admin
The FBI announced this week that Alejandro Rosales Castillo — who was added to the agency’s Ten Most Wanted list for the 2016 murder of a Charlotte co-worker — was arrested in Pachuca, Hidalgo, Mexico on January 16, 2026 and is now detained awaiting extradition to North Carolina. This arrest, years in the making, finally puts the man accused of a cold-blooded crime back into custody where he belongs.
Castillo is accused of luring his 23-year-old co-worker, Sandy Ly Le, under the pretense of repaying a loan, then shooting her and abandoning her body in a remote ravine in August 2016 — details that shocked and galvanized the local community at the time. Investigators say the victim’s car was later found at a bus station in Arizona, evidence of the calculated flight that followed the murder.
The case was driven by surveillance and old-fashioned police work, including Customs and Border Protection video that captured Castillo crossing the border at Nogales into Mexico on August 16, 2016, footage that haunted the investigation for nearly a decade. That same video showed him fleeing the scene with an accomplice, underscoring how criminals exploit gaps to escape American justice.
Law enforcement leaders hailed the capture as proof that persistence pays off — and rightly so. FBI officials and local partners have worked for years to bring this fugitive to heel, and FBI Director Kash Patel and others pointed to strong investigative cooperation as the reason justice prevailed this time.
But let’s be blunt: this arrest also exposes a failed immigration and border policy that allowed a suspected murderer to slip out of the country and remain at large for years. Conservatives have warned for years that porous borders and political softness on enforcement create predictable opportunities for violent criminals to vanish beyond our reach, and this case is yet another painful example.
Now the immediate priority must be swift extradition and a full, transparent prosecution so the victim’s family can finally have closure. Americans should demand that our government treat extradition and repatriation with the urgency shown by the agents who never gave up on this case.
This victory for law enforcement should not be used as a reason to rest on our laurels; it should be a rallying cry. We should congratulate the agents, honor the victim, and press our leaders to secure the border, shore up cooperation with trusted partners, and ensure that fugitives can’t exploit diplomatic or geographic gaps to evade justice.
