Twisted: Mexico bankrolls liberal lawyers helping migrant murderers escape death row

Mexico is influencing hundreds of death row cases in the U.S. as it struggles to keep a lid on cartel violence — and paying liberal American attorneys to do it.

The Mexican government has spent millions of dollars to protect convicted child-killers, rapists, members of organized crime and other heinous criminals from U.S. executions, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation found. Through the little-known Mexican Capital Legal Assistance Program (MCLAP), Mexico partners with American attorneys who register as foreign agents to assist the inmates’ legal teams. The country’s longstanding battle with cartels still festers at home even with U.S. military help, leading to the slaughter of 25 Mexican National Guard members in February.

MCLAP’s first director, Arizona attorney Gregory Kuykendall, also appears to have flouted federal rules when working for Mexico by not disclosing campaign donations to Democrats. The Department of Justice (DOJ) said it would review the matter in response to a DCNF inquiry.

Kuykendall began leading the program in 2006, registered as a foreign agent in 2009 and hired Amy Knight as an MCLAP attorney in 2014, according to their online profiles and foreign agent paperwork filed with the DOJ. The two helped remove hundreds of Mexicans from death row, with Knight taking over the program in June 2025, Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that month. Knight’s law firm has received more than $7.2 million from the Mexican government to continue the legal services, her DOJ filings show.

MCLAP “prevented or reversed” more than 1,200 cross-border executions since the program’s start in 2000, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The project shows a persistent foreign campaign to sway the American justice system after Mexico abolished the death penalty in 1929.

Kuykendall and Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the DCNF. Knight told the DCNF she is not authorized to speak on the program.

Putting Capital Punishment To Death

Mexicans make up 45% of foreign nationals now on death row in the U.S., dwarfing every other foreign country, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Documents filed with the DOJ in June listed dozens of potential capital cases that may need MCLAP’s help, plus current death row inmates included in the program.

The list includes convicted killers of small children, murderers who were in the country illegally, ones who raped their victims and other killers linked to organized crime, according to authorities and local media.

One death row inmate slated for MCLAP assistance is Hector Acosta-Ojeda, a hitman for the Cartel de Noreste who was found guilty in Texas of beheading his roommate and killing the victim’s teenage girlfriend in a 2017 incident. The State Department designated the cartel as a foreign terrorist organization in February 2025 for “attacks against government officials in Mexico” and other crimes.

Before his departure from MCLAP, Kuykendall assisted lawyers for drug trafficker Benjamin Madrigal-Birrueta in 2024 before he pleaded guilty to federal murder charges in California, court records show. Madrigal-Birrueta fatally shot a man and his pregnant wife in 2022 over an argument, killing her unborn child. The DOJ agreed not to pursue the death penalty after Kuykendall got involved in the case and the defense team argued against it.

Knight and Kuykendall have framed their efforts as protecting legal rights for the disadvantaged.

“Mexicans are uniquely vulnerable at every stage of the capital prosecution process due to rampant racial and ethnic bias, significant differences between the Mexican and American legal systems, and complex language issues,” they wrote in a 2018 law journal article.

Mexico’s June statement also described a May 2025 meeting between Kuykendall, Knight and a Mexican diplomat who discussed the importance of MCLAP “given the current immigration situation” under President Donald Trump.

MCLAP draws inspiration from a 2004 United Nations (UN) court ruling in favor of a Mexican complaint against the U.S. The court found that the U.S. violated an international treaty after it sentenced 54 Mexicans to death without informing Mexico, ordering American officials to reconsider the punishments. Former President George W. Bush initially ordered states to comply, but the Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that such UN rulings are unenforceable without congressional legislation.

Knight’s current agreements with Mexico authorize her to “communicate with or meet with” American officials about enshrining the UN ruling in law, DOJ filings show.

Mexico aims for “the eventual abolition of the death penalty worldwide,” Kuykendall said on behalf of Mexico in 2017, citing the 2004 UN ruling, according to The Houston Chronicle. Kuykendall called the death penalty “cruel and inhuman” in “all circumstances” when responding to Mexican national Ruben Cardenas Ramirez’s pending execution after a state appeals court upheld his murder conviction, the paper reported. Cardenas kidnapped, raped and fatally strangled a 16-year-old girl in 1997, according to state records.

Kuykendall has donated around $4,000 exclusively to Democratic campaigns since 2006, including for former Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Barack Obama and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, while Knight supported Democrats with a handful of donations in 2018 and 2020, Federal Election Commission records show.

Kuykendall has also led lawsuits against Arizona police and, together with Knight, successfully defended an activist from federal charges of harboring migrants under the first Trump administration, according to court records and news reports.

Trump’s DOJ Responds

Kuykendall’s campaign donations as a foreign agent may present a transparency concern, which has prompted a review by the Trump administration.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) requires registrants to regularly disclose campaign donations or other political influence, threatening criminal penalties for knowingly making false statements. More than a dozen times, Kuykendall claimed he did not donate in American elections over certain periods despite Federal Election Commission records showing otherwise, the DCNF found.

“If a foreign agent filed [FARA documents] but did not disclose the political contributions, then they may have omitted required information,” Nicole Kelly, an attorney specializing in FARA for Lex Politica, told the DCNF. A person can file amendments to correct the documents, “but the FARA office may not think that’s enough if the omission was intentional,” Kelly said.

“We will take the information you provided under advisement to determine if it raises a FARA concern,” the DOJ spokesperson told the DCNF in response to an inquiry.

Kuykendall likely did not break the law unless he intended to hide the donations from the DOJ, said Caitlin Sutherland, executive director of Americans for Public Trust. His filings point to a larger problem: lax FARA rules and inconsistent enforcement that defeat the law’s purpose, she said.

“There are a lot of loopholes, a lot of exemptions, and it has kind of been under-enforced … across administrations,” Sutherland told the DCNF.

A February 2025 memo from Attorney General Pam Bondi directed the DOJ to limit FARA prosecutions to “conduct similar to more traditional espionage by foreign government actors,” framing the policy change as a check on DOJ “weaponization.” Trump’s DOJ still prosecuted most pending FARA cases in 2025, according to an analysis by JD Supra.

“The FARA disclosures are important to shine a light on who is working for [or] on behalf of a foreign government,” Sutherland told the DCNF. “Those are inherently important forms that should be filled out correctly.”

Kuykendall reported one political donation — about $100 to Warren’s presidential bid — throughout 16 years of filing FARA reports, the DCNF found. Federal FARA databases that exist specifically to inform the public of political activities have no record of his donations.

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