Juno News - February 24, 2026Security expert gives WARNING to Canadians in Mexico
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
186.78638
Summary
The Jalisco New Generation Cartel, one of the most powerful and feared criminal organizations in Mexico, have unleashed a wave of attacks across 20 Mexican states. They have torched businesses and set up blockades, all this after the government's killing of a notorious drug lord best known as El Mencho.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Well, violence continues across Mexico as members of a notorious drug cartel attack police and
00:00:10.240
civilian targets following the death of a drug lord on the weekend. An estimated 26,000 Canadians
00:00:16.560
are in Mexico. Some are trying to leave the country. The Jalisco New Generation Cartel,
00:00:22.900
one of the most powerful and feared criminal organizations in Mexico, have unleashed a wave
00:00:28.780
of attacks across 20 Mexican states. They have torched businesses and set up blockades. All this
00:00:35.340
followed the government's killing of a notorious drug lord best known as El Mencho, who died in
00:00:42.360
custody Sunday shortly after being captured by Mexican special forces. Joining us is security
00:00:48.940
expert and bodyguard to the billionaires, Ross McLean. What can you tell us about the situation
00:00:53.960
in Mexico right now? Well, from the breakout of it, this was the Mexican special forces went in and
00:01:01.680
took down this drug lord, one of the biggest, most powerful drug lords in the area. When the
00:01:07.100
information first came out, Mark, it was talking about that the Americans were actually involved
00:01:13.380
on the ground with the takeout of this guy. When they went, they got him and he apparently died upon
00:01:19.840
the exercise to arrest him. So what happened after that is the cartel came out, started grabbing
00:01:27.480
people out of their cars at major intersections leading into Puerto Vallarta and other major centers,
00:01:32.960
dragging people out of their cars, killing them or not, I don't know, but then setting the cars on
00:01:37.340
fire as roadblocks so people couldn't leave. Then they apparently sent out an email to everybody
00:01:43.180
saying, hey, if you're a resident here in Mexico, stay in your house after two o'clock because we're going
00:01:48.640
to be taken to the streets. And we're getting various information about how much they said
00:01:54.400
they were going to do and how much harm and how much shooting and how much killing. And that was
00:01:59.180
the situation as it broke out the other day, Mark. Yeah, I mean, you've got this drug cartel
00:02:04.340
obviously wreaking havoc after the death of their drug lord. And I think Americans are their main
00:02:11.100
targets. They're upset with America. We had, of course, a call by Donald Trump for action on
00:02:17.600
the cartels. And of course, their president, Scheinbaum, finally did something about it.
00:02:24.560
And so I think the anger is going to be directed at Americans. But of course, in the fog of war,
00:02:29.960
Americans, Canadians, they kind of look pretty much the same, Westerners, you know, on vacation.
00:02:36.520
And so what advice would you have to Canadians down there right now who are finding themselves
00:02:41.400
trapped, unable to leave? Yeah. So when this was breaking out, I saw it breaking out real time
00:02:48.280
on X, of course, like everybody did. Saw the videos real time, right? This is the thing that
00:02:53.840
makes things different with all the phones that are out there, the cameras, the internet, Skylink.
00:02:58.240
You can see this breaking out in full time. So my big concern at the start of this was that what they
00:03:05.880
were going to do was they were going to be targeting Americans. That would have been the
00:03:11.040
thought. They're not going to target Natives, but they might have targeted Americans. So I was
00:03:16.440
putting out a series of tips and advice on my timeline for what people could do if they were
00:03:21.340
down there. You know, one of the ones that I put out, which was interesting, was I said, look,
00:03:25.840
if you're American and you're down there, ditch your ID. Someone comes across you, tell them
00:03:32.200
you're Canadian, not American. You know, and I had a lot of people that appreciated that was put
00:03:37.900
out. And I got a lot of course, jokes firing back from people. Oh, I'd never say I'm a Canadian.
00:03:42.280
Oh, why would, you know, people not realizing the seriousness of it. But of course I do. I've
00:03:47.400
sent executives into very dangerous places in the past and people do get killed because of their
00:03:53.560
ethnicity, their nationality, their color, whatever. And so the concern here would have been if they
00:03:58.820
were looking for Americans, you did not want to look like an American. You know, the next thing
00:04:03.780
I suggested people should do is they have to get to a place of safety. And what I typically do when
00:04:09.360
I go traveling or I tell people when they go traveling is I go find the top security guy.
00:04:14.440
And sometimes maybe you just find the head doorman at your hotel or the resort you're staying at.
00:04:18.940
And I'd give them 50 bucks and I'd say, Hey, you see this face? Remember this face. You're going to
00:04:23.220
look after me. If I have any questions, if I need help, will you be able to help me? I don't want to
00:04:27.120
get any bad cabs or any bad deals. You look after me. And they say, well, they take the 50 bucks and
00:04:31.520
they say, yes. Right. And you can ask them about where you're going and what the problems are.
00:04:35.880
So what I would have suggested there is I would have gotten ahold of that person in the hotel and
00:04:41.340
say, where can I hide? Where can I hide for cover and concealment? The most important thing, Mark,
00:04:48.700
being you want, not only want to be out of sight where someone's not going to find you, but
00:04:52.520
behind something that's pretty bullet resistant, you know? So if they had, if they had something in
00:04:57.860
the basement where they stored dried food in that hotel or something like that, you could get in
00:05:03.520
there and lock that door and bolt that up. Give, you know, 50, a hundred bucks or whatever to whoever's
00:05:08.060
running the kitchen. Don't give me up sort of thing or whatever. Right. You stand a good chance that
00:05:13.200
actually happened. The other one is going to a local storefront. If you're out somewhere where the
00:05:18.160
store owners, I mean, they appreciate tourists. Right. And you say, can I hide in your store?
00:05:22.540
That happens. If you remember the Charlie Hebdebo when they were shooting, uh, Jews and everything
00:05:28.840
because of the depiction of Muhammad over in France, I think it was. Yeah. What's the one guy did? He had
00:05:33.680
a butcher store. I think it was, and he hid like 12 people in the freezer in his, when they were going
00:05:38.200
around killing people. So you want to get out of sight, out of mind, uh, not be identifiable if that's who
00:05:44.500
they're targeting for what they're looking for. But those are some of the keys that I would look at.
00:05:50.740
Yeah. I mean, to your point earlier about Americans being up to their necks in this operation,
00:05:54.820
there is a, an exclusive by Reuters, a new U S military led task force specializing in an intel
00:06:01.620
collection on drug cartels played a key role in the Mexican military raid on Sunday that killed Mexican
00:06:10.260
drug lord known as El Mencho, that according to a U S defense official. And so this has definitely
00:06:18.580
been a major bone of contention between the Mexicans and the Americans. At one point, uh, Trump threatened
00:06:25.940
to wage his own attacks on these, uh, cartel, uh, on these cartels and their operations and their leaders.
00:06:35.780
She said, no. And I guess there must've been some agreement to allow the U S forces as well to play
00:06:42.820
a role in this. And that's probably why this is going on, but this is probably going to drag on for
00:06:47.940
a while, isn't it? I mean, the, the cartels are incredibly powerful in Mexico and a byproduct of
00:06:55.860
that power as they unleash violence on the population as a result of the death of, uh, of El Mencho. How long
00:07:03.620
do you think this is going to drag on? Well, it's, it depends. It depends what they do, right? The
00:07:10.100
actions they take. I don't think the public is generally aware of exactly how deadly the they're
00:07:14.900
like a military force. They're like their own little army. Uh, these cartels, they make, you know,
00:07:19.700
all the money they make from drugs. We know how big that is, right? Everybody who watched Scarface,
00:07:24.580
all the money they make from that is so much. They can't hang onto it. They make more money from human
00:07:29.780
trafficking, right? All the people that were going across the Southern border. They made way more
00:07:34.100
money from that, from doing human trafficking. As a result, they own all kinds of weapons,
00:07:38.260
armored vehicles. There's even a report out that the cartels sent a couple of people over to the
00:07:43.780
Ukraine to train on how to use drones to kill people. Right. I'll talk to you about that another
00:07:49.540
time. I know someone who was in the Ukraine with those drones and very deadly. So, uh, if they start
00:07:55.860
picking on Americans, I'm not sure where it's going to go. If they start deciding to go looking
00:08:01.220
for them and killing them, I would suspect you're going to see one very, very strong response from
00:08:06.580
the United States because they know if you're allowed to pick off Americans in one spot, you'll
00:08:11.460
be, it'll happen in other spots. And, uh, you know, the Canadian response to this has been interesting.
00:08:18.740
Uh, once again, I saw that at best after a couple of hours, you know, I looked right away for the
00:08:24.820
embassy down in Mexico and that part there, they're closed till Monday at nine. So no help there.
00:08:30.020
Right. It was a 24 hour number for emergencies or something, but eventually they came out and said,
00:08:35.060
Oh, we'll send your name to this, uh, text it to this address here and in global affairs or whatever,
00:08:40.740
we'll update you on what's going on. Well, the people are already updated. I mean, they're seeing
00:08:45.220
it live on Twitter. They're seeing the videos, how close it is to where they are. They can find all the
00:08:50.180
information. What I was shocked, uh, was I don't, I don't, this is me. I would like to have Canada
00:08:56.580
have a response to say, don't worry. We're making plans to get people out right now. You know, we
00:09:02.740
have this little opera operation group called JTF two joint task force two. They are the world's best
00:09:10.260
and other special forces will tell you this. I know special forces guys. They're the world's best at
00:09:15.060
going in and getting people out of places. World's best bar none. Ask you, ask a Delta force guy,
00:09:20.820
a seal, uh, uh, an Israeli, uh, Mossad agent. Who do you want to come get me out? They'd say,
00:09:26.820
go get me JTF two. No one knows how good that they are. So I said, why are they not being sent down to
00:09:32.340
the border to hook up with the U S uh, military? Why aren't we getting a couple of globe master planes,
00:09:37.860
those giant planes being sent down? Hey, we're sending them down to Texas. And when the time is right,
00:09:42.100
we'll get them across or something like, why not show some action rather than I'll text you this
00:09:48.340
to stay in your room and be safe. It's that's not much help. It has been, I would think, tepid
00:09:54.660
and kind of slow, but I guess Anita and on finally saying this, Mexico hopes violence will calm in
00:10:01.940
coming days, says Anita Anand while cautioning, urging caution. I mean, that's, that's all they've got.
00:10:08.820
Ministers says Canadians and affected States should still follow shelter in place orders.
00:10:15.620
Yeah. I would definitely say stay off, you know, stay off the streets if you can. I mean, if you see
00:10:21.860
any potential danger. And I also found it fascinating that you said that the U S may, if Americans are
00:10:29.700
killed during the retribution against whoever is responsible for the death of Al Mencho,
00:10:39.060
then, uh, the fact that troops could be headed to Mexico would be, that would be huge. I mean,
00:10:45.380
uh, but you're saying that's a possibility from what you've heard.
00:10:49.300
Trump said that to the Taliban in the Middle East, he had the guys, he said to them, if one more
00:10:55.540
American gets killed here going forward, we're going to wipe you out. And the, the ambassador who
00:11:01.460
was talking to the Taliban guy pulled out a picture of the guy he was talking to at the front door to his
00:11:06.260
house and said, here, have a look at this. One more American gets it. You're going to get it.
00:11:11.540
I have no doubt that Donald Trump will make sure that that message is conveyed to the heads of the
00:11:16.420
cartel. I got no doubt that he will convey that message.
00:11:19.780
And let's not forget that there's a Mexican cartel connection in Canada, of course, along with the
00:11:26.500
Chinese, they've got labs in Canada, don't they? And in some cases, super labs, um, at least one that I
00:11:36.740
know of was, uh, stopped, was, uh, attacked essentially by, you know, people were arrested
00:11:43.780
and put a stop to that, what the operation in that lab. But there's a strong connection and a
00:11:49.300
growing connection between these Mexican cartels in Canada. They see the border, the northern border
00:11:54.980
of the United States as quite porous as maybe something that would allow them to continue operating
00:12:02.180
in a way, uh, even more so than the southern border. Is that fair?
00:12:06.580
Oh, look, that's the way the cartels operate. That's why Mexico is called, not lightly by people,
00:12:12.100
the narco state, meaning that the, the drug lords run it. They decide who's going to be the mayor
00:12:17.140
and who's going to be, do what. And look at, for all the Canadians who've been going to, uh,
00:12:21.940
Mexico for the longest time and they feel safe down there. There's a reason for that.
00:12:25.620
They ring that because the cartels know that killing all the tourists is bad for business.
00:12:30.020
And the tourists are down there buying the drugs when they're down there sort of thing.
00:12:33.300
You do not want to kill a tourist, right? That kills the destination and all the people that are
00:12:38.020
around you sort of thing down there. And the cartels, they, they go down there, they get woven
00:12:45.060
into the police departments, into the politicians. And we've had it up here in Canada. One of the most
00:12:50.260
senior intelligence people for the RCMP was doing that. He created a whole thing where he was making
00:12:56.180
untraceable, unbuggable blackberry phones and running a network and selling them to drug cartels
00:13:01.940
so they could conduct their business. And we're certainly having issues right now where we're
00:13:06.180
looking at it, even in Toronto with organized crime, potentially and allegedly being involved
00:13:10.580
with the Toronto police service. So, uh, you can absolutely bet if the cartel operates the way,
00:13:16.020
that way down there, they will operate that way up here. It's their playbook.
00:13:20.420
Yeah. You make a great point about Mexican tourism. And here, the cartels are saying,
00:13:26.500
you mess with us, we'll mess with you. So the tens of millions that you bring in from tourists,
00:13:34.420
well, you can kiss that goodbye because of what you did, your cooperation with the Americans
00:13:40.020
to kill El Mencho. You know, we're going to cost you an infinite amount of tourist dollars
00:13:46.340
because of that. So that makes sense now, doesn't it? In terms of, it's just, it's not just
00:13:51.620
retribution. It's sending a message to the government saying, you mess with us, we will
00:13:57.220
mess with your huge revenue source here being, uh, tourism. Is that, uh, what you think might be going
00:14:03.780
on? Oh, I, I, I absolutely. That's what's going on. Absolutely. That's going on. Trump could just
00:14:08.260
turn around tomorrow with the secretary of transport and say, that's it. We're closing the border,
00:14:12.500
no more trips, no more flights, no more, nothing into Mexico. And a lot of money gets repatriated
00:14:17.700
back to Mexico too. There's so many Mexicans that, that live in, live in the U S right. I mean,
00:14:22.900
Mexicans have really spread out a lot from Mexico. We've got lots of great Mexican diaspora here,
00:14:28.580
even in Canada. So I've got no doubt that those are the words that are going on. So where does it go
00:14:33.380
from here? Well, it depends on the level of threat that's being made and what message is being
00:14:38.100
delivered. Uh, but at this point I would not want to be the one that's, uh, testing Donald Trump's
00:14:45.380
patience too far on this. Absolutely. How do people consume your content online?
00:14:51.140
Yeah. They can catch me over at McLean Chronicles for my YouTube. And, and I've known on there,
00:14:55.140
I do have one video that dealt with an active shooter, uh, that was in New York before who went
00:14:59.780
up to the NFL offices. And I, I give some tips in there about how to protect yourself in the event of
00:15:04.900
an active shooter, what you do. And I think I'm going to make one up, do a video on this Mexican
00:15:10.260
one to talk about what you do, because we're seeing this unrest can break out anywhere. Now you could be
00:15:15.300
in any, any city, anywhere in the world. And all of a sudden this unrest could break out. Absolutely.
00:15:21.620
Ross, thank you so much for coming on the show. We appreciate it. Thanks, Mark.
00:15:25.940
And if you enjoyed this show, consider supporting great independent journalism
00:15:29.700
where breaking news stories are told by going to junonews.com backslash straight up. That's the
00:15:35.300
name of this show. Straight up. Junonews.com backslash straight up. Helped us a great deal. Thank you.