A deportation order has come the way of a Mexican national who told undercover police officers he was the “muscle” for a drug trafficking organization with ties to a notorious cartel, while bragging that he smuggled narcotics into Canada and disposed of bodies in the Vernon and Lavington areas.
A recently published decision from the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada found Colin Montero inadmissable to Canada after he returned to the country in February 2025 and filed a refugee claim.
The board determined there was reasonable grounds to believe Montero was a member of an organization linked to members of the La Familia Michoacana cartel, and was involved in transnational crime.
The Federal Serious Organized Crime Unit of the RCMP initiated an investigation into drug trafficking in Vancouver from throughout 2014, involving law enforcement agencies from the U.S. Using wiretaps and undercover officers, these agencies tracked targets linked to significant methamphetamine seizures at border crossings in the Lower Mainland and U.S.-based Mexican organized crime activities.
Officers infiltrated the drug trafficking group Montero was alleged to be a part of, and during covertly recorded interviews, Montero allegedly identified himself as a hitman “who may have committed murders in Canada,” while also admitting he smuggled drugs across the U.S.-Canada border “on multiple occasions,” according to the decision.
The RCMP-recorded interview is where Montero allegedly boasted about stashing bodies in the North Okanagan.
“You declared that you have killed in the past and provided details on how and where you have gotten rid of the bodies in the Lavington, Vernon area of British Columbia,” the board’s decision reads.
Montero told undercover officers he’d crossed the border into Canada on foot smuggling 10 to 20 kilograms of narcotics at a time.
Montero “even offered the undercover operator to provide him with ecstasy and heroin if he was interested,” the decision states.
The 2014 sting operation led to the seizure of two kilograms of cocaine, one ounce of heroin and 8.5 kilograms of meth in Vancouver. U.S. enforcement action on this same trafficking group resulted in the seizures of four kilograms of cocaine, six pounds of meth, almost 200,000 U.S. dollars, 165 kilograms of marijuana and one assault rifle in the U.S.
Montero first came to Canada in 2006 as a visitor to B.C. and remained as an overstay until he was arrested in November 2014. He was removed from Canada in 2015 but returned to Canada in February 2025 to file his refugee claim, after living illegally in the U.S. for three years.
The refugee claim is what prompted the board’s recent admissability hearing, during which Montero claimed his self-identification as a hitman had been a lie, and that he’d been forced by the Vancouver Police Department to act as an informant. He claimed he’d misrepresented who he really was under threat of being removed from Canada and sent back to Mexico, and that he was only involved with the drug trafficking organization for the purpose of bringing information to the Vancouver Police.
The Refugee Board didn’t buy it, and said Montero had the opportunity to leave the organization and chose not to. This was presented as a key test in a previous Supreme Court of Canada decision that sets precedent for cases in which a person claims they were coerced into criminal activity.
“You chose to continue in that role … so, the defense of duress does not really apply to you in this particular case,” the board stated. “If you truly did not want to get involved with a violent drug dealing organization by spying on behalf of the Vancouver Police, and reporting to them, you could have easily left because you truly put your life at risk in doing so.”
The board concluded by saying the transnational organization was engaged in a pattern of criminal activity and Montero was a member of that organization, and ordered his deportation.
The board noted that no charges or convictions have been registered against Montero, but this is not necessary for it to find him inadmissable to Canada.