Free Republic

Big-league Mexican drug traffickers imprisoned in the United States are contending that unnecessarily harsh conditions - locked up alone in ultra-high-security confinement - take a physical and psychological toll and may violate U.S.-Mexico extradition treaties.

Scandal: New documents reveal the Department of Justice lied to Congress and show how U.S. officials bought guns with tax dollars and then made sure no one stopped their transfer to Mexican drug cartels. The funneling of thousands of American guns into the hands of Mexican drug cartels in the operation known as Fast and Furious was not a botched sting operation or the result of bureaucratic incompetence. It was not designed to interdict gun trafficking, but to facilitate it. We now know that it involved not just the use of straw buyers, but also agents of the federal government...

Suspected Mexican drug traffickers from the Zetas drug cartel on 20 September drove two trucks to a main avenue in the Mexican Gulf coast city of Boca del Rio in Veracruz state and dumped 35 corpses during rush hour while gunmen stood guard, menacing frightened motorists with automatic weapons. So, why is this being written about here? Well, if for no other reason, Mexico’s drug cartels have declared a de facto war with the government for control of the country’s northern provinces for exports routes into the United States. Meanwhile, Washington, fixated on the decade-old war on terror, the Middle...

The stench from Washington is getting stronger. Rep. Darrell Issa has called for a special prosecutor to get to the bottom of the festering mess known as Operation Fast and Furious. Hatched somewhere in the bowels of the Justice Department, that misbegotten scheme had the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives deliberately allowing high-powered guns to “walk” from Arizona and elsewhere into Mexico: Our agents turned a blind eye toward the straw purchasers who were funneling the weapons to the drug cartels. The (dumb) idea was to trace cross-border arms trafficking, and so prove the (false) claim that 90...

Drip. Drip. Drip. Whether it is Solyndra, Obamacare, or Fast and Furious, President Obama’s push for his “American Jobs Act” has been drowned out this week by the failure of his past policies. Every night it seems there is a new angle on the Energy Department’s failed loan to the bankrupt solar panel manufacturer Solyndra. Not only was there a headline-grabbing hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee yesterday (at which Obama officials tried to blame Bush) , but the Treasury Department separately announced that their Inspector General (IG) would join the FBI and Energy Department IG in their...

Start rattling the chains. Start ratcheting up the hue and cry. Fire up the masses. It's long past time to force mass resignations at, and possible prosecutions of members of, the Obama Justice Department --and, more broadly, of the West Wing itself. Forgive all the links, but the scope of the corruption is so large as to defy adequate descriptions, in a single column, of each abomination. The reality is that these Obama/Holder minions at DoJ are dangerous to the very heart of constitutional, republican (small 'r') government.

NORTHPORT — Professor Allen Wells discussed major challenges facing Mexico at the monthly meeting of the Mid-Coast Forum on Foreign Relations on Sept. 7 at Point Lookout in Northport. Two of those challenges — political gridlock and drug violence — are linked to a move to open democratic elections. Wells said drug traffickers and the former ruling political party had a “working relationship” going back to World War II. He said there were patronage networks with drug cartels, like other parts of the economy. “This arrangement limited violence against public officials and top traffickers and made sure judicial investigations never...

WASHINGTON — Some have described Hurricane Irene as "the most over-hyped event in history." Americans in the Northeast who were flooded out of their homes and businesses and those without electricity, fuel or water don't agree. But a U.S. official I spoke with this week told me, "The next storm coming from down south is already deadlier than Irene, and nobody is paying attention." My source wants to remain anonymous because he is not authorized to talk about these matters with the media. He doesn't work for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency or...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Tuesday replaced two top Justice Department officials associated with an ill-fated investigation into a gun-trafficking network in Arizona that has been at the center of a political conflagration. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced the resignation of the United States attorney in Phoenix, Dennis K. Burke, and the reassignment of the acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Kenneth E. Melson. The two officials became the highest-profile political casualties yet in the fallout from a disputed effort to take down a weapons-smuggling ring based in Arizona and linked to...

ACAPULCO, Mexico (AP) — Two decapitated bodies and scalped heads were dumped outside a Sam's Club store in Acapulco while three headless corpses were found nearby on the resort city's main tourist strip, authorities in Mexico said Saturday. The bodies discovered outside the Sam's Club were cut into more than 20 pieces, Guerrero state's Public Security Department said in a statement.

Texas-Mexico Border It's not a sales pitch heard too often in the Rio Grande Valley. Farmers and ranchers here — used to haggling over the price of feed, irrigation rights and labor costs — have a new, tax-deductible option for improving their businesses. And the company offering it promises to take a bullet for its client. International Security Agency, a private security firm with offices in Colorado and Houston, announced last week in McAllen that it has received the required licenses from the Texas Department of Public Safety to operate locally. Its mission is to stop cartel-style violence in the...

La Línea: Network, gang, and mercenary army La Línea, an enforcer gang, is influential in the contested and lucrative region adjacent to El Paso, Texas By John P. Sullivan and Samual Logan Mexico is embroiled in a complex, irregular conflict often described as a drug war, a criminal insurgency, and a narco-conflict. A protean mix of criminal enterprises (cartels and gangs) fight for control of illicit economic circuits, drug-trafficking plazas and corridors, and freedom from state interference. The cartels and gangs fight each other (both against rival cartels and internally between competing factions) and against the state, attacking police and...

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico —An entire 20-man police force resigned in a northern Mexican town after a series of attacks that killed the police chief and five officers over the last three months, state officials said Thursday. The officers’ resignation Thursday left the 13,000 people of Ascension without local police services, Chihuahua state chief prosecutor Carlos Manuel Salas said. State and federal police have moved in to take over police work..Ascension is southwest of Ciudad Juarez, the border city across from El Paso, Texas, that is one of Mexico’s most violent cities.

Cartel Boss Says U.S. Allowed Drug Smuggling August 5, 2011 New bombshell allegations from a high-ranking member of the Sinaloa cartel claim that the U.S. government agreed to allow drug smuggling into the U.S. in exchange for information on rival cartels.

SANTA ANA, Calif. — Nearly 100 purported gang members have been arrested, along with weapons, cash and drugs, in what law enforcement officials are calling a devastating blow on local gangs and leaders of the notorious Mexican Mafia. Among those named in one of several indictments unsealed Wednesday was Peter Ojeda, a Santa Ana native indicted in 2005 and currently in federal prison. But despite his incarceration, Ojeda is accused of continuing to hold a grip in Orange County's Latino street gangs, ordering punishment on local gangs that refused to follow his commands and giving the "green light" on rivals...

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) — A spray-painted sign threatening death for U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents was found Friday next to a school in a northern Mexico state capital, officials said. Addressed with profanity to "Gringos (D.E.A.)," the unsigned graffiti warned: "We know where you are and we know who you are and where you go. We are going to chop off your (expletive) heads."

Not in our town, drug cartels! That's the message the men of a Mexican town – masked, wielding rifles and standing guard at makeshift blockades – delivered to drug traffickers. The would-be defenders, the indigenous Purépechas of Cherán, are protecting themselves against illegal loggers, whom they believe are backed by notorious drug traffickers. This town, surrounded by mountains of pine forests and neat farmland, is where loggers allegedly killed two residents last month and wounded several others. "There is no fear here," said one young man, defiantly peering out between a red handkerchief pulled up to his dark eyes and...

mmigration: As the President gives an amnesty speech near a hotbed of Mexican drug violence, Arizona's governor takes her case to the Supreme Court and will use prison labor and online donations to build a border fence. President Obama flew into the border city of El Paso Tuesday, no doubt over the wildfires that have plagued the politically red state and whose disaster he has chosen to virtually ignore. He may have also passed the El Paso City Hall, which last summer became a war zone as gunfire from the Mexican side pockmarked the building. He was there to tout...

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales chided fellow Republicans on immigration, urging them to work toward comprehensive immigration reform. Gonzales, the first Hispanic attorney general of the U.S., said it was a "failure" by both parties to have not achieved immigration reform yet, and warned against a proposal favored by some Republicans to amend the U.S. Constitution to deny birthright citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants. "My recommendation not just to the Republican Party but also the Democratic Party is that this country, our federal leaders need to pass comprehensive immigration reform," Gonzales said Sunday on Univision's "Al Punto" program....

On December 14, Border Officer Brian Terry lost his life in a shoot out with illegal Mexican aliens he was attempting to stop from sneaking into our country. This much we know for sure. Since then we have seen the Bureau of Alcohol Firearms and Tobacco (BATF) work overtime to keep us from learning that the guns involved in the crime, the guns with Mexican drug cartel fingerprints on them, were likely “Gun Walker” firearms. “Gun walker” was an insane idea dreamed up by some fool in the BATF that would “allow” known Mexican drug gang members to slip over...