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Some days are bloodier than others in Mexico. Yesterday in the border city of Nuevo Lardo -- just across the Rio Grande from Laredo, TX -- police found nine bodies hanging from an overpass and another fourteen decapitated bodies nearby as reported by The Associated Press: "the city . . . has recently been torn by a renewed turf war between the Zetas cartel, a gang of former Mexican special-forces soldiers, and the powerful Sinaloa cartel, which has joined forces with the Gulf cartel, former allies of the Zetas." Los Zetas apparently has taken responsibility for yesterday's carnage as reported...

LA GRULLA — A Mexican national faces allegations that he repeatedly kicked a Border Patrol agent in the face late Wednesday night. Agents had been tracking a group of suspected illegal immigrants in La Grulla near Leopoldo Longoria and La Grulla streets about 10 p.m. Wednesday, according to a criminal complaint published Friday

At least 23 people have been killed in gruesome circumstances in the Mexican city of Nuevo Laredo, on the US border. Nine bodies with signs of torture were found hanging from a bridge. Hours later, 14 decapitated bodies were discovered in a vehicle, police said. Their heads were found in ice boxes dumped outside the mayor's office. Nuevo Laredo is the scene of a feud between two of Mexico's biggest drugs gangs, who are fighting for control of smuggling routes into the US. A message left with the hanged bodies said they were members of the Gulf drugs cartel who...

ALAMO - A Donna ISD police unit escorted a school bus, as it made stops in Little Mexico. The neighborhood was the scene of a drive-by shooting early this morning. Sheriff's deputies say a juvenile drove by and shot at a group of students waiting at a school bus stop. Two students were hit. One was shot in the abdomen. Witnesses say a bullet grazed another teen's hip. Both students are expected to be OK. Deputies arrested the suspected gunman and a passenger that was in the vehicle. The Hidalgo County sheriff says the shooting was gang-related. CHANNEL 5 NEWS...

NAFTA isn't NATO, at least not yet. However, the North American defense ministers conference hosted by Canada the last week of March sent the low-key but categorically public message that Mexico has emerged as the U.S. and Canada's regional security partner. The conference, held in Ottawa, was the first scheduled trilateral defense ministers meeting involving all three North American countries in which Mexico officially participated. The three countries agreed to increase their efforts to combat drug cartels, to include sharing intelligence and cooperating in land and sea missions to stop cartel operations. As allies in World War I and World...

WESLACO - Federal agents say they are on the trail of more than a hundred illegal gun buyers in South Texas tonight. This is six months after a new requirement was added for gun dealers in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives says agents realized they weren't tracking high-powered rifles. "The weapon of choice we weren't seeing reported is rifles," says Franceska Perot, an ATF spokesperson. She adds two out of every three new cases the ATF opened in the last six months in the four border states were from Texas. The...

SOUTH OF ALAMO — Investigators performed a walk-through Thursday at a home here to learn more about the circumstances surrounding the shooting of a kidnapping suspect by a federal agent. The procedure is standard protocol for incidents like the one that unfolded Wednesday afternoon at 214 San Bernardino St. south of Alamo, San Juan police Chief Juan Gonzalez said. A U.S. marshal opened fire during a combined effort to rescue a woman and her two young children, who had allegedly been kidnapped by the woman’s ex-boyfriend the night before. Police identified the kidnapping suspect Thursday as Eliseo Alvarado, 19. He...

Mexican authorities have recovered around 68,000 guns that traced back to the United States in the past five years, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) said on Thursday. “Since 2007, trace data shows a trend in recovered and submitted crime guns from Mexico shifting from pistols and revolvers to rifles,” the ATF said in a statement. The agency added that reports from officials in Mexico show “certain types of rifles, such as the AK and AR variants with detachable magazines, are used more frequently to commit violent crime by drug trafficking organizations.” The ATF said it was...

A review of "Murder Capital of the World," a low-budget documentary that provides a sobering account of drug-cartel violence in Juárez, Mexico, including the sobering statistic that more than 50,000 murders have occurred in Mexico since 2006.We've all seen the news reports: Across the border of El Paso, Texas, the city of Juárez, Mexico, has become a war zone where bloodbaths are a daily routine. As Mexican drug cartels continue their deadly campaigns of narco-terrorism, it quickly becomes clear why Charlie Minn's film is titled "Murder Capital of the World." The film is rife with news clips and staggering statistics,...

WESLACO - Border Patrol agents arrested a cartel hit man along the U.S.-Canadian border. The Border Patrol kept the story quiet until Edgar Campos Barraza, who's also known as "El Cholo," was in Mexican custody. The Mexican government wanted Barraza on kidnapping, conspiracy and murder charges. Barraza was arrested in January. He admitted to Border Patrol agents in Ohio that he worked for the Sinaloa drug cartel. We're told Barraza was living in Sandusky, Ohio. The city is between Toledo and Cleveland, two high-intensity drug trafficking areas. It's also connected to I-80 and several other major highways. According to a...

The number of Mexican immigrants living illegally in the U.S. has dropped significantly for the first time in decades, showing a dramatic shift as many illegal workers are moving back to Mexico from the U.S. because there are so few job opportunities. The new analysis comes amid renewed debate over U.S. immigration policy as the Supreme Court hears arguments this week on Arizona's tough immigration law. Mexican immigrants make account for nearly 60 per cent of the illegal immigrant population in the U.S. and last year there were 6.1million in America. That number was down from its peak in 2007...

ATF's mysterious grenade smuggler case: new photos, documents turned over to Congress Evidence photos just turned over to Congress under subpoena show a frightening stash of grenade parts, fuse assemblies and more than 2,000 rounds of ammunition. It was all hidden in a spare tire of an SUV crossing from the US to Mexico in 2010. The accused smuggler, an alleged drug cartel arms dealer named Jean Baptise Kingery, was questioned by agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) but released. Documents handed over to Congress by the Justice Department shed new light on missteps in the...

New images are coming in of that brazen attack carried out in front of a Nuevo Laredo police station. A car bomb went off. in west nuevo laredo just after eight a-m Tuesday. It happened only hours after seven men were killed in the streets. Witnesses say they heard the loud explosion and saw flames several miles away. Two people were reportedly hurt in the attack and transported to area hospitals. No police officers were hurt, eventough their offices are only a few hundreds feet away. Soon after the incident a massive gunfire reportedly broke out between the Mexican military...

Signs it's not going well for this government and Solicitor General Donald Verrilli at the Supreme Court: when a traditionally liberal judge appointed by Barack Obama has no idea of the argument they're trying to make. Enter Justice Sonia Sotomayor: "Putting aside your argument that this -- that a systematic cooperation is wrong -- you can see it's not selling very well -- why don't you try to come up with something else?" she said to Verrilli. "Because I, frankly -- as the chief has said to you, it's not that it's forcing you to change your enforcement priorities. You don't have to take...

Supreme Court justices took a dim view of the Obama administration’s claim that it can stop Arizona from enforcing immigration laws, telling government lawyers during oral argument Wednesday that the state appears to want to push federal officials, not conflict with them.The court was hearing arguments on Arizona’s immigration crackdown law, which requires police to check the immigration status of those they suspect are in the country illegally, and would also write new state penalties for illegal immigrants who try to apply for jobs.The Obama administration has sued, arguing that those provisions conflict with the federal government’s role in setting...

Apprehensions of Mexicans trying to cross the border illegally have plummeted by more than 70% in recent years The number of Mexican immigrants living illegally in the U.S. has dropped significantly for the first time in decades a new study suggests. The figures represent a dramatic shift as many illegal workers, already in the U.S. and seeing few job opportunities, are returning to Mexico. The analysis of census data from the U.S. and Mexican governments finds that roughly 6.1 million unauthorized Mexican immigrants were living in the U.S. last year. That's down from a peak of nearly 7 million in...

The number of Mexican migrants to the United States dropped significantly while the number of those returning home increased, bringing net migration from Mexico to a statistical standstill, according to a report published Monday.

Agents made a bust in the Arizona desert and it turns out two of the 37 people taken into custody were sex offenders. Casa Grande station agents came upon a group of 37 border-crossers in the West Desert and determined one of the men was a 31-year-old wanted for rape, violence, duress and menace in San Jose, Calif. He also had a previous conviction for assault with a deadly weapon. He will be turned over to the United States Marshals Service for extradition.

--snip-- In almost total secrecy, the Obama Justice Department has charged a U.S. Border Patrol agent, Luis Fonseca, for depriving the rights of a yet to be identified illegal alien at the Border Patrol station located on Imperial Beach, California, last July. Fonseca, however, was not indicted until a week ago. Agent Fonseca, 32, allegedly kneed and choked an unidentified alien during his tour near the Mexican border last summer. During his arraignment on Monday April 16, he entered a not guilty plea. A grand jury had handed down the indictment on April 12, but details were withheld and the...

An unidentified woman believed to be a U.S. citizen was killed Saturday night during a firefight between the Mexican military and a group of gunmen near the Plaza Niños Heroes in downtown Reynosa, said a Tamaulipas law enforcement official who asked not to be named for security reasons. On Sunday, the Mexican military raided a stash house just two blocks away from where the woman had been killed, said a source outside law enforcement with direct knowledge. It remained unclear whether the woman was a bystander Saturday night or played a role in the clash. Mexican authorities have not released...