Cartel gunmen tied three illegal immigrants to the top of the border fence in Arizona as punishment for refusing to cross drug loads. The rare find was made by authorities in the border city of Nogales after one of the immigrants managed to call 911.

“It’s just another one of those things that happens along the border,” Santa Cruz County Sheriff Paul Estrada told the Nogales International, a local newspaper. “It never seems to surprise you.”

The rare find was made on Friday early morning at an area just west of Nogales. The victims had been preparing to climb the border fence in an effort to enter the country illegally. That is when a team of gunmen went up to them and stopped them. According to the information that the Sheriff Estrada gave the local newspaper, the gunmen told the immigrants that if they wanted to climb the fence through their territory they would have to cross drugs. The immigrants refused and as punishment, the gunmen strung them up from the fence “like piñatas”, the sheriff said.

As Breitbart Texas previously reported, cartel gunmen control everything that crosses through their territories. Every illegal immigrant that is able to cross into the U.S., has provided one of the various drug cartels that control the border with money or some form of labor to offset their tariff.

Last year, Breitbart Texas reported on the case of one illegal immigrant that apparently crossed without having made prior arrangements. Cartel gunmen in Arizona captured the man and sodomized him. Information obtained by Breitbart Texas, revealed that after the attack, the illegal immigrant spent hours in the hospital where medical personnel worked to remove splinters from a stick that the gunmen had used to penetrate him during the sexual assault.

Ildefonso Ortiz is an award winning journalist with Breitbart Texas you can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.