Death toll from torrential rains in Mexico rises to 64 as search expands

POZA RICA, Mexico (AP) — Fifteen minutes before water from a flooded stream swept into her home, Lilia Ramírez took off running with what little she could carry. When she returned she found not only damage from the water that had flooded her first floor to the ceiling, but the oil it had carried now streaking her walls.

Poza Rica is an oil town, and among the challenges confronting some residents who fled flooding that has killed 64 people across five states and left 65 missing, is residue from the oil that built this city not far from the Gulf of Mexico. Authorities say some 100,000 homes across the region have been damaged by the torrential rains and flooding.

“Never before has it been tarred before like that,” Ramírez said Monday standing in her devastated ground floor, where walls that had once been pink were now vertically striped with black.

Mexico has deployed some 10,000 troops in addition to civilian rescue teams. Helicopters have ferried food and water to the 200 some communities that remained cut off by ground and carried out the sick and injured.

“There are sufficient resources, this won’t be skimped on ... because we’re still in the emergency period,” President Claudia Sheinbaum said during her daily press briefing Monday.

But on some streets in Poza Rica, 170 miles (275 kilometers) northeast of Mexico City, the cleanup of mud and debris was complicated by thick oil deposits on trees, roofs and vehicles tossed by the current that swept through Friday.

Parts of Veracruz state received some 24.7 inches (62.7 centimeters) of rain from Oct. 6 to 9.

Ramírez said that at other times of heavy rains, the state oil company Pemex had drained nearby areas with oil to avoid it spreading.

Roberto Olvera, one of her neighbors, said that a siren from a nearby Pemex facility alerted them to danger. “It was a really anguishing moment because a lot of people from the neighborhood stayed behind and some perished,” he said.

Pemex said in a brief statement to the AP that so far it did not have reports of an oil spill in the area.

Sheinbaum acknowledged it could still be days before access is established to some places. “A lot of flights are required to take sufficient food and water” to those places, she said.

The president denied that government systems had failed to provide sufficient warning. “It would have been difficult to have had much advance knowledge of this situation, (it's) different from with hurricanes,” she said.

Mexico’s Civil Protection agency said the heavy rains had killed 29 people in Veracruz state on the Gulf Coast as of Monday morning, and 21 people in Hidalgo state, north of Mexico City. At least 13 were killed in Puebla, east of Mexico City. Earlier, in the central state of Querétaro, a child died in a landslide.

Authorities have attributed the deadly downpours to two tropical systems that formed off the western coast of Mexico and have since dissipated, Hurricane Pricilla and Tropical Storm Raymond.

This version has corrected that Olvera is a neighbor not a husband of another person quoted in the story.

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

A rescue worker, part of the volunteer brigade known as the Topos, works near a car hanging over a fence by a damaged house in Poza Rica, Mexico, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025, after torrential rains. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

People clean the Ramirez family's flooded house in Poza Rica, Veracruz state, Mexico, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025, after torrential rains. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

A plush toy lies in the mud inside a flooded house in Poza Rica, Veracruz state, Mexico, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025, after torrential rains. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

People clean the Olvera Gomez family's house in Poza Rica, Veracruz state, Mexico, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025, after torrential rains. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

Damaged vehicles sit in mud after flooding in Poza Rica, Veracruz state, Mexico, Sunday, Oct. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

Federal immigration agents deployed to Minneapolis have used aggressive crowd-control tactics that have become a dominant concern in the aftermath of the deadly shooting of a woman in her car last week.

They have pointed rifles at demonstrators and deployed chemical irritants early in confrontations. They have broken vehicle windows and pulled occupants from cars. They have scuffled with protesters and shoved them to the ground.

The government says the actions are necessary to protect officers from violent attacks. The encounters in turn have riled up protesters even more, especially as videos of the incidents are shared widely on social media.

What is unfolding in Minneapolis reflects a broader shift in how the federal government is asserting its authority during protests, relying on immigration agents and investigators to perform crowd-management roles traditionally handled by local police who often have more training in public order tactics and de-escalating large crowds.

Experts warn the approach runs counter to de-escalation standards and risks turning volatile demonstrations into deadly encounters.

The confrontations come amid a major immigration enforcement surge ordered by the Trump administration in early December, which sent more than 2,000 officers from across the Department of Homeland Security into the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Many of the officers involved are typically tasked with arrests, deportations and criminal investigations, not managing volatile public demonstrations.

Tensions escalated after the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a 37-year-old woman killed by an immigration agent last week, an incident federal officials have defended as self-defense after they say Good weaponized her vehicle.

The killing has intensified protests and scrutiny of the federal response.

On Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota asked a federal judge to intervene, filing a lawsuit on behalf of six residents seeking an emergency injunction to limit how federal agents operate during protests, including restrictions on the use of chemical agents, the pointing of firearms at non-threatening individuals and interference with lawful video recording.

“There’s so much about what’s happening now that is not a traditional approach to immigration apprehensions,” said former Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Sarah Saldaña.

Saldaña, who left the post at the beginning of 2017 as President Donald Trump's first term began, said she can't speak to how the agency currently trains its officers. When she was director, she said officers received training on how to interact with people who might be observing an apprehension or filming officers, but agents rarely had to deal with crowds or protests.

“This is different. You would hope that the agency would be responsive given the evolution of what’s happening — brought on, mind you, by the aggressive approach that has been taken coming from the top,” she said.

Ian Adams, an assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of South Carolina, said the majority of crowd-management or protest training in policing happens at the local level — usually at larger police departments that have public order units.

“It’s highly unlikely that your typical ICE agent has a great deal of experience with public order tactics or control,” Adams said.

DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a written statement that ICE officer candidates receive extensive training over eight weeks in courses that include conflict management and de-escalation. She said many of the candidates are military veterans and about 85% have previous law enforcement experience.

“All ICE candidates are subject to months of rigorous training and selection at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, where they are trained in everything from de-escalation tactics to firearms to driving training. Homeland Security Investigations candidates receive more than 100 days of specialized training," she said.

Ed Maguire, a criminology professor at Arizona State University, has written extensively about crowd-management and protest- related law enforcement training. He said while he hasn't seen the current training curriculum for ICE officers, he has reviewed recent training materials for federal officers and called it “horrifying.”

Maguire said what he's seeing in Minneapolis feels like a perfect storm for bad consequences.

“You can't even say this doesn't meet best practices. That's too high a bar. These don't seem to meet generally accepted practices,” he said.

“We’re seeing routinely substandard law enforcement practices that would just never be accepted at the local level,” he added. “Then there seems to be just an absence of standard accountability practices.”

Adams noted that police department practices have "evolved to understand that the sort of 1950s and 1960s instinct to meet every protest with force, has blowback effects that actually make the disorder worse.”

He said police departments now try to open communication with organizers, set boundaries and sometimes even show deference within reason. There's an understanding that inside of a crowd, using unnecessary force can have a domino effect that might cause escalation from protesters and from officers.

Despite training for officers responding to civil unrest dramatically shifting over the last four decades, there is no nationwide standard of best practices. For example, some departments bar officers from spraying pepper spray directly into the face of people exercising Constitutional speech. Others bar the use of tear gas or other chemical agents in residential neighborhoods.

Regardless of the specifics, experts recommend that departments have written policies they review regularly.

“Organizations and agencies aren’t always familiar with what their own policies are,” said Humberto Cardounel, senior director of training and technical assistance at the National Policing Institute.

“They go through it once in basic training then expect (officers) to know how to comport themselves two years later, five years later," he said. "We encourage them to understand and know their training, but also to simulate their training.”

Adams said part of the reason local officers are the best option for performing public order tasks is they have a compact with the community.

“I think at the heart of this is the challenge of calling what ICE is doing even policing,” he said.

"Police agencies have a relationship with their community that extends before and after any incidents. Officers know we will be here no matter what happens, and the community knows regardless of what happens today, these officers will be here tomorrow.”

Saldaña noted that both sides have increased their aggression.

“You cannot put yourself in front of an armed officer, you cannot put your hands on them certainly. That is impeding law enforcement actions,” she said.

“At this point, I’m getting concerned on both sides — the aggression from law enforcement and the increasingly aggressive behavior from protesters.”

Law enforcement officers at the scene of a reported shooting Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)

Federal immigration officers confront protesters outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)

People cover tear gas deployed by federal immigration officers outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)

A man is pushed to the ground as federal immigration officers confront protesters outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/John Locher)

A woman covers her face from tear gas as federal immigration officers confront protesters outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)