The border state of Coahuila continues to hang on to two top officials who are unable to enter the United States after their visas were revoked in 2025. The two top officials remain in their posts at a time when the U.S. government has been focusing on revoking visas of top officials throughout Mexico as a way to force the country to act against organized crime.
The two officials are quite close to Coahuila Governor Manolo Jimenez, who appears to be relying on them; however, the issue could impact his relationship with the U.S. government.
One of those individuals is Sonia Villarreal, the Undersecretary of Government for the northern region of Coahuila, while the other is her husband, Jorge Miguel “El Hummer” Barajas Hernandez, a founding leader of the GATES police force which helped Coahuila fight off Los Zetas. As Breitbart Texas reported, from the latter part of the 2000s until 2013, through widespread public corruption, the Los Zetas Cartel was able to expand and surpass the capabilities of law enforcement in Coahuila.
Their explosive growth led to the creation of GATES to fight the cartel head-on. Over time, GATES and other names the group was later rebranded as managed to push cartels underground. The rebranding has come largely for political reasons, as a core group led by Barajas and his mentor Hector “El Jaguar” Flores Rodriguez have racked up allegations of human rights violations and of operating a part of the police force as their own criminal organization.
In 2025, when their visa was originally revoked, government officials in Coahuila were quick to point out that it was due to suspicion of birth tourism since the couple was expecting their second child. Breitbart Texas consulted with various U.S. law enforcement sources who confirmed that both Villarreal and El Hummer remain unwelcome in the United States due to “derogatory” information documented over time by various law enforcement agencies, making them “inadmissible” into the country. Officials would not comment if the two are current targets of criminal investigations.
Credit: Sonia Villarreal-Facebook
Despite having been labeled as unwelcome, Jimenez continues to rely on Villarreal, something that has been raising red flags within the U.S. government. A Breitbart News Foundation investigation has revealed that Villarreal’s husband, El Hummer, has been linked to cases of forced disappearances, and during the humanitarian crisis in the Biden Era, the couple and a group of trusted police officers directly coordinated for profit the routes and supplies used by migrants who were looking to reach the banks of the Rio Grande in order to cross into Texas and claim asylum.
Editor’s Note: Breitbart News Foundation traveled to Mexico City and the 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 News Foundation’s Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and their original Spanish. This article was written by “J.M. Martinez” from Coahuila.
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