Cars stolen in U.S. are being smuggled to Mexico, where they're almost impossible to recover
Tijuana, Mexico — After a month away, Catherine Vermillion came home to her San Diego apartment and an empty parking space.
"I looked up and realized my car was gone," Vermillion told CBS News. "I remembered that I had an AirTag in the car, so I checked my phone, and the AirTag showed that my car was in Tijuana, Mexico."
When she saw where the AirTag popped up, she said she was in "shock and disbelief."
Disbelief turned into frustration after she said local police couldn't help.
"They just said that because it's across the border, they're not able to go and get it even though I could show them it was only 45 minutes away," Vermillion said.
It's a frustration shared by the California Highway Patrol.
"When it comes to country borders, we cannot cross that line," CHP Lt. David Navarro said.
Navarro warned that organized theft rings are going after high-end SUVs, pickups and performance cars, stealing them in the U.S., then smuggling them into Mexico. He said it's lucrative, hard to track and often impossible to recover those cars once they cross the border.
In just the last four years, CHP data shows the number of stolen vehicles tracked crossing the border from California, Arizona and Texas jumped 79%.
"If a vehicle's stolen in the middle of the night, and the victim does not wake up till 7 in the morning, well if it's stolen at 2, you have roughly five hours to transport that vehicle," Navarro said. "If that vehicle's not reported in the system, and it passes through that camera, then no, it's not going to be alerted at all."
That's exactly what happened to Vermillion's Jeep. The difference was she knew exactly where it ended up — 46 miles away, over the border in Tijuana.
Enter Phil Mohr, a repo man who has spent the last 20 years as a stolen car bounty hunter in Mexico.
Mohr said a lot of stolen cars end up next to the airport in Tijuana, a few hundred yards from the U.S.-Mexico border.
"This is a organized drop-off point," Mohr said.
Organized in many cases by cartels, who federal agents told CBS News drive the cars into Mexico and use them to traffic drugs and weapons.
Mohr worked with local law enforcement in Mexico to repossess Vermillion's car and bring it back to San Diego.
"It feels like a win," Mohr said. "It feels like you made it right, that you righted a wrong in the world."
A neighbor of Vermillion's took a picture to capture the moment when Mohr brought her car back.
"I just have my hands up, like, whoa," Vermillion said. "It was like the best day ever."
For Vermillion, it was the best day ever, but for most, that day never comes.