Free Republic

NUEVO LAREDO — Nearly 200 additional soldiers and AFI agents descended on the Sister City on Sunday, barely two days after four men — including a federal highway patrol officer — were found executed with warnings from one drug cartel to another.Neither the Agencia Federal de Investigaciones (known as AFI, an agency similar to the United States’ FBI), nor the federal Defense Department would provide information about the operation, but new checkpoints were seen in various parts of the city. Witnesses saw military vehicles rumbling into the city Sunday afternoon as they crossed the 26-kilometer marker of the National Highway....

MONTERREY, Mexico, May 11 (Reuters) - Hit men from Mexico's Gulf Cartel drug gang handcuffed three men and shot them dead at a death cult altar on Friday, leaving lit candles, flowers and a taunting message for rivals in a worsening drug war. Police near the northern city of Nuevo Laredo found the corpses at a shrine to Santa Muerte, a religious figure worshiped by criminals and many of Mexico's poor. "This is for everyone who messes with the Gulf Cartel. Welcome to Nuevo Laredo, bunch of assholes," read the message, written on orange paper and taped to a wall...

A Lubbock-area man suspected of wounding a U.S. Border Patrol agent during a Wednesday afternoon shootout at the Rio Grande, was returned to the United States Thursday morning after being captured in Nuevo Laredo. “He’s in U.S. custody right now, but he hasn’t been arraigned yet,” said Border Patrol spokesman Sara Melendez. Jordan Davidson, 21, of Ranson Canyon, faces charges of aggravated assault on a police officer. Davidson is accused of shooting agent Jesus Aguilar, 28, in the hand during a confrontation at the riverbank in Laredo. “This individual was down there on the river, and set off some electronic...

LAREDO — If the teenage hitman had stayed locked up in his concrete cell after the first murder, maybe Moises Garcia would still sing goofy Spanish songs to his son. Maybe Noe Lopez, a 27-year-old father of four, wouldn't be buried under a sapling in the city cemetery. Maybe. If a judge hadn't reduced Gabriel Cardona's bail after the second murder charge, perhaps Mariano Resendez would be close to finishing his junior year of high school. If the justice of the peace hadn't decreased Cardona's bail on another murder charge and a charge of engaging in organized crime from a...

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico - With heavily armed Mexican soldiers patrolling Nuevo Laredo's graffitied, rubbish-strewn streets, Mario Cepeda is having a tough time convincing anyone to take his horse-drawn city tour. Once an easygoing Mexican border town thronging with U.S. tourists, Nuevo Laredo is becoming a ghost town because of a brutal, three-year-old turf war between rival drug cartels that has driven residents and businesses across the Rio Grande to the safety and prosperity of its Texan sister city, Laredo. "Business is no good, nobody comes any more," said Cepeda in broken English as he waited in vain for passengers on...

NUEVO LAREDO Authorities said Friday they had arrested 10 people smugglers and 42 Central American migrants headed to the United States. Victor Jimenez, a commander with Mexicos Federal Agency of Investigation, or AFI, said the group was caught Thursday walking on a dirt road to avoid an immigration checkpoint about 16 miles south of Nuevo Laredo. "All the undocumented migrants were from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras," Jimenez said. "The guides were all Mexican." The alleged smugglers were turned over to federal prosecutors and the Central American migrants were sent to a detention center in Mexico City pending their deportation,...

NUEVO LAREDO ? The Mexican states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon continue to be hotbeds of criminal activity, and federal authorities must increase their efforts to help restore order, the heads of the states? public safety department said Friday.?Municipal, state and federal authorities are committed to the fight against the criminal elements and its tentacles reaching out throughout the republic,? said Antonio Garza Garcia, head of Nuevo Leon?s public safety department. ?The shooting deaths of police officers in Monterrey show our shortcomings in profiling these criminal elements,? the chief added. ?We need to improve in this area to contain these...

A bank robbery at the IBC at Wal-Mart South Saturday night ended with the suspects shooting a police car, then racing to El Portal where they escaped into the brush along the Rio Grand and swam to the Mexican shore carrying bags of cash.Tow trucks pulled out a dark-colored Toyota Tundra out of the river late Saturday while a Border Patrol helicopter, Webb County Sheriff’s deputies, Texas Rangers, and other law enforcement officials oversaw the scene. When the car was pulled out it was surrounded by law enforcement officers in full protective gear. Police say at least two men with...

NUEVO LAREDO — A U.S. citizen left for dead on the banks of the Rio Grande here 10 days ago was back in Laredo on Tuesday, safe in a local hospital as he recuperates from gunshot wounds to the head.William Valente Solís, 36, told Tamaulipas state investigators that he was kidnapped in Laredo by four men who shot him twice and then took him to Nuevo Laredo. He said his attackers threw him out of their vehicle by the edge of the Rio Grande. It was unclear who first spotted Solís, discovered not far from a kids’ skate park on...

If last week’s attempt on the life of Congressman Horacio Garza does not awaken the conscience of our neighbors in Nuevo Laredo, then we don’t know what will. Or, perhaps, we don’t know our friends across the creek. People on both sides were shocked, but not surprised, by reports that Garza had sustained serious wounds and his driver killed in last Monday night’s ambush en route to the international airport. WE CAUGHT A MEXICAN network interview by Joaquin Lopez Doriga of Televisa where Garza says he was the assault’s target. Garza was emotionally moved by the death of his driver...

Horacio Garza Garza, a federal congressman from Tamaulipas and former Nuevo Laredo mayor, was critically wounded and his chauffeur killed Monday when their car was ambushed near the airport. The latest attack against a well-known public figure from Nuevo Laredo came one day after the Mexican government announced it was sending an additional 3,300 federal troops to the Texas-Mexico border and two days before a visit by U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to Laredo. Late Monday, Garza was placed in an ambulance and taken to an unknown destination in a caravan of several police cars that sped off toward...

MEXICO CITY - The Mexican government will expand its anti-drug raids to two states across the border from Texas, deploying more than 3,000 soldiers, sailors and federal police, officials said Sunday. The raids will cover Nuevo Laredo, a town across the border from Laredo, Texas, that has been bloodied by turf wars between drug gangs in recent years. Officials also said that in the two months since intensive raids began in central and western Mexico, they have destroyed almost as many opium fields as plots of marijuana, long Mexico's principal drug crop. "We have begun a frontal struggle against organized...

NUEVO LAREDO — Five subjects, all believed to be in their teens, were the subject of a manhunt here Thursday in connection with a holdup of an HSBC branch bank south of the downtown business district.Tamaulipas State Ministerial Police rushed to the scene at Campeche and Obregón streets around 11:30 a.m. Thursday after a call to police headquarters informed officers that the bank and at least one customer were robbed. Police at the scene quoted several bank personnel as saying that the robbery occurred at gunpoint in broad daylight in front of 25 to 30 people, including bank staffers and...

The FBI is investigating the apparent kidnapping of another U.S. citizen in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico — the 64th such case reported to the agency in the past 2 1/2 years. Dagoberto Saenz, a Laredo resident in his 20s, was last seen with three friends early Feb. 3 at the red-light district known as "Boystown," said William Slemaker, a friend of the missing man's family. Slemaker, whose daughter disappeared in Nuevo Laredo, is a member of a local advocacy group for those kidnapped in Mexico, called Laredo's Missing. Saenz and his buddies got into a fight, were arrested and were put...

HOUSTON-Accused Mexican drug lord Osiel Cardenas-Guillen pleaded not guilty in U.S. Federal court Friday while documents filed by prosecutors describe his penchant for grotesque violence and ruby-encrusted handguns. The short man with a receding hairline and a forgettable face was the leader of the Gulf drug cartel, federal agents say. Court documents filed when Cardenas-Guillen was extradited to the United States last month reveal some of the brutal tactics and corruption that investigators say went into his business moving drugs along the billion-dollar smuggling route from Mexico to Texas. Federal agents say Cardenas-Guillen, who seized the leadership of the cartel...

A Mexican woman was arrested Thursday, accused of helping kidnap two Laredoans in Nuevo Laredo last July. Maria Christina Rodriguez, 31, a U.S. legal resident from Mexico, was arrested in her Laredo home Thursday at 4 p.m., according to a statement released by the FBI. FBI agents, assisted by the Laredo Police Department, stormed her residence and arrested her without incident, police said. She was charged with conspiracy to kidnap victims in a foreign country, said Norman Townsend, FBI senior agent in charge. If convicted, she could face up to life imprisonment for the criminal offense, he added. “Obviously we...

NUEVO LAREDO – Unknown attackers ambushed two officers in the Mexican Army Intelligence Service in the southwest part of the city, killing a captain and injuring a colonel, officials said Thursday.The attack occurred near 7 p.m. Wednesday night as the two Army officers were driving on the highway to the airport near its intersection with Avenida Dr. Mier. Civil authorities identified the deceased as Capt. Agustín Moisés Salazar, but did not give the officer’s hometown. Meanwhile, the injured colonel was taken to a military hospital in Mexico City. His name was not released. A rare official report of the attack...

NUEVO LAREDO – Federal police and Mexican soldiers rescued a Laredo musician and three Nuevo Laredoan teens in an early-morning raid Tuesday that also netted the arrests of two men, accused of kidnapping as well as drug and gun possession.Héctor de Jesús Domínguez, 27, a Mexican citizen who is a legal resident of Laredo, as well as three Nuevo Laredo youths, ages 17, 16 and 15, were kidnapped over the weekend, according to the federal attorney general’s office. They were found inside what is believed to be a safe house in the southern part of the city, officials said. All...

Cartels' hands seen in border abductions Mariano Castillo Express-News Border Bureau NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico — One afternoon in late August, Olivia Luque de Lopez looked out the window of her home and weighed the fate of her husband, then considered her own future and that of her four children. A group of unexpected visitors had thrust a decision of immense proportions upon the homemaker: Should she risk her husband's life, or hers and their children's? Lopez, her three daughters and son had been captives in their house in an upscale neighborhood here for 21/2 days on Aug. 25, the day...

LAREDO — A day after one family was reunited following a harrowing kidnapping ordeal, another stepped forward Tuesday to make a public plea for help finding their loved ones. The three-week ordeal of Librado Piña Jr., now released and back with family, was highly publicized. But relatives of brothers Felipe and Sergio Lopez only now have decided to break a silence of more than 31/2 months. The Lopez brothers, owners of a currency exchange business called La Moneda in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, were kidnapped in late August and haven't been heard from since, said Carmen Lopez, Sergio Lopez's wife. Sergio...