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MEXICO CITY – Mexican police have captured alleged drug lord Carlos Beltran Leyva, just two week after his even more powerful brother was killed in a shootout with troops — back-to-back victories in President Felipe Calderon's drug war. The Public Safety office said in a statement Saturday night that Carlos Beltran Leyva was arrested in Culiacan, the capital of the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa, where he and several of his brothers were born and allegedly started their gang. Two weeks ago, his brother Arturo, reputed chief of the Beltran Leyva Cartel, was killed in a shootout with Mexican marines...

For those interested in exploring one of the greatest internal and transnational threats to the United States, there is a new book out today by Samuel Logan, This is For the Mara Salvatrucha: Inside the MS-13, America's Most Violent Gang. The book traces the history of Brenda Paz, a young Honduran who joins MS-13 and eventually becomes the most effective police witness against the organization, before she was killed. But besides the individual story, the book shows just how powerful and ruthless the MS-13 has become. Given that it now has chapters in thousands of cities across the United States,...

Bob Mazur won't be showing up at bookstores to sign copies of his new book. * * * Twenty-one years ago, after learning that the notorious Medellin drug cartel had sent a hit squad to kill him, Mazur had to assume a new identity and move his family from their Tampa home. * * * Mazur's book about the investigation code-named "Operation C-Chase" is a white-knuckle tale of how he gained the trust of crooked bankers and Colombian drug traffickers who would have killed him without a second thought if they knew he was one of "los feos." * *...

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...