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Amid Rising Violence, Mexicans Fight Back Government Efforts to Control Drug Turf Wars Aren't Enough, Some Say; Mayor Promises to 'Clean Up' Organized Crime By DAVID LUHNOW and JOSÉ DE CÓRDOBA MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's war on drugs took a grim twist this week, as a prominent mayor said he had created an undercover group of operatives to "clean up" criminal elements -- even if it had to act outside the law. Underscoring why the mayor may have felt compelled to take such steps, the new police chief in a neighboring town, a retired brigadier general, was shot and killed...

Hundreds of people have been arrested in Texas and around the country what officials say is the largest single strike at a Mexican drug cartel in the U.S WASHINGTON (October 22, 2009)—U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder calls the arrests of more than 300 people in a series of drug raids in Texas and across the country the largest single strike at a Mexican drug cartel operating here. Holder said at a news conference Thursday that the arrests over the past two days were aimed at the U.S. operations of the La Familia cartel. Click here to find out more! Holder...

Mexican candidate, his wife and 2 sons killed Published: 9/5/09, 6:10 PM EDT VILLAHERMOSA, Mexico (AP) - Gunmen killed a state congressional candidate and his wife and two sons in their home Saturday in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco, in southern Mexico. Jose Francisco Fuentes Esperon, 43, was found dead along with his wife, 38, and two sons aged 9 and 13, in the state capital, Villahermosa, according to state Attorney General Rafael Gonzalez Lastra. Fuentes Esperon was a former university rector, and was widely known in the state capital. The state government immediately offered to provide protection for...

Note: The following text is a quote: Ten Alleged Mexican Drug Cartel Leaders Among 43 Defendants Indicted in Brooklyn and Chicago as Part of Coordinated Strike Against Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations WASHINGTON – Forty-three defendants in the United States and Mexico, including 10 alleged Mexican drug cartel leaders, have been charged in 12 indictments unsealed yesterday and today in U.S. federal courts in Brooklyn and Chicago, the Department of Justice, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced. The alleged leaders and other high-ranking members of several of Mexico’s most powerful drug cartels are charged...

Authorities announced charges Thursday against a Mexican gang that took Tijuana-style violence to the upscale suburbs of San Diego County, kidnapping, torturing and killing well-to-do residents, even after some families paid large ransoms. The gang, a rogue cell of the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix drug cartel, moved across the border in 2002 and posed as U.S. law enforcement, donning FBI and police uniforms and caps while snatching victims outside homes and public places, said San Diego County prosecutors. Nine victims were killed from 2004 to 2007, and the bodies of two of them were dissolved in chemicals at a rented house...

Mexican troops have found what may be a hide-out of the country's No. 1 drug lord at a giant methamphetamine lab hidden in the northern Sierra among cabins equipped with caviar face cream and escort catalogues. Mexican media published photos of a complex of 22 secluded mountain cabins, camouflaged to be invisible from the air. One was outfitted with a king-sized bed, luxury clothes, satellite television, pirated movies and high-speed Internet. The daily Reforma said army officials suspected the well-equipped cabin was used by top fugitive Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, leader of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, or his associate Ismael Zambada,...

WASHINGTON – Federal prosecutors cited problems with evidence Monday when they asked a judge to drop charges against a Chinese-Mexican businessman accused of importing large amounts of methamphetamines to the United States. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan lambasted prosecutors at a hearing on the request to dismiss the indictment against Zhenli Ye Gon, saying, "I'm not pleased at all with anything I've heard from the United States government." When Ye Gon was arrested in 2007 in Wheaton, Md., authorities said they had seized more than $205 million in U.S. drug profits from his Mexico City mansion. The U.S. Drug Enforcement...

FBI is advising law enforcement officers across the country that a Texas cell of Los Zetas — an increasingly powerful arm of the Mexican Gulf Cartel drug trafficking syndicate — has acquired a secluded ranch where it trains its members to “neutralize” competitors in the United States.

With growing violence on the U.S.-Mexico border fueled by powerful drug cartels, officials from both countries have been repeating a shocking statistic to suggest this isn't just a Mexican problem. But Obama, Clinton and others have left out important qualifiers when citing the 90 percent statistic, which originates from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The agency doesn't have statistics for all weapons in Mexico, where gun sales are largely prohibited; it is based on only guns that the Mexican government sent to the ATF for tracing and that the ATF found were traceable.

Violent Mexican drug cartels have been making headlines in recent weeks. And now comes word that the Department of Justice reports cartel organizations exist in 230 American cities. Of alarming note for Arkansans is that three cities on the list are in the Natural State: Little Rock, Fort Smith and Fayetteville. U.S. Senator Mark Pryor says coordination of counternarcotics enforcement among every level of government is critical in order to combat drug smuggling across the border and cartel infiltration of U.S. cities. He held a Senate hearing Tuesday, entitled “Counternarcotics Enforcement: Coordination at the Federal, State and Local Level,” where...

MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) -- Mexican authorities arrested a woman guarding an arsenal that included the first anti-aircraft machine gun seized in Mexico, police said Tuesday, as the army announced the capture of an alleged top drug cartel lieutenant. The arsenal belonged to a group linked to the powerful Beltran-Leyva drug cartel, federal police coordinator Gen. Rodolfo Cruz said. It also included ammunition, five rifles, a grenade and part of a grenade launcher. ... Cruz said the confiscated .50-caliber, anti-aircraft machine gun can fire 800 rounds per minute and is capable of penetrating armor from more than 5,000 feet (1,500...

A recent surge in arrests and cocaine seizures in Peru points to an increased presence of Mexican drug cartels, counter-narcotics officials say. The cartels have also contributed to more drug-related violence in Peruvian cities, ports and in remote valleys in this Andean country where coca, cocaine's base material, is grown, the officials say. Peruvian claims of Mexican cartels expanding echo those by officials in other Latin American countries, from Honduras to Argentina, where Mexican gangs have supplanted once-powerful Colombian cartels as kings of the illicit-drug underworld. .... That Mexican drug lords are sending emissaries here is no surprise to Hidalgo...

WASHINGTON -- On Sunday, Nov. 9, 2008, Rahm Emanuel, now the White House chief of staff, famously described the future Obama administration's philosophy for governing: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before." "O-Team" sycophants in the so-called mainstream media chuckled. Conservatives were alarmed. We now know we had reason to be. At the time Emanuel made his comment -- five days after the election -- we thought he was referring to the ongoing economic crisis to...

(oops, forgot the URL before...sorry) Poor Mexico! If it weren't for us, they'd be "the" perfect country. At least that's what the Democrats want you and I to think.

WASHINGTON, March 24, 2009 – The Department of Homeland Security is “still considering” the use of National Guard troops along the U.S.-Mexico border, along with several other initiatives, the DHS secretary said in a White House press briefing today. “This issue requires immediate action,” Janet Napolitano said. “We are guided by two very clear objectives. First, we are going to do everything we can to prevent the violence in Mexico from spilling over across the border. “And second, we will do all in our power to help President [Felipe] Calderón crack down on these drug cartels in Mexico.” Napolitano...

WASHINGTON — President Obama weighed in Wednesday on the escalating drug war on the U.S.-Mexico border, saying that he was looking at possibly deploying National Guard troops to contain the violence but ruled out any immediate military move. "We're going to examine whether and if National Guard deployments would make sense and under what circumstances they would make sense," Obama said during an interview with journalists for regional papers, including a McClatchy reporter. "I don't have a particular tipping point in mind," he said. "I think it's unacceptable if you've got drug gangs crossing our borders and killing U.S. citizens."

AUSTIN — Mexican drug cartel violence is not spilling into Texas, several frustrated border mayors told a state legislative committee Monday in an effort to dispel public perceptions that their communities are under siege. “For me to believe that our cities are so endangered by all this violence that we need to send the military to the border is a knee-jerk reaction,” McAllen Mayor Richard Cortez told the House Border and Intergovernmental Affairs Committee. Cortez, mayor for 19 years, said his daughter in San Antonio recently called to express apprehension about his re-election because of fears he might become an...

Many people ABC-7 talked to in Juarez believe if the military does indeed take over the police department, which we refer to as “martial law” in the U.S., the calm will end and the attacks will increase to a whole new level.

Recent arrests in a mistaken killing point to the perilous presence of gangs The order was clear: Kill the guy in the Astros jersey. But in a case of mistaken identity, Jose Perez ended up dead. The intended target — the Houston-based head of a Mexican drug cartel cell pumping millions of dollars of cocaine into the city — walked away. Perez, 27, was just a working guy, out getting dinner late on a Friday with his wife and young children at Chilos, a seafood restaurant on the Gulf Freeway. His murder and the assassination gone awry point to the...

Mexican military forces take over police duty in Juarez, Mexico to combat drug cartel violence. Death count expected to increase.

Mexico troops enter drug war city Mexico hopes to have up to 7,000 troops in the city in a few days More than 1,500 Mexican troops have moved into a city on the US border being fought over by rival drug gangs.Soldiers moved into Ciudad Juarez to try to regain control of a city in which more than 2,000 people have been murdered over the past year. Officials say they intend to have 7,000 troops and police in position by the end of the week. Rival gangs are battling for control of the city, which is a key entry...

Anderson Cooper did a piece for 60 Minutes tonight on the Mexican drug cartels, and generally he did a good job in presenting a concise overview of the issues. However, the segment failed to address the horrific violence perpetrated by the drug cartels on the U.S. side of the border in cities such as Phoenix, AZ and Atlanta, GA, and failed to address the role by U.S. financial institutions and money managers in laundering some $38 billion in drug money for the cartels every year. Cooper interviewed Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano who recognized that the drug cartels pose an...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2009/February/09-ag-162.html Hundreds of Alleged Sinaloa Cartel Members and Associates Arrested in Nationwide Takedown of Mexican Drug Traffickers “Operation Xcellerator” Takes 23 Tons of Narcotics Off America’s Streets and Seizes More Than $59 Million in Drug Money WASHINGTON – Today Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., announced the arrest of more than 750 individuals on narcotics-related charges and the seizure of more than 23 tons of narcotics as part of a 21-month multi-agency law enforcement investigation known as "Operation Xcellerator." The Attorney General was joined in announcing the current results of Operation Xcellerator by...

In Arizona's Pima and Cochise counties law enforcement officials "are seeing more and more 'rape trees,' places where Mexican drug cartel members rape female border crossers and hang their clothes."

Cricket promoter Allen Stanford linked to drugs investigation The FBI is investigating Sir Allen Stanford over possible links to a Mexican drugs cartel, according to reports. By Paul Kelso, Chief Sports Reporter, Houston Last Updated: 3:03PM GMT 19 Feb 2009 In a report screened on Wednesday night on ABC News in the US, it was claimed that Sir Allen was suspected of laundering money for the notorious Gulf cartel, and that one of his private jets was detained as part of the investigation last year. The reports come 36 hours after the Security and Exchanges Commission charged the Texan financier...

US authorities 'had been investigating Allen Stanford for 15 years' David Byers, Suzy Jagger in New York, and James Bone in Antigua American authorities have been suspicious of Allen Stanford's financial dealings for 15 years but only accelerated their investigation after the Bernard Madoff fraud was exposed, it was claimed today. As investigators continued to hunt Mr Stanford and the $50 billion (£35 billion) of assets connected to him, a financial expert said that the Texan had been on "everybody’s radar" for more than a decade. The claim, made by the journalist and author Jeffrey Robinson, came as a link...

Grenades used in three recent attacks in Monterrey, Mexico, and Pharr, Texas, all originated from the same lot delivered from South Korea... That the grenade used in the third attack reportedly came from Mexico indicates that in addition to the well-known path of weapons flowing from the United States into Mexico, arms also are flowing from Mexico into the United States. The first of the three attacks targeted the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey, Mexico. In the second incident, again in Monterrey, gunmen attacked a local TV station on Jan. 12 in an attempt to intimidate the news agency into cutting...

Which two countries offer the greatest threat to the United States? If you answered that they both must be in the Middle East, you would be only half right. You would be amazed to learn, as was I, that the second greatest threat to America comes from this hemisphere---yes, right next to us. Former CIA chief Michael Hayden told reporters in January of this year that Mexico could rank alongside Iran as a challenge for President Obama - perhaps a greater problem than Iraq. The U.S. Justice Department said last month that Mexican gangs are the "biggest organized crime threat...

Making their rounds in company vans, members of the Aispuro drug trafficking organization dealt Mexican meth to plumbers, teenagers and street pushers. Police say the group moved more than $200,000 or 25 pounds of methamphetamine each week in the Albuquerque area and supplied the drug to hundreds. It was a well-run organization with stash houses, job descriptions for its members, a fleet of transport cars with hidden compartments, a secret code and two auto detailing shops it used to launder money. Police say the organization formed a partnership with the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico, which shipped the Mexican-made drugs to...

A Mexican drug suspect has confessed to dissolving the bodies of 300 rivals with corrosive chemicals near the U.S. border, in a claim highlighting the brutality of Mexico’s drug war. Santiago Meza, known as "The Stew Maker," told journalists he did away with bodies in industrial drums on the outskirts of the violent city of Tijuana. More than 700 people died in Tijuana last year as rival gangs battled for control of the city’s lucrative drug trade. Many others are missing and believed dead after being abducted. The suspect, who was paraded before journalists by the army on Friday, said...

MEXICO CITY – President Felipe Calderon's war on drug trafficking has led to his own doorstep, with the arrest of a dozen high-ranking officials with alleged ties to Mexico's most powerful drug gang, the Sinaloa Cartel. The U.S. praises Calderon for rooting out corruption at the top. But critics say the arrests reveal nothing more than a timeworn government tactic of protecting one cartel and cracking down on others. Operation Clean House comes just as the U.S. is giving Mexico its first installment of $400 million in equipment and technology to fight drugs.

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/0901/090114tampa.htm January 14, 2009 Colombian drug lord gets life in prison following joint law enforcement investigation TAMPA, Fla. - A high ranking member of a Colombian drug cartel was sentenced here to life in prison Monday following a multi-agency investigation comprised of several federal agencies including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Ivan Gonzalez-Bejarano, 48, linked to the Cali Cartel, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Steven D. Merryday to a term of life imprisonment for conspiracy to import and distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine. The joint federal investigation, that spanned...

According to the US Joint Forces Command there are two US allies that have the possibility for rapid and sudden collapse, Pakistan and Mexico. Pakistan was no surprise but MEXICO ? The implications of that are frightening for the future of this country. The report points to the fact that Mexico's politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and press by criminal gangs and drug cartels:

The gruesome violence will not stop with the tolling of the New Year’s bells, nor will it stop at the U.S. border. Many have written about the nexus of crime and terrorism; the fact is that drug crime and terrorism, mixed in with a healthy dose of youth gangs lies in front of us. Ask local law enforcement officials, but don’t necessarily look for it to be reported in your local newspaper. You won’t find much either about the increase in home invasions. Earlier this month, the former girlfriend of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the Sinaloa cartel showed up dead,...

More than 5,000 people have been killed in Mexico's out of control drug cartel wars this year, so why is our government opening even more border crossings at this time with Mexico. Many elected officials are ignoring Mexico's raging war against the drug cartels and instead of focusing on safety and public security, trying to widen the openings in our border with Mexico strictly for commerce purposes. DOBBS: Disturbing new details emerging tonight from Mexico proving that the raging drug cartel wars there are far more deadly than the government of Mexico has previously admitted. The U.S. response, however, is...

<p>McALLEN — Two South Texas Border Patrol agents appeared in federal court today on charges alleging they helped drug traffickers move their product across the U.S.-Mexico border.</p> <p>A grand jury in Houston returned sealed indictments Monday against Leonel Morales, 30, of the Border Patrol's Laredo sector and Salomon Ruiz, 34, of the Rio Grande Valley sector.</p>

FBI Warns of Potential Terror Attacks The FBI and Department of Homeland Security today issued an analytical "note" to U.S. law-enforcement officials cautioning that al-Qaida terrorists have in the past expressed interest in attacking public buildings using a dozen suicide bombers each carrying 20 kilograms of explosives. Authors with the U.S. Office of Intelligence and Analysis added that they have "no credible or specific information that terrorists are planning operations against public buildings in the United States." The FBI and DHS analysts said they were releasing the note because "it is important for local authorities and building owners and...

TIJUANA – A special federal task force captured several men believed to be high-ranking members of the Arellano Felix cartel amid gunfire in a pre-dawn raid Friday, according the local Mexican military command. The suspects were gambling around 2 a.m. in a room at Caliente Casino, owned by former mayor Jorge Hank Rhon. Alfonso Duarte Mujica, local military commander, said at a press conference Friday morning that one of those captured was Pedro Ignacio Zazueta, known as “El Pit,” believed to be one of the leaders of the Arellano cartel. Zazueta is a lieutenant to Fernando Sanchez Arellano, known as...

OUR OPINION: U.S. MUST SUPPORT EFFORT TO DEFEAT NARCOTICS CRIMINALS The outpouring of drug-related violence in Mexico over the last few months has made it indisputably clear that President Felipe Calderón's government is engaged in a fight to the death against the powerful criminal gangs that run the cross-border drug trade. For Mexico, the stakes are all too clear: Either it prevails or the country becomes one big sanctuary for druglords. With Mexico reaching out to the United States for help and the Bush administration eager to comply, Congress must make assistance to Mexico an urgent priority. Last week, the...

By Lizbeth Diaz TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - Seventeen Mexican drug gang members were killed near the U.S. border on Saturday, their bodies scattered along a road after one of the deadliest shootouts in Mexico's three-year narco-war. Rival factions of the Arellano Felix drug cartel in Tijuana on the Mexico-California border battled each other with rifles and machine guns in the early hours of the morning, police said. Fourteen bodies were lying in pools of blood on a road near assembly-for-export maquiladora plants on the city's eastern limits. The corpses were surrounded by hundreds of bullet casings and many of their...

A Mexican national who was shot by two Border Patrol agents but later was charged with smuggling marijuana is expected to plead guilty to those charges today in federal court in El Paso, Texas, The Washington Times has learned. Osvaldo Aldrete Davila, whose testimony against Border Patrol Agents Ignacio "Nacho" Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean led to their conviction in March 2006, was apprehended by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) last year at the international port of entry in El Paso, after witnesses identified him in a second drug-smuggling operation. Ramos and Compean are serving 11 and 12 years, respectively....

Afghanistan to Ask NATO for Bigger Army Afghan officials will go to the NATO summit in Romania Thursday with a request: pay to increase our national Army by 40 percent. A bigger Army, Afghan officials argue, will allow the US and other coalition members to scale back in the coming years. This appeal comes amid pleas from the US and Canada for other NATO members to commit more to the Afghanistan mission, which many analysts say has floundered over the past year for lack of resources and a coherent strategy. France is expected to contribute another 1,000 forces and...

EL PASO, Texas - Mexican Consulate officials in El Paso, Texas, said Mexican drug cartels have been posting help-wanted ads in Juarez, Mexico, newspapers. The officials said publications including P.M., El Diario de Juarez and El Norte have been printing vague help-wanted ads that are designed to trick young people into smuggling drugs over the border into the United States, the Las Cruces (N.M.) Sun-News reported Friday. Mexican Consulate spokeswoman Socorro Cordova said the issue came to the attention of officials nine months ago when the family of a driver stopped at the U.S. border showed the ad to Mexican...

Alleged gun smuggling leader arrested in TucsonBy: The Associated Press Updated at: 04/04/2008 02:16:41 PM PHOENIX (AP) - Arizona authorities have arrested a Tucson man accused of being the leader of a gun smuggling network that supplied a Mexican drug cartel with weapons. Authorities on Thursday announced the arrest of 23-year-old Victor Manuel Varela Jr., who is accused of supplying the Juarez cartel in Palomas, Mexico with rifles and guns. Tom Mangan, a spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, says Varela’s network illegally bought the firearms in Arizona, transported them to New Mexico and then took...

Murders and kidnappings on both sides of the border have significantly increased in recent years. The violence along the U.S.-Mexican border has increased so dramatically that the Juárez Mayor José Reyes Ferriz asked Mexican President Felipe Calderón to send more help as reported in the El Paso Journal. Only thirty federal officers had been sent at that time to Juárez despite repeated requests for more help. It's necessary and urgent to have agents from the federal preventive police to patrol the streets the way that we need to confront this situation," Reyes Ferriz said in a news conference. The Mexican...

CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico – The government of Mexican President Felipe Calderón on Thursday announced a military surge of more than 2,000 soldiers in this besieged border community – caught in the crossfire between two warring drug cartels. "Operation Chihuahua," named after Mexico's biggest state, nestled against New Mexico and Texas, is aimed at restoring law and order in a region that many say has grown lawless. Since Jan. 1, nearly 200 people have been killed in this city of 1.2 million. "In this fight, Chihuahua is not alone," said Mexico's interior secretary Juan Camilo Muriño, who was accompanied by the...

MEXICO CITY - Suspected drug cartel gunmen killed five people in an attack on a police station in central Mexico and during their subsequent escape, authorities said on Saturday. At least six masked, heavily armed men raided the police station in the town of Jerecuaro, in the state of Guanajuato, on Friday, shooting and killing two police officers and a secretary. Making their escape in sport utility vehicles, they gunned down another two police officers on a nearby highway, state authorities said. Police later found one of the gunmen dead of a gunshot wound in one of three abandoned bullet-riddled...

Soldiers seized assault rifles, grenades, marijuana and bulletproof vests bearing police insignia after a brief shootout in the Mexican border city of Tijuana. No one was wounded in the overnight exchange of fire with three suspects hunkered down in a house in La Mesa district, army Gen. Sergio Aponte Polito told reporters Friday. Troops seized 91 assault rifles — some with butts of gold and ivory — along with 18 grenades, the bulletproof vests and more than 880 pounds of marijuana, Aponte Polito said. The three suspects, aged 25 to 33, were arrested. The bust followed weeks of bloody confrontations...

MEXICO CITY — Mexican soldiers seized nearly 10 tons of marijuana, a machine gun, scores of assault rifles and three grenades in a raid Thursday just across the border from Texas, the military said. Soldiers stopped a fleeing minivan and searched a nearby building outside the city of Miguel Aleman, across from Roma, Texas. Inside, they found the marijuana, 89 assault rifles, more than 80,000 rounds of ammunition and a host of other weapons, a Mexican Defense Department statement said. Five men, from ages 28 to 62, were arrested, according to the statement. The seizure follows weeks of bloody confrontation...

A proposal facing action by the U.S. Senate would force National Park and National Wildlife Refuge managers to allow more loaded, hidden handguns in national parks and wildlife refuges, endangering the public as well as wildlife. "This is more of the same from the gun pushers - any gun, anywhere, at any time," said Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "Why are we putting hikers, campers and families at risk by introducing loaded, hidden handguns into our national parks and refuges? This proposal is a bad idea that the Senate should reject." Senator Tom Coburn...