The series is inspired by a report in The Washington Post newspaper.
As the current U.S. administration ramps up its anti-immigrant policy and weaves a narrative of hate that stigmatizes these people, a good portion of whom come from Latin America, as criminals who come to harm the peace of the U.S., a Mexican series reminds us that this, or rather, works the other way around.
For decades, Mexico has been the natural escape destination for numerous American convicts, persecuted in their country for acts (truly proven, not the result of a Yankee president's racist imagination regarding foreigners) involving bloodshed, first-degree murder, extortion, theft, and fraud.
While this evasive route is well known—as American television and film have emphasized it over time, sometimes from a xenophobic and contemptuous perspective toward the host country—what is less widely known is the story of those who pursue and capture them within Mexico.
Premiering on television, the series, Cazadores de gringos (Netflix, 2025), brings into the audiovisual universe the daily work of the members of the International Liaison Unit, a Mexican brigade based in Tijuana, whose mission is to search for, arrest, and return these criminals to the U.S. In 23 years of work, the Unit captured more than 1,600.
Inspired by a report in The Washington Post, the series not only has the virtue of airing this truth or vindicating the effectiveness of these police officers. It also has the merit of showing a more diverse Mexico, one that is far removed from the stereotype: from within, from a local rather than a foreign perspective, one that neither denigrates it nor displays it through that eternally xenophobic postcard of ochre, sepia, and yellowish tones with which Hollywood portrays it.
Unfortunately, beyond these virtues, there are no other reasons to boast.
There's an element of plot and script that tends to undermine both the narrative balance and the more objective portrayal of the arrests of these fugitive criminals. These are fleeting figures, of whom the viewer will only know or appreciate, if at all, their photos in the police file, their names, a brief description of why they're wanted, and the moment of their arrest.
A 12-part procedural series must address many elements that a newspaper article—especially due to space and its nonfiction nature—can't include. And one of these is the delineation, the individualization of the characters.
Almost ghostly presences, a greater degree of emphasis on the personalization of these outlaws is lacking throughout the material (several of them are ridiculous sketches, such as Nancy Baker in the fourth episode), understanding that the emphasis of the series is intended to fall on the Mexican agents, not the fugitives.
Now, if we were to heed this logic, we would run into the problem that there isn't much introspective focus in the Latin American demographic either. When describing the members of the Tijuana police elite squad, the script team didn't do so with much dedication or care.
With the Netflix algorithm in full swing, Mexican agents are the condensation and summation of what constitutes a police force according to the Yankee serial machine. Consequently, the denotative features of their identity are reduced only to language, or when they go out for tacos.
And the police officer with unorthodox qualities within the team (that autistic person who solves a years-long case in just a few minutes) bears a suspicious resemblance to another character, played by Ximena Sariñana in Las azules (Apple tv+ 2024).
