sacrosanct. Rival narcos — including members of the notorious MS-13 gang from El Salvador — know not to touch the money for fear of enduring the saint’s wrath, law enforcement officials say.

Many of the gruesome murders, including beheadings and human sacrifices, committed by Mexican drug gangs are done so in the name of Santa Muerte, said Almonte, who is writing a book about the cult.

In a 2016 interview, a sicario for the Juarez Cartel named Edgar described his worship, telling documentary filmmakers during a prison interview that, before each hit job, he would pray to the saint to ensure that everything would go according to plan.

As cartels continue to make inroads into the US, Santa Muerte-influenced violence is expected to increase, experts say.

https://nypost.com/2021/12/21/religious-saints-of-murders-outlaws-worshiped-by-cartels/

A lot more gruesome detail and detail of the saints at link, and pictures. This was written in 12/21 so I’m sure much more of this cult is in this country. Apparently prospective jurors for El Chappo trial were questioned about knowledge of the saints.