PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Coahuila – Officials linked a former state police commander in Coahuila, Mexico, to several migrant kidnapping cases. The former police investigator allegedly collected protection fees from human smugglers and kidnappers in order to let them operate in her area. The revelations were made public in a recent trial where a court convicted kidnapping gang members for their role in the hostage-taking of several migrants.

Deyanira Tamallo was a former commander of the Coahuila Investigative Police State Investigative Police until she left her post and is believed to have gone into hiding. She is known to organized crime members as “Commander Deyanira.”

During her time as a law enforcement officer assigned to the northern part of the state, Tamallo allegedly collected a monthly fee of $ 200,000 pesos per month or approximately $ 11,111 in U.S. dollars from each group of human smugglers or “polleros” in exchange for protection.

The outing of Tamallo’s alleged activities comes from statements made by the convicted leader of a kidnapping gang known as Marco Antonio “El Lagrima” Martinez de la Cruz. The man claimed to have worked in the moving of migrants from the southern parts of Mexico to the border areas in Coahuila so that the migrants could be crossed illegally into Texas. The man claimed that his group used railroads to move the migrants and operated stash houses in the rural area known as Cinco Manantiales.

El Lagrima and his helpers, Juan Martinez Alvarado, Mariano de Meza Sanchez, Adrian Melo Dominguez, Candelario Martinez de la Cruz, and Lorenzo Martinez de la Cruz, were originally arrested in 2016 after a kidnapping victim managed to escape and call for help.

The group of kidnappers charged up to $ 5,000 dollars to the relatives of the victims who were migrants expecting to be illegally crossed into Texas before being taken hostage. The kidnappers told the extorted family members living in the U.S. that their loved ones would be killed if the ransoms were not paid.

Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by “J.M. Martinez” from Coahuila.