A&E, Adam Pittman, Fugitive Hunters Mexico, Jeffrey Leonard, Jesse Frias, Mexico, Penny Fearon, reviews, true crime, TV
January 2, 2025
by Carla Hay
Some language in Spanish with subtitles
Culture Representation: The documentary series “Fugitive Hunters Mexico” features a predominantly Latin group of people (with some white people and African Americans) who are connected in some way to U.S. fugitives who have been accused of crimes and who have fled to Mexico.
Culture Clash: An elite squad of law enforcement officials in Mexico track down the fugitives, so that the fugitives can be extradited back to the United States to face criminal charges.
Culture Audience: “Fugitive Hunters Mexico” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of low-budget true crime docuseries that give an inside look at international crime fighting.
“Fugitive Hunters Mexico” delivers exactly what the title of this no-frills docuseries promises, with expected outcomes in each episode segment about Mexican law enforcement capturing U.S. fugitives. The show capably gives insight into suspects’ motives. The fugitives are almost always people who were arrested and charged with at least one felony but they fled to Mexico to avoid court appearances.
“Fugitive Hunters Mexico” (whose showrunner is Penny Fearon) is produced by Lucky 8 for A&E and has multiple cases featured per episode. Only the show’s first episode, titled “Trouble in Paradise,” was available for review before the series premiere. “Fugitive Hunters Mexico” sticks to a specific formula where viewers can expect to see the hunted fugitives caught in the end.
What will keep viewers interested in watching is seeing how these suspects are caught and how they were living Mexico while they were fugitives from the law. The Mexican law enforcement agents featured in the series are identified by their first names only. They include Jesús, Hector, Santiago and Victoria. The agents in Mexico work with U.S. agents, such as U.S. Marshals, the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Agency (the U.S. agents aren’t featured in the show) in helping catch these accused criminals.
“Fugitive Hunters Mexico” is slickly produced, with plenty of drone camera shots that highlight much of Mexico’s natural beauty, as well as urban decay, depending on which part of Mexico is being filmed. “Fugitive Hunters Mexico” has a professional-sounding narrator (Armando Valdes-Kennedy), who has a narration style/tone that’s similar to “The First 48” narrator Dion Graham. The narration for “Fugitive Hunters Mexico” tends to get a bit repetitive by re-stating something that was shown just a few minutes earlier.
In the “Trouble in Paradise” episode (which was filmed in 2024), three fugitives are featured in three separate segments.
- Jeffrey Leonard, a fugitive from Las Vegas, had been on the run from the law since 2021. He was wanted for charges of battery by strangulation because he was arrested for assaulting the roommate of his girlfriend at the time. It’s mentioned that Leonard is a registered sex offender, who was convicted of coercion and enticement of a minor in 2014. The hunt for Leonard takes the agents to Tijuana, where law enforcement received a tip that Leonard was living at a resort.
- Adam Pittman, a 34-year-old suspected meth dealer, was in hiding from law enforcement since 2022. The agents track him down in the city of La Esperanza. Two of the agents go undercover, pretending to be a couple interested in buying a sofa from Pittman’s live-in girlfriend. Because the agents don’t have a warrant to enter the house where Pittman lives, they come up with a logical idea to lure him out of the house.
- Jesse Frias—a 37-year-old from Prescott, Arizona—was running away from charges of kidnapping, assault and domestic violence of his wife. Frias had been a fugitive since 2021. Ironically, his wife was the first person he called after he gets caught in the city of Mexicali.
All of the show’s field agents and translators are professional and very watchable, but the first episode of “Fugitive Hunters Mexico” doesn’t show any agents with personalities that particularly stand out. What stands out are some of the crime confessions that these fugitives willingly make on camera after they’re caught. In interviews with the arresting agents, the fugitives also talk about how they like life in Mexico more than they like life the United States because they think Mexico has a more “freeing” lifestyle.
The fugitives have different reactions when caught. Leonard is genuinely surprised and initially denies knowing why he is being arrested. Pittman is the most agitated and angry about his arrest. Frias is the calmest and seems to know it was a matter of time before he was apprehended. What all three of these fugitives have in common is that they had previous criminal convictions and fled their more recent charges because they didn’t want to go back to prison.
Leonard and Pittman were living with women at the time of their arrest. The women (whose faces are not shown on camera) seemingly did not know until the arrests that their lovers were fugitives. Frias is another story because he hints that his wife knew where he was all along. It goes without saying that being a fugitive requires help from other people, who might or might not be knowing accomplices.
Most of the outcomes of the fugitives’ cases are not revealed in the episode, except for Frias, who gets an epilogue that gives an update of what happened after he was extradited back to Arizona. “Fugitive Hunters Mexico” has the usual disclaimer stating that suspects are innocent until proven guilty, and charges could be reduced or dropped. Regardless of the outcomes of these arrests, “Fugitive Hunters Mexico” offers a brief but fascinating glimpse at what happens when the law catches up to fugitives hiding in Mexico.
A&E premiered “Fugitive Hunters Mexico” on January 2, 2025.