Mexican cartels are stealing cars and trucks from U.S. rental agencies at an alarming rate, spiriting thousands of vehicles across the border each year to keep top capos in the latest model BMWs and Cadillacs. Law enforcement agencies and companies charged with trying to recover stolen vehicles say that while much of the thefts occur in border states, cartel operatives have stolen vehicles from as far away as New York, Chicago and Miami. But California remains the top target. Each year, about 2,000 vehicles stolen from California end up in Mexico, according to the California Highway Patrol.

LAPD Sgt. Juvey Mejia, a member of the Task Force for Regional Auto Theft Prevention, said the cartels love heavy-duty pickup trucks and Jeeps. "Anything that can drive through tough terrain to get away from Border Patrol so they can move dope," Mejia said. Along with Chevy Suburbans, Ford Raptors and Toyota pickups, the vehicles of choice include Cadillac Escalades and BMW SUVs, according to people whose job is to recover them.

To battle rival cartels or authorities, criminal groups sometimes convert the trucks into mutant tanks, adding heavy ballistic-proof steel plating, firing ports and gun mounts. The thefts don't require much stealth: vehicles are rented in the U.S. by cartel operatives and then driven across the border. The exact number of vehicles is unknown. California sees significant theft, in part, because of its restrictive privacy laws on GPS tracking of rental vehicles, according to Sharky Laguana, owner of Bandago Van Rentals based in San Francisco.

Unlike other states, California requires that rental agencies wait to turn on GPS tracking until the vehicle return deadline has passed and the renter has been contacted by the company. By then, most stolen vehicles are deep in Mexican territory. “California allows criminals to take advantage of the fact that we are not allowed to see where the vehicle is until it’s too late,” Laguana said.

The American Car Rental Assn., a trade group, said in a statement that California laws make it harder to recover vehicles. “Members are reporting a sharp increase in rental vehicle theft from California into Mexico, where California law uniquely restricts rental fleet operators from accessing technology to protect and recover their assets,” the association said in a statement. “The result is millions of dollars in annual theft-related costs.”Early this year, criminal groups stole 10 new Ram pickup trucks from Oakland, Los Angeles and Las Vegas airports, according to private investigators.

The trucks ended up in Jalisco state in regions controlled by the violent Jalisco New Generation Cartel. The private investigators recovered one truck with help from the Mexican army. Security forces also seized a cache of Browning and Barrett .50-caliber weapons. In another haul this year, thieves stole six 2026 model Jeep Wranglers from Oakland and Las Vegas. Four have been recovered so far. Private investigators believe the vehicles were destined for the Sinaloa Cartel.

The same investigators received requests last week to recover a dozen Ram trucks tracked to Sinaloa and seven more in Durango state. "For the cartel, it is the cheapest way for them to do business," said Kevin Carter, owner of Collateral Consultants, a rental car recovery company in Texas. "There’s no sense in them buying a car when they could rent one for a few hundred bucks, and it’s theirs forever."

Along with California, Texas and Arizona are the other top targets for Mexican criminal groups. One tactic involves cartels hiring people in the U.S. via social media to rent a vehicle for five days, get the damage waiver that includes covering the car if it is stolen, and then leave the keys in the vehicle still parked in the rental parking lot. An operative arrives, gets in the car and drives it south to Mexico.

In other cases, thieves will rent the vehicle online or at a kiosk using a stolen identity, said Mejia, the LAPD officer. Since the pandemic, it’s not unusual for people to wear protective masks, so the renter will wear a mask to hide their identity from the kiosk camera. "They know it won't be traced back to them," Mejia said. The process for reporting a stolen rental vehicle varies from state to state, but it is often tedious. It can take three days after the vehicle has gone missing for a company to prepare a demand letter to the renter seeking return of the vehicle.

Such notification is required before a vehicle can be reported stolen, and it can take another two days to send the letter by certified mail. Depending on the state, a company might have to wait up to nine days to report the theft to police. Only then can it appear on the FBI-managed U.S. National Crime Incident Database, where stolen vehicles are reported. More days will pass before the VIN number ised in Mexico's stolen vehicle database.

If the car or truck was rented in one state, set to return in another state and crossed into Mexico via a third, the coordination required between three state law enforcement agencies can make timely recovery of the vehicle even more complicated. Many vehicles are nevered in the U.S. stolen car database. Carter, from Collateral Consultants, said that of the approximately 1 million cases he has seen in his 15 years recovering rental vehicles in the U.S. and elsewhere, fewer than half made it into the U.S. database.

A vehicle is not officially considered stolen until it appears in the registry. Large rental agencies often don't bother recovering vehicles that disappear across the border, and consider the loss the cost of doing business, Carter said. "It’s a calculated risk to most of the big companies," he said. While insurance companies insure rental agencies against vehicle damage, they do not cover theft, according to Luguana of Bandago Van Rentals.

Most agencies are self-insured, meaning the loss of a vehicle cuts into their bottom line, he said. Though sometimes the target is a single vehicle, authorities have also uncovered larger theft operations. In 2024, the Colorado attorney general’s office indicted 17 people associated with the Sinaloa Cartel, accusing them of stealing 190 new Ford F150s and luxury suburbans near the Denver airport. The cartel operatives drove the stolen vehicles, valued at nearly $10 million, to Mexico, according to court documents, and exchanged them for cocaine, fentanyl and methamphetamine.

In the Texas border city of Laredo, Deputy Police Chief Timothy Tubbs said he has seen a 50% increase in the theft of rental vehicles — about 10 a month. “They have seen how easy it is to steal a rental car, and the process it takes to report it,” Tubbs said of criminal groups. And the vehicles are supporting drug trafficking into the U.S., he said. “These stolen vehicles empower the cartels,” Tubbs said. “It is another tool for them to continue their smuggling and continue their violence.”

Once the vehicles are in Mexico, operatives approach corrupt Mexican officials and change out the U.S. license plates for Mexican plates and the vehicles on Mexico's online car registry platform, according to car recovery experts. Authorities install a chip that is scanned by machines along federal highways. The chips are supposed to flag stolen cars and trucks, but because the new plates are valid, the vehicles are never listed as stolen.

In the United States, stolen vehicles are far more likely to be identified, experts said, for a variety of reasons — a routine maintenance check or a scan by a highway license plate camera could trigger an alert. But once a stolen car arrives in Mexico, it essentially vanishes. "It crosses that border, it is a brand-new car," Carter said. Cartels steal more cars and trucks when turf wars break out because they require more resources, one U.S. law enforcement official said.

And in recent years, cartels have increasingly splintered as leaders have been arrested. One of the more dramatic examples is the Sinaloa cartel, founded by the now imprisoned Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. His sons, known as Los Chapitos, are fighting a rival faction for control of the criminal group. The ruthless Jalisco cartel has fought to expand its territory to Michoacán and Chiapas states, warring with groups from Baja California and fighting wars on multiple fronts as it seeks to expand its presence.

Though many stolen vehicles disappear, some are recovered. In Guerrero state last November, the Mexican army seized a Toyota TRD Pro and other vehicles loaded with high-caliber weapons and nearly half a ton of meth. According to sources familiar with another recovery, in August a member of the Jalisco New Generation cartel went to the border city of Mexicali to pick up a tractor trailer with a 2026 Cadillac Escalade and a late-model Ram hidden inside, apparently to evade detection system until they could be outfitted with Mexican plates.

But private investigators hired to recover the Cadillac began tracking it. They asked not to identify their tracking methods to avoid tipping off criminals. The investigators notified the Mexican army, providing the license plate number. Their tracking method allowed them to see the Cadillac was on the move, passing through toll booths and military checkpoints, but without setting off alarms. At one checkpoint, National Guard soldiers opened the trailer and, seeing a wall of hay bales, let it pass.

At the next checkpoint, however, soldiers pulled back the bales to reveal the Cadillac and the Ram. The driver said he was to be paid nearly $1,500 and admitted the cars were bound for drug lords. Fisher is a special correspondent. This article was co-published with Puente News Collaborative, a bilingual nonprofit newsroom. Reporting for this article was supported with a grant by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.