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Officials with the federal Drug Enforcement Administration say they took down several bosses from the Sinaloa Cartel in a move they say "decimated" a Utah-based cell of the Mexican crime ring. At least seven arrests came Tuesday .. part of an 18-month investigation that has yielded more than 30 arrests in Utah, California and Nevada. Authorities have also seized more than 30 pounds of methamphetamine, 200 pounds of marijuana, a kilogram of heroin and a kilogram of cocaine, as well as more than $322,000 and guns.

“Mexican commandos have discreetly traveled to the United States, assembled at designated areasand dispatched helicopter missions back across the border aimed at suspected drug traffickers,” reports the New York Times. This is all part of what the Obama Administration is calling “boomerang operations” which are designed to get at Mexican drug traffickers through the back door. ”The cartels don’t expect Mexican police coming from the U.S.,” one senior military official told the Times. Clearly things are not going well in Mexico.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The Los Angeles, Times reported that William G. McMahon, William D. Newell and David Voth, the three key supervisors in the Phoenix-run investigation that went wrong, were promoted to management positions at the ATF's Washington headquarters. The House committee investigating "Fast and Furious" asked the ATF to explain the new jobs and to confirm whether or not McMahon, Newell and Voth had been promoted. The ATF's acting director Kenneth E. Melson, told the Oversight and Government Reform Committee staff that the jobs were not considered promotions because as no one received a raise in...

Federal officials said Thursday they've taken down a drug and weapons trafficking ring involving members of a U.S. Iraqi community and a major Mexican drug cartel that was caught selling large amounts of drugs, guns and grenades. Police in El Cajon said they've arrested more than 60 people in the takedown of the ring, whose members are suspected of being affiliated with the Chaldean Organized Crime Syndicate based in Detroit. Smugglers were shipping drugs from El Cajon to Iraqis in Detroit, authorities said. El Cajon and federal police say they have seized 18 pounds of methamphetamine, narcotics, cocaine and other...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Police in southern California have arrested 60 people and broken up an Iraqi criminal ring accused of selling drugs, machine guns and improvised bombs out of an immigrant social club, authorities said on Thursday. The swoop by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and local police targeted a network operating out of El Cajon, which is near San Diego and close to the border with Mexico.

UKIAH -- An estimated $800 million worth of marijuana has been seized following a massive raid on illegal grows on public lands deep in Northern California's pot country, authorities said Tuesday. ... Several Mexican-based drug trafficking organizations were behind the illegal grows, Department of Justice spokeswoman Michelle Gregory said. In previous years, officials have blamed Mexican drug cartels for some of the state's largest growing operations, but Gregory stopped short of making that claim.

At least 122 firearms from a botched U.S. undercover operation have been found at crime scenes in Mexico or intercepted en route to drug cartels there, according to a Republican congressional report being issued on Tuesday. Mexican authorities found AK-47 assault rifles, powerful .50 caliber rifles and other weapons in late 2009 that were later linked to the U.S. sting operation to trace weapons going across the border to Mexico, the report said. Guns from the program, dubbed "Operation Fast and Furious," also were found at the scene of the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in the border...

A fight at a crowded Kent car show escalated Saturday afternoon, leaving 10 people shot as cars sped away from the scene and frightened spectators ducked into the safety of nearby businesses. Hundreds of people packed the La Plaza parking lot all day before the shooting. At least one shooter fired from the front of the shopping center into the crowd.

Washington - Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Deputy Commissioner David Aguilar told CNSNews.com that Mexican drug cartels control “several areas along our border with Mexico.” In Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, CNSNews.com asked Aguilar, “Do you think Mexican drug cartels have taken control of the human trafficking that takes place from Mexico to the U.S.?” Aguilar said, “There are several areas along our border with Mexico where in fact we believe that the drug cartels not only have taken control, but control the areas by which the illegal crossings occur.”

MEXICO CITY (AP) — U.S. and Mexican officials signed an agreement Wednesday allowing each country's trucks to traverse the other's highways, implementing a key provision of the North American Free Trade Agreement after nearly two decades of bickering. Transportation secretaries Ray LaHood and Dionisio Perez-Jacome signed the three-year memorandum, which is based on an agreement announced in March by Presidents Barack Obama and Felipe Calderon. NAFTA, signed in 1994, had called for Mexican trucks to have unrestricted access to highways in border states by 1995 and full access to all U.S. highways by January 2000. Canadian trucks have no limits...

Mexican troops crossed the border into the United States Thursday, KGNS-TV reported Friday. A convoy of three military trucks loaded with soldiers and weapons crossed the border at Bridge No. 2 in Laredo, Texas, the station reported.

In response to a deadly Border Patrol shooting by this week in the Tijuana River Valley, Mexico's president confronted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over the incident, and later demanded punishment for whomever was responsible. An investigation is underway to determine exactly where 40-year--old Jose Yanez Reyes was shot when he allegedly tried to cross the border Tuesday night into the United States. According to investigators, 40-year-old Jose Yanez Reyes and two other migrants allegedly crossed from Tijuana into the U.S. Tuesday night and began throwing rocks at border patrol agents, striking one of them in the head. According to...

A convoy of three Mexican military trucks loaded down with soldiers and weapons may have violated territorial sovereignty near Laredo, TX on Thursday, driving through a border checkpoint and crossing into the United States. KGNS-TV reports the crossing happened at a section known as Bridge Number Two: Mexican leaders say the soldiers, who had just been deployed to Nuevo Laredo, didn’t know the area, got lost and then made their way through Bridge Two.

Man dies while raping elderly South Texas woman Associated Press Posted on June 13, 2011 at 4:59 PM Updated today at 5:50 PM Tivoli, Texas View larger map REFUGIO, Texas (AP) — Investigators said a man has died while in the act of raping an elderly South Texas woman. The Refugio County Sheriff's Office identified the man as 53-year-old Isabel Chavelo Gutierrez. Sheriff's Sgt. Gary Wright said the incident happened June 2 after he rode two miles by bicycle from his home to that of his 77-year-old victim in the tiny coastal community of Tivoli.

Three Project Gunrunner documents Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican and House Oversight Committee chairman, released on Wednesday show high-ranking Justice Department officials were aware of Operation Fast and Furious and that there was a consistent administration policy that allowed American guns to be “walked” into Mexican drug cartels’ possession. One of the documents shows Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer approved a wiretap application for suspects Operation Fast and Furious targeted in March 2010. The wiretap application process is lengthy and cumbersome, and often requires those applying to make strong case as to why they need it. So, Breuer would have...

An Anchorage police officer who took on a false identity that masked his Mexican citizenship has been arrested and charged with passport fraud, federal officials said today. At a news conference Friday, U.S. Attorney Karen Loeffler said that patrolman Rafael Espinoza, on the Anchorage police force for about six years, was really Rafael Mora-Lopez, a Mexican national working in the United States illegally.

VERACRUZ, Mexico – Mexican troops clashed with gunmen in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz on Tuesday, killing 10 alleged assailants, the state government said. Soldiers and marines were checking on a report of armed men in the Infonavit Rio Medio neighborhood when they came under fire, the Veracruz state government said in a statement. The troops then gave chase after some of the gunmen fled the scene and another shootout ensued, it said. The troops also seized three automatic rifles, three police uniforms and two cars, the statement said.

(CNSNews.com) - Richard M. Stana, director of homeland security and justice issues at the Government Accountability Office (which is responsible for “auditing agency operations to determine whether federal funds are being spent efficiently and effectively”), told the Senate Homeland Security Committee yesterday that the federal government can actually prevent or stop illegal entries into the United States along only 129 miles of the 1,954-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border. That leaves 1,825 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border where the Border Patrol cannot prevent or stop an illegal entry. Nonetheless, Stana told the committee, the Border Patrol itself says it has established “an acceptable...

PHOENIX – Arizona legislators took a timeout from illegal immigration with the Senate easily defeating five related bills, reflecting little appetite for an issue that made the state the focus of national debate and protest last year. Majority Republicans were split Thursday in their votes on the defeated bills, which included two measures intended to force a U.S. Supreme Court ruling against automatic citizenship for U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants. The other three dealt with health care, public services and everyday activities such as driving. Supporters of the measures voiced frustration and said there could be political fallout for lawmakers...

MEXICO CITY – The Mexican Senate on Thursday called a hearing over reports that U.S. agents allowed guns to be smuggled into Mexico as part of investigations into drug traffickers. The Senate voted to summon U.S. Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan to discuss the issue, though it set no date. The lawmakers also asked Foreign Relations Secretary Patricia Espinoza to demand information from the U.S. State Department. CBS News and the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity reported that agents of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives investigating gunrunning by cartels allowed hundreds of guns purchased in the U.S. to...