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<p>Back in April, 2008 I reported on how the Border Patrol was dropping it's requirement for a High School Diploma or GED, lessening training from 88 days to 55 days and basically encouraging a Border Patrol that will enable corruption and incompetence to enter the agency. Now this has proven true as arrests for corruption within the Border Patrol has skyrocketed.</p>

Crossing a Mexican drug cartel usually comes with a price — death. On the U.S.- Mexico border, that price is being paid daily with an endless stream of execution-style slayings in a war to control drug routes to the north. As Mexican officials crack down on these cartels, violence spreads. Lives are merely the cost of doing business, and since 2007 the international press has documented more than 7,400 drug war-related murders on the border. Police are gunned down in public squares. Failed drug smugglers are tortured to death and bound from head to toe in duct tape. Enemies are...

During his visit to Mexico last week, President Obama suggested that Americans are partly to blame for the appalling violence associated with the illegal drug trade there. "The demand for these drugs in the United States is what's helping keep these cartels in business," he said. "This war is being waged with guns purchased not here but in the United States."Obama is right that the U.S. is largely responsible for the carnage in Mexico, which claimed more than 6,000 lives last year. But the problem is neither the drugs Americans buy nor the guns they sell; it's the war on...

In 2006, I conducted a three-part interview with former US Border Patrol Supervisor David J Stoddard. For 27 years, David served in Calexico, California, Vermont, Yuma, Tucson Sector Headquarters and Naco, Arizona and worked in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and other locations. He also provided testimony about immigration reform to Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner's (R-WI) House Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims in 1999 and a Congressional subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources in 2002. With the current US-Mexico border crisis — including an actual ongoing war on our southern border — I thought it was time to...

MEXICO CITY — As Mexico suffers from an onslaught of massacres, decapitations and execution-style hits, six major drug cartels have carved up the country into fiefdoms. Like the armies of authentic warlords, the cartels attempt to completely dominate their territories, controlling trafficking routes, local drug sales and other criminal enterprises. Clashing over disputed turf, the cartels all have carried out murders on an epic scale. Sinaloa Cartel City base: Culiacan (northwestern Mexico) Kingpins: Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, Juan Jose Esparragoza (El Azul) States in sphere of influence: Sinaloa, Sonora, Durango, Morelos, Chihuahua, Baja California, Mexico City,...

AT least 15 people have been killed in the past 24 hours in northern Chihuahua state, local officials said, hours after US President Barack Obama said violence in Mexico has "gotten out of hand". The bodies of five men were found on Saturday in an irrigation ditch outside of Rosales, in the central part of the state, the local prosecutor's office said, adding that the bodies were apparently dumped from a pick-up truck. In Chihuahua capital, another four bodies were dumped by gunmen from a car near a petrol station, the office added. Late Saturday, three people were murdered in...

From the original 31 members, the Mexican organized criminal faction Los Zetas has grown into an organization in its own right, operating separate from the Gulf Cartel and just as violent Between the first of the year and mid-March, 2009, the Mexican criminal organization most commonly known as "Los Zetas" has been busy. Members of this group have been linked to a death threat delivered to the president of Guatemala, a grenade thrown into a bar in Pharr, Texas, the death of a high-ranking military general in Cancun, and a fair share of the organized crime-related deaths registered this year...

WASHINGTON — Tighter gun control and stronger law enforcement in Southwestern states were recommended Thursday by lawmakers concerned about drug violence in Mexico possibly spilling across the border. --snip-- "The United States and Mexico border violence can only be solved if we look at all parts of the equation," Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., said Thursday during a House subcommittee considering changes to U.S. gun laws. "Let’s examine our gun laws, let’s cut down on U.S. drug consumption, let’s ask there to be more resources to root out drug-money laundering," he said...

Reporting from Monterrey, Mexico -- The small houses of the Independencia neighborhood climb a hill that rises from the bone-dry Santa Catarina riverbed. Gang graffiti proliferate the higher you go, until they completely cover the cinder-block walls with slogans, threats and declarations. Young men in baggy pants, sweat shirt hoodies pulled tightly around their faces, populate the desolate street corners, in between vacant lots and shattered wooden stoops. Look out from the top of the hill and in the distance you see the impressive skyline of Monterrey, the wealthiest city in Mexico, its fancy museums, glistening high-rises, leafy plazas and...

For eight years Joaquín Guzmán Loera reportedly managed his international drug smuggling operation from behind bars while enjoying a lavish prison life with access to booze, women and a home entertainment system. Then in January 2001, facing extradition to the U.S., Guzmán slipped into a laundry cart and escaped. Since then "El Chapo," or Shorty, as he is called, has tightened his grip on Mexico's drug trade as head of the Sinaloa cartel, one of the biggest suppliers of cocaine to the U.S. It is a lucrative business to be in these days. Thirty-five million people in the U.S. use...

The failure to secure the border to prevent illegal drugs from entering into the United States from Mexico in the first place is inexusable. The Mexican drug cartels have established distribution networks and supply lines in at least 230 American cities, and the enforcement violence among the rival cells has been brutally incessant in Phoenix, Atlanta and Houston. The governors of Arizona and Texas have requested national guard troops to secure their borders only to be rebuffed by resident Barack Obama who "said that now is not the time to send troops": "We've got a very big border with Mexico,"...

Expert Tom Diaz says that imports of certain semiautomatic rifles were regulated under the first Bush and Clinton administrations. But he told a House panel Wednesday the import rules were relaxed under the most recent Bush administration.

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."

Obama Considering Deploying Troops to U.S.-Mexico Border President Obama tells regional reporters it is "unacceptable if you've got drug gangs crossing our borders and killing U.S. citizens." FOXNews.com Thursday, March 12, 2009 President Obama says he's considering whether to deploy National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, after Texas Gov. Rick Perry made an urgent call fort 1,000 more "boots on the ground" to deal with the growing violence. The president weighed the option during a meeting with regional reporters Wednesday afternoon. "We're going to examine whether and if National Guard deployments would make sense and under what circumstances they...

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."Already this year there...

FORT HUACHUCA — The Phoenix area has literally become the kidnapping capital of the United States, Arizona’s attorney general said Tuesday. The fight to control illegal immigrant smuggling routes into the United States has seen a lot of one gang of coyotes trying to take another gang’s human treasure, Terry Goddard told a number of federal, state and local law enforcement officials. Drop houses, which is where the gangs hide illegal immigrants smuggled into the country from Mexico, are a lucrative business, and that is why gangs belonging to different cartels try to kidnap people staying in those facilities, Goddard...

On Monday’s CBS Evening News, correspondent Ben Tracy filed a report documenting the thousands of guns that are illegally smuggled to Mexican drug cartels which they use in battle with the Mexican army, and suggested that lax gun laws in America are to blame. Without delving into the possibility that greater availability of guns in Mexico might help the country’s citizens to reduce that country’s overall crime rate, Tracy informed viewers that it is "nearly impossible" to buy guns in Mexico legally, as he pointed out America’s less strict laws: Mexican law makes it nearly impossible to buy guns there...

ACAPULCO, Mexico — Gunmen killed six people, including a local police chief, in a series of attacks Monday in mountain towns in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero. The police chief of Pungarabato was repeatedly shot while driving his red Mustang on a highway near the small town early Monday, Guerrero state public safety department said in a news release. Five other men were found gunned down in different towns in the isolated mountainous zone known as the Tierra Caliente, or the Hot Land, the state police said. In the border city of Tijuana, soldiers detained 60 people at a...

WASHINGTON — Americans got a wakeup call last week about the threat posed by Mexican drug traffickers when the State Department issued a travel advisory warning vacationers heading for warmer climes of the danger they would face visiting our closest neighbor to the south. The violence has escalated to the point where in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, the police chief was forced to flee the city after drug traffickers demanded his resignation, systematically killing his deputy and three of his men until he capitulated. Mexican President Felipe Calderon has dispatched soldiers and more federal police to patrol the...

Mexico City (dpa) - Mexican police found five human heads Tuesday in portable coolers on a road in Ixtlahuacan del Rio, some 600 kilometres northwest of Mexico City. On the inside of the coolers' lids, two messages had been written in black ink, with threats addressed to someone that was only identified as ``Goyo,'' a spokesman for the public prosecutor's office in the state of Jalisco told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. The authorities said the heads of the five men had been severed just hours before they were found. Police were combing the rural area where the heads were found, some...

Mexico’s Other Export by: Heather Latham, March 10, 2009 Mexico has a major export that never gets discussed in free-trade agreements. “There has been an alarming spike in violence in Mexico in recent years, most of which is associated with the trafficking in illegal drugs and the efforts of the Mexican government to shut down that trade,” Ted Galen Carpenter writes in a recent CATO Institute Policy Analysis titled “Troubled Neighbor: Mexico’s Drug Violence Poses a Threat to the United States.” He continues, “The turf battles have been ferocious. In 2005, more than 1,300 people perished in drug-related violence. By...

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...

You can drive into this dusty fleck of a town near the Texas-Louisiana border if you're African-American, but you might not be able to drive out of it—at least not with your car, your cash, your jewelry or other valuables. That's because the police here allegedly have found a way to strip motorists, many of them black, of their property without ever charging them with a crime. Instead they offer out-of-towners a grim choice: voluntarily sign over your belongings to the town, or face felony charges of money laundering or other serious crimes. More than 140 people reluctantly accepted that...

With U.S. forces fighting two wars abroad, the nation's top military officer made an important visit last week to forestall a third. He went to Mexico. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made the trip to confer with Mexican leaders about the Merida Initiative, a three-year plan signed into law last June to flood the U.S.-Mexican border region with $1.4 billion in U.S. assistance for law-enforcement training and equipment, as well as technical advice and training to bolster Mexico’s judicial system. That’s about 100 people every week for the last 14 months. The cartels usually do...

Members of Congress are raising the alarm that war-like conditions on the Mexican border could lead to Mexican drug cartels helping terrorists attack the U.S. “When you have…gangs and they have loose ties with al Qaeda and then you have Iran not too far away from building a nuclear capability, nuclear terrorism may not be far off,” said Rep. Trent Franks (R- Ariz.), a member of the House Armed Services committee. The Mexican drug cartels’ violence accounted for more than 6,000 deaths last year, and in recent months it has begun spilling over into the districts of lawmakers from the...

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...

Death froze his exhausted face. The attackers lashed or punctured nearly every part of his body. Then they cut off the dead man's head, wrapped it in a plastic grocery bag and dumped it with his body between two tractor-trailers on a city street. As with most murders in Ciudad Juarez, police found no witnesses, no weapons. Only the battered corpse on the steel coroner's table carries clues to who he was and how he died. "Every organ speaks," says Dr. Maria Concepcion Molina, who gently removes packing tape from the head of her third decapitated victim in a week....

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.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama was briefed Saturday by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen about the drug wars in Mexico and wanted to know how the United States can help. "Clearly one of the things the president was interested in was the U.S military capability that may or may not apply to our cooperation with the Mexicans," said a U.S. military official who requested anonymity because the discussions were private. "He was very interested in what kind of military capabilities may be applied." Mullen briefed Obama Saturday morning about discussions with Mexican military leaders about the drug...

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- Few Americans enter this border city anymore. Crossing south on the right side of the bridges is lonely, with only a smattering of people, mostly Mexicans living in El Paso. The army base has banned soldiers from crossing, and few if any kids come looking for a good time -- most of the bars have closed anyway. The reason: Juárez is at war. The city is fighting drug cartels, and the cartels are fighting each other. In 2008, more than 1,600 people were killed in Juárez in drug-related violence, often assassinations carried out in daylight. Some...

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

The Mexican president has blamed US "corruption" for hampering his nation's efforts to combat violent drug cartels. Felipe Calderon also told the AFP news agency that the main cause of Mexico's drug gang problems was "having the world's biggest consumer [of drugs] next to us". "Drug trafficking in the United States is fuelled by the phenomenon of corruption on the part of the American authorities," he said on Wednesday. The Mexican president launched a massive assault on drug cartels after entering office in late 2006 but the cartels have responded with campaigns of violence and intimidation that left 6,000 dead...

HELPING OUT IS IN OUR INTEREST Today's terror in Mexico is tomorrow's terror on US soil; the violence has already started crossing the border. To protect ourselves, we must help our beleaguered neighbors decisively and effectively put an end to the rippling massacres. Violence isn't all that will cross the border - corruption will spread, too. In 2007, the DHS opened 79 investigations into border corruption in four US states along the Mexican border, more than twice the number four years earlier.

Heeding the advice of Gen. David Petraeus, Barack Obama has committed 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan and will keep 50,000 in Iraq after U.S. combat operations end in August 2010. But are U.S. vital interests more threatened by what happens in Anbar or Helmand than in the war raging along our southern border? Prediction: After all U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Korea have come home, there will be a U.S. army on the Mexican border. For this is where the fate of our republic will be decided, as the fate of Europe will be decided by the millions streaming...

In case you haven't noticed, the violence and mayhem along the Mexican border is spilling into the United States. Years of lackadaisical enforcement and a booming drug trade has spiraled the murder rate in what used to be a bucolically quiet region. Now south Texas is starting to look more and more like north Mexico... the highway in Brownsville was closed the other day because of a shootout. Senator Cornyn sent this letter to Obama today, asking him to please enforce the borders. Fat chance, really... especially after Bush left it wide open after 9/11. Democrats probably love it... new...

The Administration is Not Dealing Straight With Us on Mexico's Gun Problem Let's set things straight right up front. Yes, some guns are being smuggled into Mexico from the U.S. Most are handguns. But, handguns are being illegally trafficked from state to state and from the U.S. to Canada. It should come as no surprise that guns are smuggled into Mexico. But, the problem being portrayed by the U.S. media and our government is not as it seems. You see, Mexico doesn't allow ownership of most firearms, so ordinary Mexican people seeking self-protection will find a way to get them...

Armed to the hilt, they came from land and air, determined to restore order to Mexico's most violent city. Nearly 2,000 Mexican soldiers and armed federal police poured into the border town of Ciudad Juarez last weekend. The city - just across from El Paso in Texas - has been ravaged by drug gangs. Just this month 250 people were killed there by hitmen fighting for lucrative smuggling routes.

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...

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said the US wants to increase the military assistance it provides Mexico for its fight against drugs trafficking. Mr Gates said Washington was more prepared now to help Mexico in its fight against the cartels which control the flow of illegal narcotics. Mr Gates said aid could come in the form of military hardware, training and intelligence support to help the Mexican authorities in their fight against the well-armed and organised drugs traffickers. "It clearly is a serious problem," Gates said. But he pointed to Mexican President Felipe Calderon as the main reason for this...

Two of Mexico's deadliest drug cartels have reached a combined force of 100,000 foot soldiers, wreaking havoc across the country and threatening U.S. border states, the U.S. Defense Department told The Washington Times. The cartels rival the Mexican army in size and have both Mexico and the U.S. in crisis mode as they deal with what they fear is a coming insurgency along the border. "It's moving to crisis proportions," an unidentified defense official told The Times. The official also said the cartels have reached a size where they are on par with Mexico's army of 130,000. About 7,000 people...

Armed to the hilt, they came from land and air, determined to restore order to Mexico's most violent city. Nearly 2,000 Mexican soldiers and armed federal police poured into the border town of Ciudad Juarez last weekend.

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=53293 Gates: U.S. Military Could Help Mexico Fight Drug Cartels By Donna Miles American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, March 2, 2009 – The United States could increase its military support to help Mexico fight drug cartels that pose an increasingly alarming security risk, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said yesterday. “I think we are beginning to be in a position to help the Mexicans more than we have in the past,” Gates said during an NBC “Meet the Press” interview. “Some of the old biases against cooperation between our militaries and so on,...

MEXICO CITY — Federal police made two arrests and confiscated weapons and marijuana Sunday in Tijuana, across the U.S. border from San Diego, after coming under attack by men linked to a drug cartel. Police said one of the suspects told them they worked for “the engineer,” an apparent reference to a leader of the Arellano Felix drug cartel. Officers, who were not injured in the attack, seized three assault rifles, pistols and bundles of marijuana. - snip - On Saturday, two police officers in the town of Praxedis Guerrero were shot dead in their patrol vehicle, prosecutors said. The...

El Debate (Sinaloa) 2/24/09 Three of four youths abducted Monday night were found murdered in farmland near Costa Rica, Sinaloa, some 20 miles south of Culiacan. The victims were ages 17, 19 and 20. The fourth youth abducted with them has not been located. All the bodies had signs of torture and had been shot repeatedly in their backs and heads. Their hands were tied behind them with cord. [Photo relates.] murder —– “A small fortune” in US currency was seized by Mexican federal authorities in Culiacan. The Army confiscated more than $380,000 as well as two vehicles from a...

This week, an Arizona gun shop goes on trial in state court in what law-enforcement officials are calling a landmark case against gun dealers who sell weapons that end up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels, fueling horrific violence south of the border that killed more than 6,000 people last year. X-Caliber Guns LLC, is accused of knowingly selling hundreds of weapons, mostly AK-47s, to buyers who were posing as fronts for Mexican drug gangs. The gun store's owner, 47-year-old George Iknadosian, has maintained his innocence in court filings. While the U.S. has long pressed Mexico to stop...

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...

PHOENIX (Reuters) – Hit men dressed in fake police tactical gear burst into a home in Phoenix, rake it with gunfire and execute a man.

The ebbing stretch of Rio Grande that divides the Texas city of El Paso from the Mexican city of Juarez may soon become one of the world's most militarized borders. This week, as Texas Governor Rick Perry went to El Paso to announce that has asked Washington for 1,000 more "boots on the ground" to enforce the border, Mexico's government ordered 5,000 extra soldiers to Juarez.

Jose Molinar knew something wasn't right. He hadn't heard from his wife for a few hours, which was not sitting well with him. Marisella Molinar worked as a secretary for a top prosecutor in Juarez... She was employed in the office for more than 10 years and though she lived across the border in El Paso, Texas, with her husband, she drove about 20 minutes over the Juarez-El Paso border every day. Her passenger, Jesus Huerta Yedra, was a target of the cartels that day.... One shot hit Marisella Molinar, a mother of two and proud grandmother, in the chest,...

President Felipe Calderon hopes to quell Mexico's rampant drug violence by the end of his term in 2012, and disputes U.S. fears that Mexico is losing control of its territory. In interviews with The Associated Press on Thursday, Calderon and his top prosecutor said the violence that killed 6,290 people last year — and more than 1,000 in the first eight weeks of 2009 — is a sign that the cartels are under pressure from military and police operations nationwide, as well as turf wars among themselves. "To say that Mexico is a failed state is absolutely false," Calderon said....