A woman wanted in connection with several brutal, gang-related murders in Mexico was recently arrested inside the United States.

On February 15, the combined efforts of the FBI Safe Streets Gang Task Force, the El Paso Police Gang Unit, County Sheriff's Narcotics Division, and Border Patrol resulted in victory when agents arrested Mexican fugitive Michelle Angelica Pineda, sometimes referred to as La Chely, in a motel in eastern El Paso, Texas. American and Mexican law enforcement officials believe that Pineda, a Mexican national, crossed the U.S. border illegally as part of a drug-trafficking ring perpetrated by the violent street gang Artistas Asesinos, or Artist Assassins.

Inside the motel room where Pineda was arrested, investigators reportedly found a cache of weapons — guns, knives, and machetes — as well as drugs like Xanax, cocaine, heroin, and fentanyl. Pineda was immediately transported across the border and placed in the care of Chihuahua state officials. She now sits in an unidentified Mexican jail.

Though her alleged leadership role among the Artistas Asesinos may sound bad enough, it's hardly the worst accusation against her. She and her fellow gang members also supposedly murdered five people, dismembered their bodies, and then offered some of their body parts to a Mexican folk saint known as Santa Muerte, or Holy Death.

"Pineda was known for her extreme brutality such as dismembering bodies, removing hearts, and placing the hearts in front of 'Santa Muerte' altars and statutes," the FBI said in a statement.

"Today’s deportation highlights the swift action of our agents and our significant partnerships by successfully taking a violent assassin off our streets and putting her back into the hands of Mexican law enforcement to be tried for her crimes," a statement from FBI El Paso Special Agent John Morales read in part.

Pineda is also suspected of participating in 20 other dismemberment murders in Juarez, which is just across the border from El Paso. One Mexican newspaper, El Heraldo de Juárez, reported that her alleged history of violence dates all the way back to when she was just 13 years old, describing her as a "young woman who grew up surrounded by violence."

Many Catholic leaders in the U.S. and Mexico have denounced Santa Muerte, a skeletal figure often associated with drug cartels, as, at best, "spiritually dangerous," and, at worst, demonic. Prayers to Santa Muerte "should be completely avoided," Bishop Michael Sis of the Diocese of San Angelo, Texas, said in 2017. "It is a perversion of devotion to the saints."

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