phd student killed in mexico

UC Berkeley graduate student Gabriel Trujillo killed while doing field research in Mexico, officials say

Gabriel Trujillo, a botanist, was doing field research in Sonora, Mexico.

A University of California, Berkeley graduate student was killed in Mexico , ABC News has learned.

Gabriel Trujillo, a botanist who was a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Integrative Biology, was killed in the Mexican state of Sonora last week while doing field research, according to a statement from UC Berkeley obtained by San Francisco ABC station KGO on Friday.

MORE: Paramedics say they felt 'intoxication symptoms' in Mexico hotel room where 2 Americans were found dead

The university, located in Northern California, said it received confirmation of Trujillo's death on June 23.

"Local police authorities are investigating," UC Berkeley said in the statement. "This is heartbreaking news and campus officials have reached out to his family to offer support and assistance."

Sonora is the second-largest state in Mexico, situated in the northwest and sharing the U.S.-Mexico border primarily with Arizona.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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For Gabriel Trujillo, the trip wasn’t just about searching for plants — it was about finding his roots.

The 31-year-old botanist and UC Berkeley doctoral student regularly journeyed to foreign lands for work. This month, it was the Mexican state of Sonora, where he hoped not just to advance his academic pursuits but reconnect with his Opata Indigenous heritage by visiting his ancestral lands.

It meant working away from his fiancee, Roxanne Cruz-de Hoyos, whom he met through Berkeley’s Integrative Biology graduate program. Still, Trujillo was excited. When he spoke to Cruz-de Hoyos the morning of June 19 from his Airbnb in the Sonoran town of Tónichi, he said he planned to go solo into the field to look for cephalanthus occidentalis , a flowering plant also known as honeybells or common buttonbush.

His body was found in a ravine three days later, not far from the car he had driven from his home in Oakland. He had been shot and killed, Mexican authorities said.

“He was a true naturalist,” Cruz-de Hoyos said. “He cultivated life every moment with his hands.”

Cruz-de Hoyos and Trujillo traveled across the U.S. and other parts of the globe, collecting plant samples as part of their studies. They were seldom apart when doing their field research and shared a home with hundreds of plants they grew from seeds.

But she was unable to make the trip to Sonora because of the demands of her own research.

“If we’re not together, we would always share our location, so I can see where he is,” Cruz-de Hoyos said in an interview Friday. “But by the afternoon, by the evening of June 19, I hadn’t heard from him. I knew something was wrong.”

She contacted the person who rented him a room. They said Trujillo’s belongings were there and that his car was gone.

Cruz-de Hoyos flew down to Sonora and contacted the authorities. She filed a missing person’s report and notified Trujillo’s advisors, friends and family.

The Sonora prosecutor’s office said Trujillo was found on a stretch of road leading to the town of Yécora. Prosecutors referred to Trujillo only by his first name, but said they found his 2009 black BMW wagon and other forensic evidence at the scene. Officials determined he was shot days earlier.

Cruz-de Hoyos identified Trujillo, and his father, Anthony, accompanied his body back to the United States.

“Thank God I was able to retrieve him, because a lot of people do not get to have that,” Anthony Trujillo said in an interview.

The last time he had spoken to his son was the day before he went missing: Father’s Day.

“He was trying to learn more about his ancestors, about where we come from,” Trujillo said. “He had plans to cultivate a garden in that area.”

Trujillo was in the fourth year of his doctoral program at UC Berkeley. University officials said they learned of his death June 23.

“Local police authorities are investigating,” UC Berkeley said in a statement. “This is heartbreaking news and campus officials have reached out to his family to offer support and assistance.”

Faculty members in the Department of Integrative Biology called Trujillo “a passionate ecologist, field biologist, and advocate for diverse voices in science.”

“He was a member of a tightly knit group of graduate students in ecology and his partner is also a member of our campus community. We all face a world that is less bright for this loss,” faculty members said in an email to students and staff.

During his trip, Trujillo planned to study the common buttonbush to see if it could be used for wetland habitat restoration. As an Indigenous person, he felt he was meant to be a good steward of the land, Cruz-de Hoyos said. The two participated in ceremonies around missing or murdered Indigenous persons, especially the Two-Spirit community — people who identify as having both a masculine and feminine spirit.

“I think that’s something he would want to mention,” she said.

In an obituary prepared by his family, Trujillo is described as having a “passion for nature and culture and a relentless drive for science. His deep appreciation for the natural world guided him to explore the wonders of the outdoors. He found solace in the beauty of nature, always eager to learn and protect the environment he held so dear.”

In a GoFundMe to raise funds for funeral services , Cruz-de Hoyos wrote “Nican Ca,” which translates to “here is” or “he is here” in the Nahuatl language.

“I think we both found in each other a kind of mirror, a very special connection that neither of us had found before,” she said.

The U.S. Bureau of Consular Affairs has advised travelers to reconsider travel to Sonora, which borders Arizona, due to crime and kidnappings. The agency’s travel advisory says the border state is a key location for drug cartels and human trafficking networks, with widespread violence.

About 1,000 miles east of Sonora in another border town, four Americans were caught in a drug cartel shootout in the city of Matamoros earlier this year. The four Americans were kidnapped shortly after they crossed the border, according to Mexican officials . Mexican authorities rescued two of the Americans and found the bodies of the two other victims in a wooden shack in the outskirts of Matamoros.

The group said they traveled from South Carolina to Mexico for cosmetic surgery.

Trujillo had traveled across the globe as a field researcher, including to other parts of Mexico. But this trip seemed different to Anthony Trujillo because his son would be alone for most of the trip.

But “there was nothing that was going to stop him.”

“He loved plants, he loved bugs, and he loved people. He loved life. He was always trying to get other people, his younger family members, out into nature, to stomp around with him,” he said. “He had a magnetic smile. I’m just so proud of him.”

Times staff writers Kate Linthicum and Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed to this story.

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UC Berkeley PhD student suffers violent death in Mexico

Gabriel Trujillo's research was tragically cut short last week in Mexico, where his father said he was shot seven times. Authorities discovered his body on June 22 in the state of Sonora, in northwest Mexico, days after his fiancée reported him missing.

SONORA, Mexico - For four years, Gabriel Trujillo trekked the breadth of the United States and south into Mexico in search of a flowering shrub called the common buttonbush.

The plant is native to the varied climates of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. Trujillo, a 31-year-old Ph.D. student at the University of California, Berkeley, wanted to know why it thrived in such a range of places, and whether the evolution of the species held possibilities for future habitat conservation and restoration efforts.

The research was tragically cut short last week in Mexico, where Trujillo’s father said he was shot seven times. Authorities discovered his body on June 22 in the state of Sonora, in northwest Mexico, days after his fiancée reported him missing.

The killing has left the family reeling and searching for answers in a case that has yet again highlighted the rampant violence that plagues Mexico locations controlled by drug cartels.

‘THE WRONG PLACE’

Trujillo drove across the Arizona border into Nogales on June 17. He spoke to his father the next day and he and his fiancée, Roxanne Cruz-de Hoyos, chatted in the morning the day after that. He told her he was going out to collect plants and would return to his Airbnb later.

Cruz-de Hoyos became concerned when Trujillo didn’t respond to her phone calls and text messages — they normally talked several times a day — and his Airbnb hosts said his belongings were still there but he hadn’t returned. She bought a plane ticket the next day and flew down to Mexico to search.

On June 22, authorities discovered his body about 62 miles from the Airbnb. He was still inside his SUV, Cruz-de Hoyos said.

She identified him for Mexican authorities as his father rushed to get a flight out of Michigan. Both have received little information about the tragedy and are begging for the U.S. and Mexican governments for answers.

"Evidently he was in the wrong place," Anthony Trujillo told The Associated Press on Thursday while he waited to board a flight back home, his son’s remains beside him.

The Sonora state prosecutor’s office said in a statement Thursday that it is analyzing evidence "to establish the facts, conditions and causes of the death." The statement did not give details about what occurred or call Trujillo’s death a homicide.

His family begged him not to go to such a dangerous place: Sonora recorded 518 homicides through May, according to federal government data. But Trujillo believed the trip was crucial to his research.

Sharing a lengthy border with the U.S., Sonora is a key route for smuggling drugs, especially fentanyl, as well as migrants, cash and weapons between the U.S. and the Sinaloa state, and the infamous cartel of the same name, further south.

Sonora has long been critical territory for Mexico’s drug cartels and in recent years those rivalries have increased the level of violence and sometimes left civilian victims.

Cartel gunmen killed three U.S. women and six of their children near the border of Sonora and Chihuahua states in 2019. The Americans lived in communities founded decades ago by an offshoot of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

INDIGENOUS ROOTS

For Trujillo, a scholar with ties to Arizona, Michigan, Illinois, New Mexico, California and Indigenous lands in Mexico, the buttonbush’s ability to survive and thrive almost anywhere must have felt familiar.

He spent years studying it and collecting specimens, often alongside Cruz-de Hoyos — a postdoctoral fellow researching widespread tree mortality — in a big red van they bought together.

"We were committed to dedicating our lives to environmental conservation and environmental research," Cruz-de Hoyos told the AP. "We felt that Indigenous hands have taken care of these lands for time immemorial."

Drawn to Sonora, Trujillo hoped to connect with his Opata Indigenous roots through the group’s ancestral lands in the dry, mountainous region. He ultimately wanted to apply his research to building a garden in Mexico and using the buttonbush for wetland restoration. His planned trip included three potential sites to make a final choice.

With shared ancestry in the Nahua Indigenous group, which has ties to the Aztec civilization in central Mexico, the couple pledged to merge their identities and scientific studies as part of their future together.

Cruz-de Hoyos had been undergoing fertility treatments for the last two years and this summer’s trip to Mexico was supposed to be Trujillo’s last before the couple began trying to get pregnant.

They had bought a house together, commissioned custom engagement rings and envisioned a wedding led by an Indigenous elder by the end of the year. They planned to announce their happy news in August, when Trujillo returned from his trip.

Cruz-de Hoyos will instead honor Trujillo with a Danza Azteca ceremony, an Indigenous spiritual tradition, in the San Francisco Bay Area after his father hosts a Catholic funeral Mass in Michigan next month.

‘A STAPLER’ Born March 4, 1992, in Arizona, Trujillo’s family moved to Michigan during his childhood. Six kids in a blended family in a predominately white neighborhood: "We were like the Mexican Brady Bunch," his father said.

Trujillo attended a boarding school in New Mexico in high school and received his undergraduate degree from Lake Forest College in Illinois. A Ford Foundation fellow, he was on track to complete his Ph.D. at Berkeley in 2025.

"Gabe was a passionate ecologist, field biologist, and advocate for diverse voices in science," the university’s Department of Integrative Biology wrote in an email to its campus community. "We all face a world that is less bright for this loss."

His mother, Gloria, died of cancer a decade ago. In addition to his father and Cruz-de Hoyos, Trujillo is survived by five siblings, six nieces and a nephew.

Put him in the same space as the youngsters, his father said, and he’d immediately lead them outside, tromping around for bugs and plants. He often took one niece to a pond in Michigan to search for frogs. She has named a stuffed frog in his honor.

"A 20-minute hike with me would take an hour because he would show me all the plants and mushrooms," Anthony Trujillo said. "He wanted to learn everything about everything."

Despite years of academic achievements, Anthony Trujillo kept thinking about his son’s grade school project: "If you were an object, how would you describe yourself?"

Gabriel Trujillo, just 8 or 9 years old, wrote that he would be a stapler.

"We all kind of wondered, ‘a stapler?’ Now it kind of makes sense," his father said, choking up. "It holds things together."

A friend has organized a GoFundMe f or him. 

___ Sánchez reported from Mexico City.

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A graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, has been killed in Mexico — where his bullet-riddled body was found in his SUV after his fiancée reported him missing on his trip to conduct field research about plants.

Gabriel Trujillo, 31, a botanist and fourth-year PhD candidate in the Department of Integrative Biology, was shot seven times June 19 in the northwest state of Sonora and his body was discovered three days later, his family said.

Trujillo, who drove across the Arizona border into Nogales on June 17, told his fiancée, Roxanne Cruz de Hoyos, on the morning of his death that he was going out to collect plants and would later return to his Airbnb.

She grew worried when Trujillo didn’t respond to her and his Airbnb hosts said he had not returned, so she jumped on a plane and flew down to Mexico to help search for him.

On June 22, authorities made the gruesome discovery of his body inside an SUV about 62 miles from the Airbnb, Cruz said.

Trujillo’s dad, Anthony Trujillo, flew from his home in Michigan to Mexico and joined Cruz-de Hoyos, but they said they’ve received little information and are urging the US and Mexican governments to provide help.

“Evidently he was in the wrong place,” Trujillo told the Associated Press on Thursday before he boarded a flight back home with his tragic son’s remains.

The Sonora state prosecutor’s office said in a statement that it was analyzing evidence “to establish the facts, conditions and causes of the death,” which it did not describe as a homicide.

UC Berkeley in Northern California said it received word about Trujillo’s death on June 23.

“Local police authorities are investigating. This is heartbreaking news and campus officials have reached out to his family to offer support and assistance,” the school said in a statement.

A GoFundMe page also announced Trujillo’s death.

“Gabriel was and is beyond what words can express. He was brilliant, genuine, talented, adventurous, brave, generous, and above all unfailingly kind and loving to everyone,” organizer Cruz wrote.

“He was a son, brother, cherished family member, fiancé, and friend. He was a deeply spiritual Danzante and was reconnecting to his Indigenous Opata and Nahua ancestry,” she said.

“His celebration of life in the Bay Area will be a Danza Azteca Ceremony that Gabriel would have wanted deeply. While attending another Danzante funeral, he shared with his fianceé that one day when he passed, he wanted this ceremony more than anything,” Cruz continued.

“Please know that Gabriel is still with you. He was and is a deeply spiritual person whose love is boundless and eternal. When you remember him, he would want you to be happy. That is how we can celebrate his life,” she added.

Born March 4, 1992, in Arizona, Trujillo later moved with his blended family to Michigan, where he and his siblings lived in a predominantly white neighborhood.

“We were like the Mexican Brady Bunch,” his father said.

Trujillo attended a boarding school in New Mexico and earned his bachelor’s degree from Lake Forest College in Illinois. A Ford Foundation fellow, he was on track to complete his doctorate at Berkeley in 2025.

Trujillo, whose mother, Gloria, died of cancer about 10 years ago, crisscrossed through the US and Mexico for the past four years in search of a flowering shrub called the common buttonbush.

He wanted to know why it thrived in such varied climates as the US, Canada and Mexico — and whether the evolution of the species held possibilities for future habitat conservation and restoration efforts.

He and his fiancée — a postdoctoral fellow researching widespread tree mortality — often traveled together in their big red van to collect specimens. He wanted to eventually apply his research to building a garden in Mexico and using the buttonbush for wetland restoration. 

“We were committed to dedicating our lives to environmental conservation and environmental research,” Cruz de Hoyos told the AP. “We felt that Indigenous hands have taken care of these lands for time immemorial.”

The couple shared ancestry in the Nahua Indigenous group, which has ties to the Aztec civilization in Mexico.

Cruz de Hoyos had undergone fertility treatments in the past two years and Trujillo’s tragic trip to Mexico was supposed to be his last before the couple began trying to get pregnant. They had bought a house together and were planning for a wedding led by an Indigenous elder by the end of the year.  

Instead, the grieving woman will honor Trujillo with a Danza Azteca ceremony, an Indigenous spiritual tradition, in the San Francisco Bay Area after his dad hosts a Catholic funeral Mass in Michigan.

His family had begged him not to go to Sonora, a drug-plagued area that recorded 518 homicides through May, but Trujillo believed the trip was vital for his research.

The US State Department urges Americans to “reconsider travel” to Sonora “due to crime and kidnapping.”

“Sonora is a key location used by the international drug trade and human trafficking networks. Violent crime is widespread,” the department warns on its website .

“Gabe was a passionate ecologist, field biologist, and advocate for diverse voices in science,” UC Berkeley’s Department of Integrative Biology wrote in an email to its campus community. “We all face a world that is less bright for this loss.”

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Grad Student Who Was 'In The Wrong Place' Shot And Killed While Studying Plants

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A Ph.D. student in botany at the University of California, Berkeley, is being remembered for his kindness, vibrant spirit and insatiable curiosity about the natural world after he was killed while studying plants in Sonora, Mexico.

Gabriel Trujillo, whose research focused on the buttonbush plant and how it might aid in habitat restoration, was shot seven times, his fiancée, Roxanne Cruz-de Hoyos, wrote on Instagram.

On June 23, police found his body in his car hours away from where he’d told Cruz-de Hoyos he was going, she said. Cruz de-Hoyos, who had flown to Mexico to find Trujillo after he didn’t reply to her calls or messages, later identified his remains, she said.

Local authorities were investigating the shooting, Berkeley officials said in a statement to the campus shared with HuffPost. “This is heartbreaking news and campus officials have reached out to his family to offer support and assistance,” it read.

No information has been released about a suspect or the circumstances of the shooting. Trujillo’s father, Anthony Trujillo, told the Associated Press , “Evidently he was in the wrong place.”

The U.S. State Department urges Americans to “ reconsider travel ” to Sonora because of the potential for violent crime and kidnapping, noting that it is a hub for the global drug trade and human trafficking.

But Sonora held a special meaning for Trujillo. He had been reconnecting to his Indigenous Opata and Nahua ancestry and loved being in Sonora, the traditional homeland of the Opata peoples , Cruz-de Hoyos said. Trujillo also participated in traditional Aztec dance and drumming with the Danza Azteca In Lak’ech in Berkeley, and the group dedicated a danza ceremony to him on Thursday.

Cruz de-Hoyos, who earned her Ph.D. in the same integrative biology program as Trujillo, said the couple intended to publicly announce their engagement once their custom rings arrived and were planning to start a family soon.

“Gabe was a passionate ecologist, field biologist, and advocate for diverse voices in science,” the chairs of the Integrative Biology Department said in an email to the department community shared with HuffPost. “He was a member of a tightly knit group of graduate students in ecology and his partner is also a member of our campus community. We all face a world that is less bright for this loss.”

“Gabriel’s love for culture was infectious.” - Obituary for Gabriel Trujillo

Trujillo’s obituary notes his “passion for nature and culture and a relentless drive for science.”

“His deep appreciation for the natural world guided him to explore the wonders of the outdoors,” the obituary reads. “He found solace in the beauty of nature, always eager to learn and protect the environment he held so dear. Gabriel’s love for culture was infectious, and he immersed himself in learning about different traditions and customs, always seeking to broaden his understanding of the world.”

His father recalled how he shared his love of nature with his five siblings, nieces, and nephew.

“A 20-minute hike with me would take an hour because he would show me all the plants and mushrooms,” Anthony Trujillo told the AP. “He wanted to learn everything about everything.”

A funeral for Trujillo will be held in Fenton, Michigan, where his family is from, on July 5. Cruz de-Hoyos organized a GoFundMe to help cover funeral expenses and the cost of returning his body to the U.S. from Mexico.

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Vol. CXXVII

Pasadena, CA

UC Berkeley Ph.D. Student Gabriel Trujillo Killed in Sonora, Mexico During Research Trip

LOS ANGELES, CA / Highland Park (June 29, 2023) – UC Berkeley Biologist Gabriel Richard Trujillo was shot and killed on June 19, 2023 in the mountains of Sonora, Mexico, as he gathered plant samples for his Ph.D. research on the evolutionary origins of Buttonwillow and how the plant could be used for wetland habitat restoration.

He was originally from Arizona, and moved as a child with his family to Michigan. He attended Lake Forest College in Chicago for his Bachelor’s Degree in Biology. He was a Ph.D. Candidate in the Integrative Biology Department at UC Berkeley. At Berkeley he met his future fiancée in 2019, Dr. Roxanne Cruz-de Hoyos, a National Science Foundation & Ford Postdoctoral Research Fellow. He strongly supported Los Angeles native Dr. Cruz-de Hoyos’ conservation efforts to restore native flora and fauna in the wildlife corridor of the open hillsides in North East Los Angeles. He was deeply committed to conserving these lands in perpetuity for the Kizh-Gabrielino Indigenous and local communities.

At Berkeley, he gained many friends and colleagues, both in the academic community and in the Indigenous Danza Azteca community. He was a mentor to many Berkeley undergraduate students in STEM and other programs. He often organized food donations and Covid relief work for the Indigenous Danza Azteca community and for the homeless. He participated in many Indigenous ceremonies throughout California and the Southwest. His indigenous self-awareness was part of the reason why he had gone to Sonora to reconnect with his Opata ancestral lands.

In 2023 he became engaged to Dr. Cruz-de Hoyos, and they had ordered their custom engagement rings before he left for Mexico on June 13. The couple had intended to announce their engagement and start their family when he returned from Mexico in August.

The last time he spoke with his fiancée was on Monday, June 19 in the morning, and he had agreed he’d text her to check in later that day. When he did not text her, his fiancée filed a missing person’s report with the Oakland Police Department, who were instrumental in contacting the Mexican authorities. His fiancée flew to Mexico to work with the authorities to launch the search for him. She contacted local Mexican biologists to search for him. It was a combination of the Mexican biologists and authorities that led to finding his body on the Thursday of that week. His body was found inside his car, shot several times. His death is currently being investigated and has become a high-profile international homicide case.

He will have two funeral services: a traditional one in Fenton, Michigan on July 5-6, and a Danza Azteca Funeral Ceremony in Oakland, California at a soon-to-be-determined date which will be announced on his GoFundMe site and on social media.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/gabriel-trujillos-funeral-celebration-of-life https://www.sharpfuneralhomes.com/obituaries/gabriel-trujillo

UC Berkeley scholar's research took him to Mexico and a violent death

By stefanie dazio and fabiola sánchez • published june 30, 2023 • updated on july 5, 2023 at 10:44 am.

For four years, Gabriel Trujillo trekked the breadth of the United States and south into Mexico in search of a flowering shrub called the common buttonbush.

The plant is native to the varied climates of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. Trujillo, a 31-year-old Ph.D. student at the University of California, Berkeley, wanted to know why it thrived in such a range of places, and whether the evolution of the species held possibilities for future habitat conservation and restoration efforts.

The research was tragically cut short last week in Mexico, where Trujillo’s father said he was shot seven times. Authorities discovered his body on June 22 in the state of Sonora, in northwest Mexico, days after his fiancée reported him missing.

The killing has left the family reeling and searching for answers in a case that has yet again highlighted the rampant violence that plagues Mexico locations controlled by drug cartels.

Get a weekly recap of the latest San Francisco Bay Area housing news. Sign up for NBC Bay Area’s Housing Deconstructed newsletter.

‘THE WRONG PLACE’

Trujillo drove across the Arizona border into Nogales on June 17. He spoke to his father the next day and he and his fiancée, Roxanne Cruz-de Hoyos, chatted in the morning the day after that. He told her he was going out to collect plants and would return to his Airbnb later.

Cruz-de Hoyos became concerned when Trujillo didn't respond to her phone calls and text messages — they normally talked several times a day — and his Airbnb hosts said his belongings were still there but he hadn't returned. She bought a plane ticket the next day and flew down to Mexico to search.

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Ferry service between Sausalito and San Francisco indefinitely suspended due to pier issue

On June 22, authorities discovered his body about 62 miles (100 kilometers) from the Airbnb. He was still inside his SUV, Cruz-de Hoyos said.

She identified him for Mexican authorities as his father rushed to get a flight out of Michigan. Both have received little information about the tragedy and are begging for the U.S. and Mexican governments for answers.

“Evidently he was in the wrong place,” Anthony Trujillo told The Associated Press on Thursday while he waited to board a flight back home, his son’s remains beside him.

The Sonora state prosecutor’s office said in a statement Thursday that it is analyzing evidence “to establish the facts, conditions and causes of the death.” The statement did not give details about what occurred or call Trujillo’s death a homicide.

His family begged him not to go to such a dangerous place: Sonora recorded 518 homicides through May, according to federal government data. But Trujillo believed the trip was crucial to his research.

Sharing a lengthy border with the U.S., Sonora is a key route for smuggling drugs, especially fentanyl, as well as migrants, cash and weapons between the U.S. and the Sinaloa state, and the infamous cartel of the same name, further south.

Sonora has long been critical territory for Mexico’s drug cartels and in recent years those rivalries have increased the level of violence and sometimes left civilian victims.

Cartel gunmen killed three U.S. women and six of their children near the border of Sonora and Chihuahua states in 2019. The Americans lived in communities founded decades ago by an offshoot of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

INDIGENOUS ROOTS

For Trujillo, a scholar with ties to Arizona, Michigan, Illinois, New Mexico, California and Indigenous lands in Mexico, the buttonbush's ability to survive and thrive almost anywhere must have felt familiar.

He spent years studying it and collecting specimens, often alongside Cruz-de Hoyos — a postdoctoral fellow researching widespread tree mortality — in a big red van they bought together.

“We were committed to dedicating our lives to environmental conservation and environmental research,” Cruz-de Hoyos told the AP. “We felt that Indigenous hands have taken care of these lands for time immemorial.”

Drawn to Sonora, Trujillo hoped to connect with his Opata Indigenous roots through the group's ancestral lands in the dry, mountainous region. He ultimately wanted to apply his research to building a garden in Mexico and using the buttonbush for wetland restoration. His planned trip included three potential sites to make a final choice.

With shared ancestry in the Nahua Indigenous group, which has ties to the Aztec civilization in central Mexico, the couple pledged to merge their identities and scientific studies as part of their future together.

Cruz-de Hoyos had been undergoing fertility treatments for the last two years and this summer’s trip to Mexico was supposed to be Trujillo’s last before the couple began trying to get pregnant.

They had bought a house together, commissioned custom engagement rings and envisioned a wedding led by an Indigenous elder by the end of the year. They planned to announce their happy news in August, when Trujillo returned from his trip.

Cruz-de Hoyos will instead honor Trujillo with a Danza Azteca ceremony, an Indigenous spiritual tradition, in the San Francisco Bay Area after his father hosts a Catholic funeral Mass in Michigan next month.

'A STAPLER'

Born March 4, 1992, in Arizona, Trujillo's family moved to Michigan during his childhood. Six kids in a blended family in a predominately white neighborhood: "We were like the Mexican Brady Bunch,” his father said.

Trujillo attended a boarding school in New Mexico in high school and received his undergraduate degree from Lake Forest College in Illinois. A Ford Foundation fellow, he was on track to complete his Ph.D. at Berkeley in 2025.

“Gabe was a passionate ecologist, field biologist, and advocate for diverse voices in science,” the university's Department of Integrative Biology wrote in an email to its campus community. “We all face a world that is less bright for this loss.”

His mother, Gloria, died of cancer a decade ago. In addition to his father and Cruz-de Hoyos, Trujillo is survived by five siblings, six nieces and a nephew.

Put him in the same space as the youngsters, his father said, and he'd immediately lead them outside, tromping around for bugs and plants. He often took one niece to a pond in Michigan to search for frogs. She has named a stuffed frog in his honor.

“A 20-minute hike with me would take an hour because he would show me all the plants and mushrooms,” Anthony Trujillo said. “He wanted to learn everything about everything.”

Despite years of academic achievements, Anthony Trujillo kept thinking about his son's grade school project: "If you were an object, how would you describe yourself?”

Gabriel Trujillo, just 8 or 9 years old, wrote that he would be a stapler.

“We all kind of wondered, ‘a stapler?’ Now it kind of makes sense," his father said, choking up. "It holds things together.”

UC Berkeley officials released the following statement on Friday:

"Gabriel Trujillo, a UC Berkeley graduate student who was in Mexico doing field research, was killed last week in Sonora, Mexico. Local police authorities are investigating. This is heartbreaking news and campus officials have reached out to his family to offer support and assistance. Trujillo, a botanist, was a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the department of Integrative Biology. The campus received confirmation of his death on Friday, June 23rd."

Sánchez reported from Mexico City.

This article tagged under:

U.S. Grad Student Brutally Killed on Mexican Field Trip

Gabriel Trujillo’s father says his 31-year-old son was shot seven times.

Pilar Melendez

Senior National Reporter

A 31-year-old California graduate student and botanist was killed last week in Mexico while conducting field research, the school confirmed to The Daily Beast.

Gabriel Trujillo, 31, was a fourth-year Ph.D. student at the University of California Berkeley. His father told the Associated Press that he went missing earlier this month while collecting plant samples in Sonora, Mexico with his body being discovered on June 22, days after his fiancée reported him missing. Anthony Trujillo added that his son was fatally shot seven times and was found in an SUV.

A school spokesperson said that the campus received confirmation of Trujillo’s death last Friday and that “local police authorities are investigating” the “heartbreaking news.”

“Gabe was a passionate ecologist, field biologist, and advocate for diverse voices in science. He was a member of a tightly knit group of graduate students in ecology and his partner is also a member of our campus community,” faculty members in the Department of Integrative Biology said in an email to student and staff, and obtained by The Daily Beast. “We all face a world that is less bright because of this loss.”

Trujillo’s father said that his son’s voyage across the border wasn’t his first—and that he had spent the last four years looking for a shrub called the common buttonbush. In his student profile for his research group, Trujillo said his interests include “studying the forces that drive evolution in tropical plants and insects.”

“More specifically, the rare transition of tropical woody plants into the temperate zone,” the Ph.D. student added. “These types of transitions shape the diversity and structure of forests around the world. My research focuses on how functional plant traits associated with frost tolerance are lost and or gained, and how these traits facilitate species range expansion from their tropical origin into temperate zones.”

The grad student went into Noglaes from Arizona on June 17. The next day, according to AP, he spoke to his fiancée, Rozanne Cruz-de Hoyos, as well as his father. Cruz-de Hoyos, who is also a Ph.D. fellow researching tree mortality, told the outlet that the couple dedicated their lives to conservation and “felt that Indigenous hands have taken care of these lands for time immemorial.”

She added that Trujillo was drawn to Sonora and had hoped to connect with his indigenous roots in the region. On his trip, she said, Trujillo was also looking for potential sites to build a garden for wetland restoration with buttonbush.

But when Trjullo eventually stopped answering her calls and messages, Cruz-de Hoyos became concerned. Days later, on June 22, authorities discovered his body, still inside his SUV, more than 60 miles from his Airbnb, the AP reported.

“Evidently he was in the wrong place,” Anthony Trujillo told the outlet. The Sonora state prosecutor’s office said they are working “to establish the facts, conditions and causes of the death,” but did not provide details into the case or label Trujillo's death a homicide.

A funeral for Trujillo will be held on July 5 and July 6 in Michigan and California. In a GoFundMe dedicated to helping Trujillo’s body be sent from Mexico, family and friends described the botanist as “brilliant, genuine, talented, adventurous, brave, generous, and above all unfailingly kind and loving to everyone.”

“He was a son, brother, cherished family member, fiancé, and friend,” the GoFundMe added. “He was a deeply spiritual Danzante and was reconnecting to his Indigenous Opata and Nahua ancestry.”

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast  here .

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UC Berkeley graduate student shot and killed while doing field research in Mexico

by NBC News Channel

A University of California at Berkeley student is dead after his research took him to a dangerous region near the U.S. - Mexico border.

PH.D. student Gabriel Trujillo was studying a shrub native to the area when his father said he was shot and killed.

The 31-year-old's body was discovered last week in the state of Sonora, in Northwest Mexico.

The state is a key route for smuggling drugs, migrants, cash, and weapons from the South into the U.S.

Local Mexican officials say they are analyzing evidence to "establish the facts, conditions, and causes of the death." They have not provided details about what occurred or ruled Trujillo's death a homicide.

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Bay Area dance group honors UC Berkeley student killed in Mexico

Trujillo, who was on a research trip in Sonora, Mexico, was shot and killed last week. Local authorities are investigating.

ANTIOCH, Calif. (KGO) -- A Bay Area Aztec group is dedicating this danza to Gabriel Trujillo, a UC Berkeley student killed last week in Mexico while doing plant research.

Manuel Garcia said Gabriel Trujillo was introduced to Danza Azteca In Lak'ech in 2017 by a UC Berkeley instructor. The instructor wanted Trujillo to find community.

"From the get-go, you could just tell he's you know, very gentle, very considerate - open," Garcia said.

UC Berkeley released the statement below:

Gabriel Trujillo, a UC Berkeley graduate student who was in Mexico doing field research, was killed last week in Sonora, Mexico. Local police authorities are investigating. This is heartbreaking news and campus officials have reached out to his family to offer support and assistance. Trujillo, a botanist, was a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the department of Integrative Biology. The campus received confirmation of his death on Friday, June 23rd.

Danza Azteca In Lak'ech holds practice every Tuesday and Thursdays. Thursdays practice in Antioch is about honoring Trujillo.

"Danza is not just dance, Danza is a corporal prayer," Garcia said.

Members brought photos, candles and flowers for the altar.

MORE: Americans who survived kidnapping in Mexico share details of captivity: 'None of us deserved it'

"He loved plants that was his life's work, you know, so we have flowers," Garcia said.

Garcia says Trujillo was engaged and met his fiancé through the danza group.

"The thing I want people to focus on is how much love he brought to everyone he was close to. He reminded all of us - I put a post - just remember, he reminded us to love and help one another," Garcia said.

Family members set up a GoFundMe to pay for travel and funeral expenses.

"The way that he went is very traumatic, and he was a very spiritual being, and we want his spirit to travel where it needs to go," Garcia said.

If you're on the ABC7 News app, click here to watch live

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California Ph.D. student's research trip to Mexico ends in violent death: "He was in the wrong place"

June 30, 2023 / 6:20 AM EDT / AP

For four years, Gabriel Trujillo trekked the breadth of the United States and south into Mexico in search of a flowering shrub called the common buttonbush.

The plant is native to the varied climates of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. Trujillo, a 31-year-old Ph.D. student at the University of California, Berkeley, wanted to know why it thrived in such a range of places, and whether the evolution of the species held possibilities for future habitat conservation and restoration efforts.

The research was tragically cut short last week in Mexico, where Trujillo's father said he was shot seven times. Authorities discovered his body on June 22 in the state of Sonora, in northwest Mexico, days after his fiancée reported him missing.

"The wrong place"

Trujillo drove across the Arizona border into Nogales on June 17. He spoke to his father the next day and he and his fiancée, Roxanne Cruz-de Hoyos, chatted in the morning the day after that. He told her he was going out to collect plants and would return to his Airbnb later.

Cruz-de Hoyos became concerned when Trujillo didn't respond to her phone calls and text messages - they normally talked several times a day - and his Airbnb hosts said his belongings were still there but he hadn't returned. She bought a plane ticket the next day and flew down to Mexico to search.

On June 22, authorities discovered his body about 62 miles from the Airbnb. He was still inside his SUV, Cruz-de Hoyos said.

She identified him for Mexican authorities as his father rushed to get a flight out of Michigan. Both have received little information about the tragedy and are begging for the U.S. and Mexican governments for answers.

"Evidently he was in the wrong place," Anthony Trujillo told The Associated Press on Thursday while he waited to board a flight back home, his son's remains beside him.

The Sonora state prosecutor's office said in a statement Thursday that it is analyzing evidence "to establish the facts, conditions and causes of the death." The statement did not give details about what occurred or call Trujillo's death a homicide.

His family begged him not to go to such a dangerous place: Sonora recorded 518 homicides through May, according to federal government data. But Trujillo believed the trip was crucial to his research.

Sharing a lengthy border with the U.S., Sonora is a key route for smuggling drugs, especially fentanyl, as well as migrants, cash and weapons between the U.S. and the Sinaloa state, and the infamous cartel of the same name, further south.

Sonora has long been critical territory for Mexico's drug cartels and in recent years those rivalries have increased the level of violence and sometimes left civilian victims.

Cartel gunmen killed three U.S. women and six of their children near the border of Sonora and Chihuahua states in 2019. The Americans lived in communities founded decades ago by an offshoot of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Indigenous roots

For Trujillo, a scholar with ties to Arizona, Michigan, Illinois, New Mexico, California and Indigenous lands in Mexico, the buttonbush's ability to survive and thrive almost anywhere must have felt familiar.

He spent years studying it and collecting specimens, often alongside Cruz-de Hoyos - a postdoctoral fellow researching widespread tree mortality - in a big red van they bought together.

"We were committed to dedicating our lives to environmental conservation and environmental research," Cruz-de Hoyos told the AP. "We felt that Indigenous hands have taken care of these lands for time immemorial."

Drawn to Sonora, Trujillo hoped to connect with his Opata Indigenous roots through the group's ancestral lands in the dry, mountainous region. He ultimately wanted to apply his research to building a garden in Mexico and using the buttonbush for wetland restoration. His planned trip included three potential sites to make a final choice.

With shared ancestry in the Nahua Indigenous group, which has ties to the Aztec civilization in central Mexico, the couple pledged to merge their identities and scientific studies as part of their future together.

Cruz-de Hoyos had been undergoing fertility treatments for the last two years and this summer's trip to Mexico was supposed to be Trujillo's last before the couple began trying to get pregnant.

They had bought a house together, commissioned custom engagement rings and envisioned a wedding led by an Indigenous elder by the end of the year. They planned to announce their happy news in August, when Trujillo returned from his trip.

Cruz-de Hoyos will instead honor Trujillo with a Danza Azteca ceremony, an Indigenous spiritual tradition, in the San Francisco Bay Area after his father hosts a Catholic funeral Mass in Michigan next month.

"A stapler"

Born March 4, 1992, in Arizona, Trujillo's family moved to Michigan during his childhood. Six kids in a blended family in a predominately white neighborhood: "We were like the Mexican Brady Bunch," his father said.

Trujillo attended a boarding school in New Mexico in high school and received his undergraduate degree from Lake Forest College in Illinois. A Ford Foundation fellow, he was on track to complete his Ph.D. at Berkeley in 2025.

"Gabe was a passionate ecologist, field biologist, and advocate for diverse voices in science," the university's Department of Integrative Biology wrote in an email to its campus community. "We all face a world that is less bright for this loss."

His mother, Gloria, died of cancer a decade ago. In addition to his father and Cruz-de Hoyos, Trujillo is survived by five siblings, six nieces and a nephew.

Put him in the same space as the youngsters, his father said, and he'd immediately lead them outside, tromping around for bugs and plants. He often took one niece to a pond in Michigan to search for frogs. She has named a stuffed frog in his honor.

"A 20-minute hike with me would take an hour because he would show me all the plants and mushrooms," Anthony Trujillo said. "He wanted to learn everything about everything."

Despite years of academic achievements, Anthony Trujillo kept thinking about his son's grade school project: "If you were an object, how would you describe yourself?"

Gabriel Trujillo, just 8 or 9 years old, wrote that he would be a stapler.

"We all kind of wondered, 'a stapler?' Now it kind of makes sense," his father said, choking up. "It holds things together."

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A California scholar’s research into a flowering shrub took him to Mexico and a violent death

In a photo provided by Roxanne Cruz-de Hoyos, Gabriel Trujillo conducts field research for his doctorate in Arizona. His research across North America was tragically cut short last week in Mexico, where Trujillo’s father says he was shot seven times. Authorities discovered his body on June 22 in the state of Sonora, in northwest Mexico — days after his fiancée reported him missing. (Roxanne Cruz-de Hoyos via AP)

In a photo provided by Roxanne Cruz-de Hoyos, Gabriel Trujillo, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, conducts field research in Mexico. His research across North America was tragically cut short last week in Mexico, where Trujillo’s father says he was shot seven times. Authorities discovered his body on June 22 in the state of Sonora, in northwest Mexico — days after his fiancée reported him missing. (Roxanne Cruz-de Hoyos via AP)

In a photo provided by Roxanne Cruz-de Hoyos, Gabriel Trujillo, a University of California Ph.D. student, conducts field research in Arizona. Trujillo’s family says he was killed in Mexico in June 2023 while doing fieldwork there for his doctorate. (Roxanne Cruz-de Hoyos via AP)

In a photo provided by Roxanne Cruz-de Hoyos, Gabriel Trujillo and and his fiancée, Roxanne Cruz-de Hoyos, right pose for a photo. For four years, Trujillo trekked across North America — from Michigan to Mexico, coast to coast — in search of a flowering shrub called the common buttonbush. The research was tragically cut short last week in Mexico, where Trujillo’s father says he was shot seven times. Authorities discovered his body on June 22 in the state of Sonora, in northwest Mexico — days after his fiancée reported him missing. (Roxanne Cruz-de Hoyos via AP)

• Copy Link copied

LOS ANGELES (AP) — For four years, Gabriel Trujillo trekked the breadth of the United States and south into Mexico in search of a flowering shrub called the common buttonbush.

The plant is native to the varied climates of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. Trujillo, a 31-year-old Ph.D. student at the University of California, Berkeley, wanted to know why it thrived in such a range of places, and whether the evolution of the species held possibilities for future habitat conservation and restoration efforts.

The research was tragically cut short last week in Mexico, where Trujillo’s father said he was shot seven times. Authorities discovered his body on June 22 in the state of Sonora, in northwest Mexico, days after his fiancée reported him missing.

The killing has left the family reeling and searching for answers in a case that has yet again highlighted the rampant violence that plagues Mexico locations controlled by drug cartels.

‘THE WRONG PLACE’

Trujillo drove across the Arizona border into Nogales on June 17. He spoke to his father the next day and he and his fiancée, Roxanne Cruz-de Hoyos, chatted in the morning the day after that. He told her he was going out to collect plants and would return to his Airbnb later.

Cruz-de Hoyos became concerned when Trujillo didn’t respond to her phone calls and text messages — they normally talked several times a day — and his Airbnb hosts said his belongings were still there but he hadn’t returned. She bought a plane ticket the next day and flew down to Mexico to search.

On June 22, authorities discovered his body about 62 miles (100 kilometers) from the Airbnb. He was still inside his SUV, Cruz-de Hoyos said.

She identified him for Mexican authorities as his father rushed to get a flight out of Michigan. Both have received little information about the tragedy and are begging for the U.S. and Mexican governments for answers.

“Evidently he was in the wrong place,” Anthony Trujillo told The Associated Press on Thursday while he waited to board a flight back home, his son’s remains beside him.

The Sonora state prosecutor’s office said in a statement Thursday that it is analyzing evidence “to establish the facts, conditions and causes of the death.” The statement did not give details about what occurred or call Trujillo’s death a homicide.

His family begged him not to go to such a dangerous place : Sonora recorded 518 homicides through May, according to federal government data. But Trujillo believed the trip was crucial to his research.

Sharing a lengthy border with the U.S. , Sonora is a key route for smuggling drugs, especially fentanyl, as well as migrants, cash and weapons between the U.S. and the Sinaloa state, and the infamous cartel of the same name , further south.

Sonora has long been critical territory for Mexico’s drug cartels and in recent years those rivalries have increased the level of violence and sometimes left civilian victims.

Cartel gunmen killed three U.S. women and six of their children near the border of Sonora and Chihuahua states in 2019. The Americans lived in communities founded decades ago by an offshoot of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

INDIGENOUS ROOTS

For Trujillo, a scholar with ties to Arizona, Michigan, Illinois, New Mexico, California and Indigenous lands in Mexico, the buttonbush’s ability to survive and thrive almost anywhere must have felt familiar.

He spent years studying it and collecting specimens, often alongside Cruz-de Hoyos — a postdoctoral fellow researching widespread tree mortality — in a big red van they bought together.

“We were committed to dedicating our lives to environmental conservation and environmental research,” Cruz-de Hoyos told the AP. “We felt that Indigenous hands have taken care of these lands for time immemorial.”

Drawn to Sonora, Trujillo hoped to connect with his Opata Indigenous roots through the group’s ancestral lands in the dry, mountainous region. He ultimately wanted to apply his research to building a garden in Mexico and using the buttonbush for wetland restoration. His planned trip included three potential sites to make a final choice.

With shared ancestry in the Nahua Indigenous group, which has ties to the Aztec civilization in central Mexico, the couple pledged to merge their identities and scientific studies as part of their future together.

Cruz-de Hoyos had been undergoing fertility treatments for the last two years and this summer’s trip to Mexico was supposed to be Trujillo’s last before the couple began trying to get pregnant.

They had bought a house together, commissioned custom engagement rings and envisioned a wedding led by an Indigenous elder by the end of the year. They planned to announce their happy news in August, when Trujillo returned from his trip.

Cruz-de Hoyos will instead honor Trujillo with a Danza Azteca ceremony, an Indigenous spiritual tradition, in the San Francisco Bay Area after his father hosts a Catholic funeral Mass in Michigan next month.

‘A STAPLER’

Born March 4, 1992, in Arizona, Trujillo’s family moved to Michigan during his childhood. Six kids in a blended family in a predominately white neighborhood: “We were like the Mexican Brady Bunch,” his father said.

Trujillo attended a boarding school in New Mexico in high school and received his undergraduate degree from Lake Forest College in Illinois. A Ford Foundation fellow, he was on track to complete his Ph.D. at Berkeley in 2025.

“Gabe was a passionate ecologist, field biologist, and advocate for diverse voices in science,” the university’s Department of Integrative Biology wrote in an email to its campus community. “We all face a world that is less bright for this loss.”

His mother, Gloria, died of cancer a decade ago. In addition to his father and Cruz-de Hoyos, Trujillo is survived by five siblings, six nieces and a nephew.

Put him in the same space as the youngsters, his father said, and he’d immediately lead them outside, tromping around for bugs and plants. He often took one niece to a pond in Michigan to search for frogs. She has named a stuffed frog in his honor.

“A 20-minute hike with me would take an hour because he would show me all the plants and mushrooms,” Anthony Trujillo said. “He wanted to learn everything about everything.”

Despite years of academic achievements, Anthony Trujillo kept thinking about his son’s grade school project: “If you were an object, how would you describe yourself?”

Gabriel Trujillo, just 8 or 9 years old, wrote that he would be a stapler.

“We all kind of wondered, ‘a stapler?’ Now it kind of makes sense,” his father said, choking up. “It holds things together.”

Sánchez reported from Mexico City.

Beloved Cal Berkeley student shot and killed in Mexico during research expedition

L os Angeles — For four years, Gabriel Trujillo trekked the breadth of the United States and south into Mexico in search of a flowering shrub called the common buttonbush .

The plant is native to the varied climates of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. Trujillo, a 31-year-old Ph.D. student at the University of California, Berkeley , wanted to know why it thrived in such a range of places, and whether the evolution of the species held possibilities for future habitat conservation and restoration efforts.

The research was tragically cut short last week in Mexico, where Trujillo’s father said he was shot seven times. Authorities discovered his body on June 22 in the state of Sonora, in northwest Mexico, days after his fiancée reported him missing.

Start the day smarter. Get all the news you need in your inbox each morning.

The killing has left the family reeling and searching for answers in a case that has yet again highlighted the rampant violence that plagues Mexico locations controlled by drug cartels.

Trujillo insisted trip was crucial for research, but family protested

Trujillo drove across the Arizona border into Nogales on June 17. He spoke to his father the next day and he and his fiancée, Roxanne Cruz-de Hoyos, chatted in the morning the day after that. He told her he was going out to collect plants and would return to his Airbnb later.

Cruz-de Hoyos became concerned when Trujillo didn't respond to her phone calls and text messages — they normally talked several times a day — and his Airbnb hosts said his belongings were still there but he hadn't returned. She bought a plane ticket the next day and flew down to Mexico to search.

On June 22, authorities discovered his body about 62 miles (100 kilometers) from the Airbnb. He was still inside his SUV, Cruz-de Hoyos said.

She identified him for Mexican authorities as his father rushed to get a flight out of Michigan. Both have received little information about the tragedy and are begging for the U.S. and Mexican governments for answers.

“Evidently he was in the wrong place,” Anthony Trujillo told The Associated Press on Thursday while he waited to board a flight back home, his son’s remains beside him.

The Sonora state prosecutor’s office said in a statement Thursday that it is analyzing evidence “to establish the facts, conditions and causes of the death.” The statement did not give details about what occurred or call Trujillo’s death a homicide.

His family begged him not to go to such  a dangerous place : Sonora recorded 518 homicides through May, according to federal government data. But Trujillo believed the trip was crucial to his research.

Sharing a  lengthy border with the U.S. , Sonora is a key route for smuggling drugs, especially fentanyl, as well as migrants, cash and weapons between the U.S. and the Sinaloa state, and the  infamous cartel of the same name , further south.

Sonora has long been critical territory for  Mexico’s drug cartels  and in recent years those rivalries have increased the level of violence and sometimes left civilian victims.

Cartel gunmen killed three U.S. women and six of their children near the border of Sonora and Chihuahua states in 2019. The Americans lived in  communities founded decades ago by an offshoot  of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

ICYMI: 13-year-old girl last seen in Denver on June 19 prompts missing-persons investigation

His call to study the environment was inspired by Indigenous lineage

For Trujillo, a scholar with ties to Arizona, Michigan, Illinois, New Mexico, California and Indigenous lands in Mexico, the buttonbush's ability to survive and thrive almost anywhere must have felt familiar.

He spent years studying it and collecting specimens, often alongside Cruz-de Hoyos — a postdoctoral fellow researching widespread tree mortality — in a big red van they bought together.

“We were committed to dedicating our lives to environmental conservation and environmental research,” Cruz-de Hoyos told the AP. “We felt that Indigenous hands have taken care of these lands for time immemorial.”

Drawn to Sonora, Trujillo hoped to connect with his Opata Indigenous roots through the group's ancestral lands in the dry, mountainous region. He ultimately wanted to apply his research to building a garden in Mexico and using the buttonbush for wetland restoration. His planned trip included three potential sites to make a final choice.

With shared ancestry in the Nahua Indigenous group, which has ties to the Aztec civilization in central Mexico, the couple pledged to merge their identities and scientific studies as part of their future together.

Cruz-de Hoyos had been undergoing fertility treatments for the last two years and this summer’s trip to Mexico was supposed to be Trujillo’s last before the couple began trying to get pregnant.

They had bought a house together, commissioned custom engagement rings and envisioned a wedding led by an Indigenous elder by the end of the year. They planned to announce their happy news in August, when Trujillo returned from his trip.

Cruz-de Hoyos will instead honor Trujillo with a Danza Azteca ceremony, an Indigenous spiritual tradition, in the San Francisco Bay Area after his father hosts a Catholic funeral Mass in Michigan next month.

More: After Yarnell, experts look to Indigenous practices to slow wildfire growth

Father says they were like 'the Mexican Brady Bunch'

Born March 4, 1992, in Arizona, Trujillo's family moved to Michigan during his childhood. Six kids in a blended family in a predominately white neighborhood: "We were like the Mexican Brady Bunch,” his father said.

Trujillo attended a boarding school in New Mexico in high school and received his undergraduate degree from Lake Forest College in Illinois. A Ford Foundation fellow, he was on track to complete his Ph.D. at Berkeley in 2025.

“Gabe was a passionate ecologist, field biologist, and advocate for diverse voices in science,” the university's Department of Integrative Biology wrote in an email to its campus community. “We all face a world that is less bright for this loss.”

His mother, Gloria, died of cancer a decade ago. In addition to his father and Cruz-de Hoyos, Trujillo is survived by five siblings, six nieces and a nephew.

Put him in the same space as the youngsters, his father said, and he'd immediately lead them outside, tromping around for bugs and plants. He often took one niece to a pond in Michigan to search for frogs. She has named a stuffed frog in his honor.

“A 20-minute hike with me would take an hour because he would show me all the plants and mushrooms,” Anthony Trujillo said. “He wanted to learn everything about everything.”

Despite years of academic achievements, Anthony Trujillo kept thinking about his son's grade school project: "If you were an object, how would you describe yourself?”

Gabriel Trujillo, just 8 or 9 years old, wrote that he would be a stapler.

“We all kind of wondered, ‘a stapler?’ Now it kind of makes sense," his father said, choking up. "It holds things together.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Beloved Cal Berkeley student shot and killed in Mexico during research expedition

Bloodshed in Taxco: The Holy Thursday that shocked Mexico

El país reconstructs the murder of a girl and the lynching of the alleged culprit in the state of guerrero, where furious residents have taken justice into their own hands against the backdrop of organized crime.

During Holy Week, all the demons were unleashed in Taxco , one of the most beautiful towns in Mexico. It’s a white hamlet perched on a hill, with steep stone streets, ornate churches and steep alleys that exhaust the local children. On Wednesday, March 27, while on vacation during the religious holiday, an eight-year-old girl named Camila walked up one of those alleys, so that she could go over to a friend’s house and play with her in the inflatable pool. It wasn’t the first time that she made this short trip, but it was the last time she was seen alive, in an image recorded on a security camera that a resident installed after an attempted robbery some time ago.

Before the body was found a few miles from the town, dozens of Taxqueños gathered in front of a house for hours, waiting for the police to arrest the alleged culprits: a woman and two of her children. However, the mob ended up raiding the house and dragging the detainees down the alley. The woman, Ana Rosa, was beaten to death, while her two boys were left badly injured, due to inaction on the part of the officers. Death and revenge were covered by dozens of journalists, who had originally come to cover the town’s famous Holy Week. In the end, they encountered real-life bloodshed.

According to the autopsy, there was no swimming pool in the house where Camila died from asphyxiation. At the top of the narrow alley — which ends after climbing more than 50 steps and several ramps —, plastic police tape attempts to block the way to a patio where some plants are lined up. The open door reveals a shabby space of about 200 square feet: a kitchen, a dining room and a bedroom. In the left corner, there’s a bare mattress. A couple of feet away from it, there’s a table strewn with sleeping pills. More pills can be found on the small, uncomfortable sofa. Everything is in motionless disorder in the hut, with its earthen floor and tin roof. A washing machine sits on the patio, near the only toilet.

“How could there be a pool, if there isn’t even a proper floor?” a neighbor points out from across the street. She lives just six or seven feet away from the rocky hallway that belonged to the woman who was lynched. Her grandson has played in the house, with Camila and one of Ana Rosa’s daughters. Apparently, it was Ana Rosa who asked Camila to come over and swim in the inflatable pool on the afternoon of March 27th.

The limited information provided by the police has given way to statements from local residents and family members of the victim. It’s known that, shortly after the girl disappeared, a ransom request for 250,000 pesos — or about $15,000 — arrived on her mother’s cell phone. “The murderer” — as the neighbors now call Ana Rosa — claimed that Camila had never responded to her invitation. But it’s clear that she didn’t count on the private security cameras in the alleyway, which captured Camila’s image. Nor did she count on the cameras belonging to the building down the road, where the alleged culprit and a taxi driver — known in town by the name José — are recorded putting a package wrapped in a black bag and some clothes in the trunk of a car. José has been detained: some residents say that he was Ana Rosa’s boyfriend. “What nonsense, she was with a [bus driver]. The cabby wasn’t her partner,” the next-door neighbor tells EL PAÍS.

This is a story that involves taxi drivers, considered to be a professional group that is heavily linked to organized crime in the state of Guerrero, a turbulent and violent southwestern Mexican state, where the town of Taxco is located. “You hear gunshots on most nights,” another neighbor notes. However, for a few days in the area there’s been relative calm, given the presence of a couple of state police officers who are protecting Camila’s mother, Margarita. They’re posted outside the door of the deceased girl’s house. And, down the road, a couple of other uniformed men guard the area, day and night.

Why so much protection for the victims? Well, the husband of the lynched woman — a taxi driver — was killed some time ago. Her two sons — now beaten and detained — are also taxi drivers. And the man who came to pick up the little girl’s body is also of the same profession. The residents of Garden Street pronounce the classic words of those who don’t want to say too much — words that are often heard throughout Mexico: “They were on the wrong path.”

From time to time, Guerrero’s capital, Chilpancigo, is torn apart by torched taxis and buses, as armed groups scramble for their share of the pie. Taxi drivers are easy prey for organized crime . They are extorted into serving the cartels. In taxis, you can transport illegal merchandise easily: the drivers go all over the place, they know the roads, and they know where everyone lives. And woe to those who don’t. Recent images shocked Mexico when hitmen beat taxi drivers in Acapulco, because they hadn’t given them the information they demanded.

Ana Rosa — the lynched woman — often used to ask fellow residents: “So, you have a kid in the United States? Do you send them money?” A shopkeeper tells EL PAÍS that she used to respond to all her questions, without understanding the intention behind them. And it turns out that Camila’s mother also has a husband in the United States (according to some versions, he’s her ex-husband). Nobody in town knows if he attended his daughter’s funeral.

Acapulco , like Taxco, is a very touristy city. And crime is no longer limited to drugs: any business that makes money becomes involved. Tourism is another goose that lays golden eggs.

Between the night of Wednesday and the afternoon of Holy Thursday, just hours before the religious processions began through the streets, tension broke out in front of Ana Rosa’s house. A question lingered as curious locals — and half of the country — watched the outcome of the crime, which is now (according to protocol) being investigated as a case of femicide.

Why didn’t the police remove the suspects from the house? Long hours passed with the crowd gathered, until chaos broke out. Residents knocked down the doors and dragged out the woman and her two sons, who — supposedly — had arrived in their taxis while the events were unfolding. No one knows if the little girl and the older girl — about 14-years-old — were in the house at the time. But they weren’t seen. Later on, “the oldest came out and hugged her boyfriend, crying: ‘My mom, my mom,’” says the neighbor, who, more than two weeks later, still carries fear in her body. At the time, the police didn’t let anybody in the vicinity leave their house. Everyone barricaded themselves in, with the curtains drawn.

Ana Rosa was dragged down the alley and to the road, where dozens of shouting people crowded around her. Journalists recorded the bloody afternoon via drones. Surely there has never been such a detailed record of a lynching. The case regarding the illegality of the mob’s violence has been resolved, without even knowing whether or not the woman is guilty. The corpse looks like an abused puppet, destroyed with a fury that dwarfed the Holy Week processions, when the faithful of Taxco carry bundles of thorns as penance.

In the video, Ana Rosa is in the hands of men and women, who vent at her with rage. “Kill the bitch, break her ribs. In her face, in her face,” they shout, inciting those who kick her. “It’s less than you deserve... You don’t touch girls,” voices are heard in chorus — as if it were an ordinary demonstration — while they end the life of a woman, who is denied the right to respond. It’s of no use for Ana Rosa to cling to the legs of a police officer, who remains aloof.

The agents eventually manage to lift her into the back of a patrol vehicle, as well as one of her children, whose face is bloodied. But the crowd doesn’t stop. They keep beating the woman: they pull her black hair, they tear off her shirt, they kick her head, and they manage to get her out of the van to continue the assault. The journalists — breathing heavily — report all of this live, without believing what they’re seeing. They don’t understand why the patrol doesn’t start the engine and take off with the wounded, instead of letting the locals get their hands on her. A new group of officers from the National Guard removes the boys from the tumult: one is already in prison, while the other — only 17-years-old — is confined to a juvenile detention center, awaiting a judicial process. Their mother, however, suffers a different fate. Practically dead, she’s put back into the police van, which, instead of rushing her to the hospital, deposits her in the Prosecutor’s Office. She has to be carried in, with her head lifeless, hair falling to the ground.

The statements made by the mayor of Taxco, Mario Figueroa Mundo, and the secretary in charge of security in this town of just over 105,000 inhabitants, Doroteo Eugenio Vázquez, have just put the icing on the cake of stupefaction. Why didn’t they take the woman to the hospital? “They didn’t know the seriousness [of her injuries]; the police don’t have medical knowledge. What we intended was to protect her at the Prosecutor’s Office. If she had been taken to the hospital, the mob would have gone there and we would have had no way to protect her,” the mayor claimed. The local authorities hid behind the town’s poor policing capacity, which, according to them, wasn’t supported by higher powers. Hence the delay in removing the suspects and putting them in custody, as well as the inaction of the agents before the crazed mob. Officers didn’t fire a single shot in the air throughout the lynching, even though the police in Mexico tend to be quick to fire. If the suspect could have offered testimony about who exactly was behind the kidnapping and death of the girl, we’ll never know. Her mouth has been permanently sealed.

To complete the chaos, Chief of Police Doroteo Eugenio Vázquez was missing throughout the incident. He ultimately blamed the dead girl’s mother for not having adequately protected her daughter. “There was a maternal responsibility and there’s an omission, because if, as a father, I have a child, I must monitor them, guide them, orient them. In this case, the lady supposedly let the girl out of her sight without taking the pertinent security measures,” he declared to the media. Six long days later, he resigned from his position.

Mexico is a country long-accustomed to lynchings. Years ago, they were limited to rural areas and were attributed to ancestral rites that time hasn’t been able to dispel, or to the population’s fatigue with justice that never arrives. Oftentimes, groundless gossip turns into revenge against strangers; anger at misery and institutional abandonment is unleashed. But lynchings aren’t just relegated to the countryside anymore . Experts maintain that the prevalence of organized crime has also brought lynchings to urban areas of Mexico, which are similarly affected by enormous pockets of hardship.

“We now have evidence that many cases have been orchestrated or promoted by organized crime. They’re not isolated incidents — there’s a direct responsibility [on the part] of these criminals,” affirmed Tadeo Luna, a criminologist and student of this social phenomenon at the Ibero-American University of Puebla, in a 2023 interview with EL PAÍS . In the case of Camila, both circumstances could have occurred: the fury of the inhabitants, angered by the death of the little girl, asking for justice and taking matters into their own hands, or maybe organized crime had a role in a town that, in recent months, has experienced terrible violence. At times, transportation has been halted — schools and businesses have been shuttered. The mayor’s car was even shot up. Once known as the city of silver, Taxco is losing its shine because of armed groups.

Today, the criminologist from Puebla says that perhaps the police showed inaction because they feared the angry crowd. He also suggests that “in many cases, [the officers] don’t know how to [handle the situation], because there are very few states that have an action protocol for cases of lynching,” he adds. But his underlying thesis is that “lynching is functional for the state, in the sense that it diverts violence in a different direction. It allows for people to take justice into their own hands. The authorities are more comfortable with this, rather than with people organizing together to demand security, justice and speed in investigations.”

With this logic, he continues: “If the authorities act, it places them at the center of violence. And that’s not convenient for them.” Case closed. And perhaps criminal groups also prefer the alleged culprits to be dead, rather than for them to make statements to the police. In any case, in Taxco, the authorities have promised the typical investigation and fight against impunity.

Between Flower Street and Garden Street, there’s a distance of barely 300 feet. Young Camila took this route one afternoon, never to return. Her body is already buried, and the residents added another, as part of a recurring phenomenon of lynchings. This second killing has dismayed the little girl’s mother — and not only because she was a friend and neighbor of Ana Rosa. “I wanted her kept alive, so that she could suffer for the same amount of time that I’m going to suffer, rotting in prison for what she did.”

Translated by Avik Jain Chatlani.

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Outbreak of blood and fire: The lynching of Daniel Picazo in a public square in Mexico

Mexican political adviser burned alive in public lynching

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Research trip in Mexico tragically cut short after UC Berkeley PhD student gets fatally shot 7 times

The student at the university of california, berkeley, was in search of a flowering shrub in mexico.

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For four years, Gabriel Trujillo trekked the breadth of the United States and south into Mexico in search of a flowering shrub called the common buttonbush.

The plant is native to the varied climates of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. Trujillo, a 31-year-old Ph.D. student at the University of California, Berkeley, wanted to know why it thrived in such a range of places, and whether the evolution of the species held possibilities for future habitat conservation and restoration efforts.

The research was tragically cut short last week in Mexico, where Trujillo’s father said he was shot seven times. Authorities discovered his body on June 22 in the state of Sonora, in northwest Mexico, days after his fiancée reported him missing.

The killing has left the family reeling and searching for answers in a case that has yet again highlighted the rampant violence that plagues Mexico locations controlled by drug cartels.

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‘The Wrong Place’

Trujillo drove across the Arizona border into Nogales on June 17. He spoke to his father the next day and he and his fiancée, Roxanne Cruz-de Hoyos, chatted in the morning the day after that. He told her he was going out to collect plants and would return to his Airbnb later.

Cruz-de Hoyos became concerned when Trujillo didn't respond to her phone calls and text messages — they normally talked several times a day — and his Airbnb hosts said his belongings were still there but he hadn't returned. She bought a plane ticket the next day and flew down to Mexico to search.

On June 22, authorities discovered his body about 62 miles from the Airbnb. He was still inside his SUV, Cruz-de Hoyos said.

She identified him for Mexican authorities as his father rushed to get a flight out of Michigan. Both have received little information about the tragedy and are begging for the U.S. and Mexican governments for answers.

"Evidently he was in the wrong place," Anthony Trujillo told The Associated Press on Thursday while he waited to board a flight back home, his son’s remains beside him.

Gabriel Trujillo conducts field research in Arizona. His research across North America was tragically cut short after his body was found shot in Mexico. (Roxanne Cruz-de Hoyos via AP)

The Sonora state prosecutor’s office said in a statement Thursday that it is analyzing evidence "to establish the facts, conditions and causes of the death." The statement did not give details about what occurred or call Trujillo’s death a homicide.

His family begged him not to go to such a dangerous place: Sonora recorded 518 homicides through May, according to federal government data. But Trujillo believed the trip was crucial to his research.

Sharing a lengthy border with the U.S., Sonora is a key route for smuggling drugs, especially fentanyl, as well as migrants, cash and weapons between the U.S. and the Sinaloa state, and the infamous cartel of the same name, further south.

Sonora has long been critical territory for Mexico’s drug cartels and in recent years those rivalries have increased the level of violence and sometimes left civilian victims.

Cartel gunmen killed three U.S. women and six of their children near the border of Sonora and Chihuahua states in 2019. The Americans lived in communities founded decades ago by an offshoot of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

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Indigenous Roots

For Trujillo, a scholar with ties to Arizona, Michigan, Illinois, New Mexico, California and Indigenous lands in Mexico, the buttonbush's ability to survive and thrive almost anywhere must have felt familiar.

He spent years studying it and collecting specimens, often alongside Cruz-de Hoyos — a postdoctoral fellow researching widespread tree mortality — in a big red van they bought together.

"We were committed to dedicating our lives to environmental conservation and environmental research," Cruz-de Hoyos told the AP. "We felt that Indigenous hands have taken care of these lands for time immemorial."

Drawn to Sonora, Trujillo hoped to connect with his Opata Indigenous roots through the group's ancestral lands in the dry, mountainous region. He ultimately wanted to apply his research to building a garden in Mexico and using the buttonbush for wetland restoration. His planned trip included three potential sites to make a final choice.

With shared ancestry in the Nahua Indigenous group, which has ties to the Aztec civilization in central Mexico, the couple pledged to merge their identities and scientific studies as part of their future together.

Cruz-de Hoyos had been undergoing fertility treatments for the last two years and this summer’s trip to Mexico was supposed to be Trujillo’s last before the couple began trying to get pregnant.

They had bought a house together, commissioned custom engagement rings and envisioned a wedding led by an Indigenous elder by the end of the year. They planned to announce their happy news in August, when Trujillo returned from his trip.

Cruz-de Hoyos will instead honor Trujillo with a Danza Azteca ceremony, an Indigenous spiritual tradition, in the San Francisco Bay Area after his father hosts a Catholic funeral Mass in Michigan next month.

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'A Stapler'

Born March 4, 1992, in Arizona, Trujillo's family moved to Michigan during his childhood. Six kids in a blended family in a predominately white neighborhood: "We were like the Mexican Brady Bunch," his father said.

Trujillo attended a boarding school in New Mexico in high school and received his undergraduate degree from Lake Forest College in Illinois. A Ford Foundation fellow, he was on track to complete his Ph.D. at Berkeley in 2025.

"Gabe was a passionate ecologist, field biologist, and advocate for diverse voices in science," the university's Department of Integrative Biology wrote in an email to its campus community. "We all face a world that is less bright for this loss."

His mother, Gloria, died of cancer a decade ago. In addition to his father and Cruz-de Hoyos, Trujillo is survived by five siblings, six nieces and a nephew.

Put him in the same space as the youngsters, his father said, and he'd immediately lead them outside, tromping around for bugs and plants. He often took one niece to a pond in Michigan to search for frogs. She has named a stuffed frog in his honor.

"A 20-minute hike with me would take an hour because he would show me all the plants and mushrooms," Anthony Trujillo said. "He wanted to learn everything about everything."

Despite years of academic achievements, Anthony Trujillo kept thinking about his son's grade school project: "If you were an object, how would you describe yourself?"

Gabriel Trujillo, just 8 or 9 years old, wrote that he would be a stapler.

"We all kind of wondered, ‘a stapler?’ Now it kind of makes sense," his father said, choking up. "It holds things together."

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Florida pre-med student stabs mother more than 70 times, killing her during visit, authorities say

A Florida pre-med university student killed his mother by stabbing her over 70 times without saying a word when he visited her from college over the weekend, authorities said.

After Emmanuel Espinoza, 21, killed his mother on Saturday, he perplexedly told detectives that he loved her and that they had a good relationship — but that he had wanted to kill her for years because she irritated him, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said.

Espinoza has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of his mother, 46-year-old Elvia Espinoza, the sheriff's office said.

The student at the University of Florida in Gainesville had traveled to Frostproof, Florida, for a family event Saturday and was going to stay with his mother, Judd said .

He arrived at her home around 2 p.m., knocked on the front door, and seemingly without provocation stabbed her "many times" after she opened the door, Judd said.

On Sunday, Judd shared doorbell camera video from Elvia's home that showed Emmanuel approach with a small knife in his right hand, hidden behind his back, and knock on the door. Judd said that Emmanuel had put AirPods in his ears and was playing Kanye West and Jay-Z's song “No Church in the Wild” when he drove up to the house and knocked on the front door. 

“His beautiful mother, who was so excited to see her son, opened the door. The second she opened the door, he charged in and started stabbing her,” Judd said.

The mother ran from him, but "he stabbed her until she fell down and died."

Judd said Emmanuel confessed to stabbing his mother repeatedly, even when he noticed her hands were still moving. He told detectives that he knew where to stab her for maximum effect because of his biology classes. 

Emmanuel told detectives that he had cut his hand in the stabbing. When he went to the kitchen sink to wash himself and the knife off, "he wanted to ask his mother for the Neosporin for the cut on his hand, but he noticed she was dead," Judd said.

Emmanuel immediately dialed 911 and confessed to operators. 

Audio of the dispatch call was played for reporters Sunday.

“I killed someone,” Emmanuel is heard telling dispatch. “I stabbed my mom.”

When Emmanuel spoke with detectives, he told them he loved his mother and had a good relationship with her but that she irritated him.

“We talked to him and he confessed. He said, 'You know, I have wanted to kill my mother for many, many years because she got on my nerves,'" Judd said.

When asked, "What’s your relationship with your mother?" Espinoza replied: "About a eight out of 10."

"He really loved her, but she irritated him and he made up his mind today on his way from Gainesville that he would murder her, and that’s exactly what he did," Judd said Saturday.

The sheriff said Emmanuel told detectives he wasn't on drugs or alcohol at the time of the stabbing — nor did he have any history of such abuse or mental health issues, no arrest record and there was no record of calls under the Baker Act (which focuses on crisis services for individuals with mental illness) to the home.

Emmanuel was known to be introverted and quiet, with zero issues, Judd told reporters. He was the Class of 2020 valedictorian at his high school and was "described as being a genius."

"[Elvia] wanted to come see him because she hadn’t seen him in a while. They text every day, every other day, they stay in constant contact. No issues over money. She would send him money to make sure she appropriately funded his ability to go to college and enjoy his college life. No argument that day. He never said a word to her," Judd said.

Elvia Espinoza was a mother of three and beloved second-grade teacher at Ben Hill Griffin Elementary in Frostproof, and was "well-loved" by the community, the sheriff's office said, calling the incident "an inexplicable vicious murder."

“I want you to understand this lady who was a school teacher for 20 years actually moved around and taught at different schools while her kids were in school so she could be close to them,” Judd said. “I want you to understand that she was the perfect mom. I want you to understand that she was very proud of his accomplishments.”

“Then I want you to understand that he viciously murdered her and confessed to it,” he added.

Polk County Public Schools said in a statement: “Her students and colleagues greatly loved her, and her sudden, unexpected death is a devastating loss. She was a very special part of her school family.”

Grief counselors have been made available at her school and another school where she previously worked. 

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Cannabis seizures at checkpoints by US-Mexico border frustrate state-authorized pot industry

Associated Press

SANTA FE, N.M. – The U.S. Border Patrol is asserting its authority to seize cannabis shipments — including commercial, state-authorized supplies — as licensed cannabis providers file complaints that more than $300,000 worth of marijuana has been confiscated in recent months at highway checkpoints in southern New Mexico.

New Mexico's Democratic governor says the disruptions prompted a discussion this week with U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas , whose impeachment charges were dismissed this week. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham says she voiced concerns that the scrutiny of cannabis companies appears to be greater in New Mexico than states with regulated markets that aren't along the U.S. border with Mexico.

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Authorized cannabis sales in New Mexico have exceeded $1 billion since regulation and taxation of the recreational market began two years ago. Yet cannabis transport drivers say they have been detained hours while supplies are seized at permanent Border Patrol checkpoints that filter inbound traffic for unauthorized migrants and illegal narcotics, typically located about 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the U.S. border.

“Secretary Mayorkas assured the governor that federal policies with respect to legalized cannabis have not changed,” said Lujan Grisham spokesperson Michael Coleman in an email. “Regardless, the governor and her administration are working on a strategy to protect New Mexico’s cannabis industry.”

Managers at 10 cannabis businesses including transporters last week petitioned New Mexico's congressional delegation to broker free passage of shipments, noting that jobs and investments are at stake, and that several couriers have been sidelined for “secondary inspection” and fingerprinted at Border Patrol checkpoints.

“We request that operators who have had product federally seized should be allowed to either get their product returned or be monetarily compensated for the losses they've sustained," the letter states.

U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich said the Department of Homeland Security should be focused on urgent priorities that don't include cannabis suppliers that comply with state law.

“Stopping the flow of illicit fentanyl into our country should be the Department of Homeland Security’s focus at these checkpoints, not seizing cannabis that’s being transported in compliance with state law," the senator said in a statement, referring to the parent agency for U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. "New Mexicans are depending on federal law enforcement to do everything they can to keep our communities safe. Our resources should be used to maximize residents’ safety, not distract from it.”

A public statement Thursday from the U.S. Border Patrol sector overseeing New Mexico provided a reminder that cannabis is still a “Schedule 1” drug, a designation also assigned to heroin and LSD.

"Although medical and recreational marijuana may be legal in some U.S. States and Canada, the sale, possession, production and distribution of marijuana or the facilitation of the aforementioned remain illegal under U.S. federal law," the agency's statement said. “Consequently, individuals violating the Controlled Substances Act encountered while crossing the border, arriving at a U.S. port of entry, or at a Border Patrol checkpoint may be deemed inadmissible and/or subject to, seizure, fines, and/or arrest."

Matt Kennicott, an owner of Socorro-based High Maintenance, a cannabis business, said seizures by Border Patrol started in February without warning and create uncertainty about shipments that include samples for consumer-safety testing. He said cannabis producers in southernmost New Mexico rely on testing labs farther north, on the other side of Border Patrol checkpoints, to comply with safeguards against contaminants like mold or pesticides.

“It's not a little confusing, it's a lot confusing,” he said. “We're trying to figure out where this directive came from.”

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