Federal authorities have targeted a prominent Mexican human rights advocate with sanctions, claiming he has been secretly working for a major drug trafficking organization while publicly criticizing Mexico’s military forces.
The Treasury Department announced Tuesday that Raymundo Ramos, who heads the Committee for Human Rights of Nuevo Laredo, has been operating as a cartel operative for over ten years while maintaining his public role as an activist. Officials claim Ramos has been creating fabricated allegations against Mexico’s Army to benefit the Cartel of the Northeast (CDN).
“On the CDN payroll, Ramos engages in these activities with the goal of boosting the public opinion of CDN and discrediting Mexican authorities’ law enforcement initiatives against the cartel,” the Treasury Department said in a statement.
The sanctions freeze any U.S.-based assets belonging to Ramos and prohibit American citizens and businesses from conducting transactions with him. Ramos has not yet responded to requests for comment regarding these allegations.
Operating from Nuevo Laredo, a border city in Tamaulipas state known for extreme violence, Ramos has established himself as one of the region’s most visible human rights advocates. Last year, he brought attention to alleged unlawful killings by military personnel, releasing footage that appeared to show Army soldiers fatally shooting five young men in a pickup truck, with one victim shot in the back of the neck. The previous year, he accused Navy personnel of forcibly disappearing civilians.
Both incidents prompted Mexican officials to detain military personnel and launch investigations, though it remains unclear whether formal charges or convictions resulted from these probes.
Mexico’s attorney general’s office has not responded to inquiries about the allegations against Ramos or whether they are conducting their own investigation into his activities.
Notably, in 2020, Mexican government agencies used Pegasus surveillance software to monitor Ramos’ communications, according to research by Mexico’s Digital Rights Defense Network and Toronto-based Citizen Lab. The organizations identified him among hundreds of Mexican journalists and activists who were subjected to government surveillance through the controversial spyware program.
