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The decapitated bodies of 15 young men have been found in the Mexican beach resort of Acapulco. Police said they were discovered near a shopping centre and were all aged between 15 and 25. They were dumped there by drug cartel members fighting over the control of the drugs business in the city. SNIP In this latest violent incident, police responding to a report of a burning vehicle near Acapulco's Plaza Senderos shopping centre shortly after midnight found five other abandoned vehicles and the decapitated bodies. Media reports say that three messages signed by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, leader of...

SAN DIEGO (CNS) - The mother of a 14-year-old boy suspected of working as an assassin for a Mexican drug cartel pleaded not guilty in San Diego Thursday to a charge of being in the United States illegally.

... The murder rate in Guatemala is already double that of Mexico, where more than 10,000 drug-related murders have taken place this year. Now there is evidence that one of Mexico’s most vicious cartels, the Zetas, are setting up bases in Guatemala as they come under increasing pressure from Felipe Calderon’s government. The Zetas have set up training camps and are trying to intimidate Guatemalan cartels. So far they’ve forced at least one Guatemalan drug family to leave the country. “When you have drug traffickers afraid of other drug traffickers, you know its getting pretty bad,” U.S. Ambassador Stephen McFarland...

...one law enforcement officer, speaking on condition that his name not be used, told The Brownsville Herald that the two-day toll “easily” passed 100... A Texas businesswoman, who was in Matamoros running errands, reported being in the downtown area when a shootout erupted just a block away. The woman reported hearing machine guns and over 20 seconds of continuous grenade explosions... Another woman said that while she was walking near the Pumarejo General Hospital in Matamoros, she saw a truck with armed gunmen collide with an SUV carrying a family. The woman stated that the impact rolled the SUV on...

The decapitation of the lead Mexican investigator in the alleged murder of a jet-skier on a border lake is a sharp retort to President Obama's administration, a Texas congressman said. "The Mexican drug cartels just sent a message to the White House that the United States no longer controls the border," Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, told WND. The severed head of investigator Rolando Armando Flores Villegas was delivered this week to an army garrison in Ciudad Miguel Aleman in the Tamaulipas state in Mexico. The city is across the river from Zapata County, Texas, the location of Falcon Lake, where...

Violence continued Wednesday in Matamoros as a grenade was thrown at city hall and a local university was shut down because of a threat of some type of attack. Also, the Mexican navy announced the arrest of 30 Gulf Cartel members during operations conducted Monday and Tuesday throughout the state of Tamaulipas. As disturbances continued to plague Matamoros, panic ripped through downtown around 9:30 a.m. when a grenade was thrown at city hall, injuring two people. Federal police and the military cordoned off an area six blocks wide around the main plaza at the intersection of Calle Sexta and Morelos....

The bodies of the four young men were discovered early on Sunday, hung upside down by their feet from a bridge near a wealthy area of Cuernavaca, a leafy city about an hour outside Mexico City, where many of the nation's elite own homes. The victims' genitals, index fingers and heads had been cut off, according to a statement from the attorney general's office in Morelos state, which includes Cuernavaca. Their heads and genitals were found nearby, along with a handmade sign, the statement said. "This will happen to everyone that helps the traitor Edgar Valdes," the placard read, referring...

MEXICO CITY — Mexican authorities say that police in Ciudad Juarez have captured five alleged drug gang members suspected in the killings of two federal officers, including one whose body was hacked to pieces. One of the suspects is also believed to have acted as a lookout in the July 15 car-bomb attack on police that killed an officer and two other people, Luis Cardenas Palomino, regional security chief for the federal police, said Friday. He described the five men as members of the La Linea gang, which works for the Juarez drug cartel. He alleged they killed two federal...

Barbara "Hair on Fire" Espinosa of Scottsdale, AZ is down on the border today along with some 500 other Arizona citizens, at a Tea Party rally in support of Arizona's SB 1070 Immigration Law. Barbara is on private property, just west of Naco, and described her position as about 100 feet from the border fence. She says, "Right across from the border fence where we are, the property belongs to the drug cartel and the area is used to transport drugs and humans into the United States. Senate candidate JD Hayworth is there and has been talking to the ranchers...

Local law enforcement was bombarded with calls from across the country Saturday asking about a report that the Zetas had taken over two ranches off Mines Road. But officials with the Laredo Police Department, Webb County Sheriff’s Department and Border Patrol said they knew nothing about such an incident, while Erik Vasys, an FBI spokesman in San Antonio, said the agency does not comment on rumors.

With the massive amount of US military on the way to Costa Rica, has our country rolled over and now admitted that it has lost control of the trafficking of drugs, money laundering and crime in general? Ever since I can remember Costa Rica has said, “If ever invaded, it´s neighbors would come to its rescue.” In times past that referred to Venezuela, but now we have Chavez and….well that´s another 100 pesos. The new friendly neighbor must be the United States who is sending 46 war ships, 200 helicopters and 7,000 Marines to rescue us from invading drug cartels,...

Drug traffickers are spending $1 million a pop to build boats that look like submarines and can carry 4 tons of cocaine for 2,000 miles without refueling. Nicknamed "narco subs," they're made to sneak loads up from South America to Mexico, where the drugs are offloaded and taken overland into the United States. "It is a semi-submersible coffin," said Jay Bergman, Andean regional director for the Drug Enforcement Administration. "You batten down the hatches and you are doing everything to not be detected sailing in the middle of the ocean." At least 13 of the craft have been stopped and...

Note: Photos included. NOTE The following text is a quote: DEA-Led Operation Delivers Over 2,000 Arrests FBI, ICE and Mexican Govt. also take part in “Project Deliverance” which leads to the seizure of $154 million and 74.1 tons of drugs, as well as the arrest of a high-priority target DEA Acting Administrator Michele Leonhart Announces Project Deliverance JUN 10 - (WASHINGTON) – DEA Acting Administrator Michele M. Leonhart joined Attorney General Eric Holder to announce the arrest of 2,266 individuals on narcotics-related charges in the United States and the seizure of more than 74.1 tons of illegal drugs as part...

Prowling these border dumps provides the equivalent of a graduate-level seminar on what illegal immigration really is, and as importantly, what it's not. We know the crossers are a religious bunch, because of the Catholic medallions, statues and Bibles they drop, and we know they're superstitious. The litter almost always includes garlic cloves: Illegals hang them from backpacks in the false belief that the scent will keep rattlesnakes away from their campsites. Some call illegal aliens "undocumented," but the truth is they have documents falling out of their pockets, literally. Examine the ground, and you'll find driver's licenses, birth certificates...

*******NOTE********* This is from December 2009. I don't remember hearing about this. I post it now, because this story is as relevant now as it was then. These Cartels are moving north, and have a presence, according to Janet Napalitano, in 230 of our cities. And its on the increase. See this thread for more information on this: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2532599/posts *********NOW TO THE STORY*************** MEXICO CITY -- The brazen murder of several family members of a Mexican Naval hero threatens to start a dangerous new chapter in the country's drug war, in which cartels increasingly resort to terror tactics to try...

While Obama and Congress sit on their hands on border security, a drug cartel planned a terrorist attack on American soil. The Houston Chronicle is reporting that a drug cartel was plotting to blow up the Falcon dam along the Texas border near Rio Grande City, an area of about 4 million residents. The cartel known as Los Zetes was intending on placing dynamite near the dam to blow it up in order to get revenge on a rival gang called the Gulf Cartel, which smuggles drugs in the area. Meanwhile in Washington, the meeting between Obama and Arizona Governor...

In the debate over illegal immigration – largely from Mexico into the United States – it is often easy to focus exclusively on the security of the border and the rule of law. While both are extremely important, so are the human costs that are paid as a result of the drug trade; when illegal aliens are caught, they are often caught smuggling illegal drugs.

Public Safety Secretary Minerva Bautista, the top security official in Mexico's western state of Michoacan where the cult-like drug cartel La Familia has been engaged in an insurgency against the government, was wounded today in an ambush which killed four others as reported by Gustavo Ruiz for The Associated Press: She was traveling in a bullet-resistant sport utility vehicle. State Attorney General Jesus Montejano told the local Milenio television station that the attackers used assault rifles, grenades, a grenade launcher and a powerful .50-caliber sniper rifle whose rounds are capable of penetrating bullet-resistant materials. * * * The dead included...

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised on Tuesday to help Mexico broaden a drug war that has failed to curb traffickers' increasingly deadly power along the U.S.-Mexican border. Clinton, leading a top-level U.S. delegation in Mexico City for a day of talks, said it was time to tackle the deeper social issues that fuel the narcotics trade as both nations battle to outmaneuver powerful smuggling organizations. "These narcotics cartels are waging war on civil society," Clinton told a news conference, pledging that the joint U.S.-Mexican response would not be bound by "borders or bureaucratic divisions." Clinton...

AUSTIN, Texas - Gov. Rick Perry announced on Thursday afternoon that Texas military helicopters will be sent to help in the battle against "spillover" violence in the Mexico border region. The governor will deploy the OH-58 Kiowa and UH-72 Lakota helicopters as part of the first phase of the violence contingency plan that he activated on Tuesday. The helicopters will help local law enforcement officers prevent and detect crime along the border. The aircraft will be flown between Brownsville and El Paso. "As we continue to increase our resources and personnel along the border to combat the threat of spillover...