Anthony Rubin, Cartel Kidnapping Near SpaceX Facility
Anthony Rubin and his brother Joshua Rubin were kidnapped by the Gulf Cartel while attempting to document illegal crossings near the SpaceX facility in Boca Chica, Texas. The encounter began on Playa Baghdad when men in a truck with Texas plates intercepted them and forced them into a vehicle at gunpoint. Cartel members blindfolded the pair and transported them to an abandoned field, where they smashed the journalists' electronic equipment with crowbars. Rubin managed to preserve critical footage of the ordeal using a GoPro hidden in a secret compartment and tracked the movement via an Apple AirTag.
anthony rubin· spacex· gulf cartel· playa baghdad· mexico· rio grande· el jefe
00:00 As we're walking up this beach, a truck stops us. First interesting thing, this truck had Texas plates, OK? Shows that these people are operating. I mean, it's kind of obvious already, but this is just proof that these people are operating between nation states. They're operating between the United States of America and Mexico. And this truck stops us and they basically say, hey, listen, get in the truck right now, OK? We're going to take you back to where you came from. We're going to forget this ever happened and you're going to go on your merry way. And I should. They didn't say it like that, of course, is in Spanish. And we were kind of broken Spanish going back and forth. And basically, I said, no, I'm not getting your truck. I don't know who you are. And, you know, I have to get I have to get to the river. I just told him I was a photographer trying to take photos. Right. Long story short.
00:43 They they call up some supposed buddy of theirs who's down there by the river. And they say, hey, listen, I call my buddy. You now have to get in the truck with us. There is no choice, because if you walk down there by yourself, it's going to be trouble for you. So, OK, fine. I said situation. We're not going anywhere. There's nowhere to run. We get the truck. We start driving. Now, at this point, I could see Elon Musk's SpaceX. I see the lights blinking. It's right in front of me. in gets in the car and immediately when I saw this guy, I was like, this is bad news. I don't want to see this guy. He just didn't look friendly. You can you can tell not friendly looking dude. They instantly whip the truck around. OK, start driving back down south.
01:36 This guy gets on the phone with this woman, starts rambling back and forth in Spanish. He puts me on the phone with her. Now she's speaking perfect English and she says, listen, like, what are you doing down here? I said, I'm just trying to photograph SpaceX from the Mexican side. That was my cover, right? And she said, well, listen, you're in, she literally told me, she's like, you're in cartel territory. You're supposed to pay $500 to go over there if you want to cross. I didn't say I wanted to cross it, just assume that. And she said, you're now in the hands of the cartel. And she basically said, she's like, you're going to be handed off to armed men. I suggest you tell them the exact thing that you told me. And just to give you guys a spark notes version, basically, we're taken back to Playa Baghdad. We pull up next to this other truck. Then this other truck is commanded by three armed men. They're all carrying assault rifles. And they all start screaming at us. They're like, you know, like, Andele, Andele, get into this other truck.
02:24 We're putting this other truck, they start driving us down inland. At this point I am not yet tied up, I'm not blindfolded, but we start driving inland, we drive about 10 minutes inland, they pull us out of the truck, line up all of our stuff, and they tell us to empty our bags. Instantly they see the drone and they see the camera. And- By the way, we're gonna put all this up front on your interview, but start over. Okay, yeah, they see the drone and the camera, and when they see that instantly they start bugging out even more. And they think that we are military or intelligence. They check us for wires. They, you know, they're searching us now for drugs or weapons. I don't know who we are. Maybe we're associated with some rival organization. Maybe we're actually, you know, some sort of intelligence agency that's buying them because they see the drone. They're freaking out. They then put us on our knees, take hostage type photos. They took my brother. They got him pinned up against the truck. And, you know, I'm thinking this this if these people think that we're somehow intelligence guys or, you know,
03:18 Military, but we could have a bullet put on our head straight up. These guys aren't messing around. They killed two Americans about a year ago, right in that same area. And this whole this whole time, another truck for other armed men armed, you know, with the same stuff. A R-15 type variants or AK 47 variants and pistols at their hip show up. Now we're surrounded by seven armed men at one point. One of these men points to my drone and holds a pistol to his head. I'm taking this as a death threat. So anyway, I'm trying to negotiate with these guys. And you can tell these guys are unhinged, right? Where you'll be smiling at one point, right? And laughing at one point. I'm like trying to make nice. I'm talking about getting beer, showing boxing moves and stuff. And then instantly, bam, they just start screaming at you. Whoa, these dudes are not friendly. I mean, these guys will go from laughing with you to putting a bullet in your head became crystal clear. And then so anyway, long story short, they bind up our hands, throw blindfolds on me. They didn't have one from brother. They pulled the hood over his head, throw us in the back of a truck.
04:13 We start skip the break. We start driving deeper into Mexico. And this whole time they're telling us they're saying investigate your own. You're going to see El Jefe. I'm like, yeah, I don't want to see El Jefe. I don't know who this is. And, you know, I'm just I'm telling them the whole time, like, listen. And yeah, I'm telling them, listen, I'm like, you know, how much money do you guys want? You know, what do you want? We'll go to a team right now, pull it out and they won't have it. They're like, no, we're going to see the boss El Jefe. And we're blindfolded the whole time. Of course, I'm not like looking at him in the eye talking like this. And there's a there's a man sitting next to my it's myself, my brother, an armed man, you know, with an assault rifle sitting next to my brother here and two armed men in the front. So we're not going anywhere as we're driving throughout Mexico there. Deeper into Mexico, they're making stops. People walking up to the truck whispering about a saying, you know, intelligentsia or military, you know, they're smoking pot in the car that making more stops driving down dirt roads. And as we're doing this, I'm actually whispering to my brother, I'm like,
05:07 Man, if you can start loosening up your hand straps, because I don't know if we're just going to have one opportunity to make a go at it before they execute us. I mean, you know, I had no idea what was going to happen. So I'm loosening up my hand straps and I got it to the point where I knew that I could slip my hand out if need be. And so so that's you know, that was the situation we were in. And so you're in a fight. If we had to, I mean, what am I going to do? I'm not going to sit down like a sheep and have a bullet in my head. That's for sure. Not that I could have done anything about it. If they wanted to whack me, they would whack me. That's right. I mean, there's no other choice. And so I got my hand wraps the point where I knew in an instant I could bam slip it out if I had to, you know, just trying to survive. You're just in survival mode at that point. You know, long story short,
05:47 We roll up, doors open up, blindfold comes off and we're in the middle of an abandoned field. And I mean, smack dab in the middle of an abandoned field. I should have provided you guys with the Google image of this because Michael Yon the whole time is tracking me. We actually had an Apple air tag on this that they didn't find. And so I actually can see where they took us. And I'm like, damn, why are we in the middle of an abandoned field right now? This is where they execute you. Like, Like, why else would we be here right now? There's no other purpose to be here. But that's not what happened. They lined up all of our electronic gear, started screaming at us. They didn't believe that they that they had gotten all of our memory cards, which actually they didn't. They didn't find my GoPro. That was in kind of a secret compartment they didn't get. So I actually maintain my most important footage of getting smuggled into Mexico by the Sinaloa cartel. So because I was never going to do that again. So they didn't get that. Thank God. And so they line up all of our electronic gear and they take out a crowbar and they smash it to bits and pieces. I mean, they straight up thought that we were spying on them.
