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Several Mexican soldiers were killed when gunmen ambushed them Thursday afternoon in Reynosa, said sources outside law enforcement familiar with organized crime. The ambush came in response to heavy casualties the military inflicted on gunmen Thursday morning, the sources said. The clashes continued a violent week along the northern Tamaulipas border, which had experienced weeks of relative calm until a reported push by the Zetas drug cartel to take over Gulf Cartel territory in Reynosa and Matamoros. In Thursday’s clashes in Reynosa, roads were blockaded and gunbattles pitted the Mexican military against gunmen, and rival groups of gunmen against each...

LAREDO — A former hit man for the Zetas cartel calmly related to jurors his role in killings on both sides of the border, testifying Monday in the drug conspiracy trial of a man prosecutors say was also a hired killer. From the witness stand in U.S. District Judge Micaela Alvarez's courtroom here, Rosalio Reta pointed to Gerardo Castillo Chavez, 25, and identified him as a fellow Zeta. Pressing his fingertips together and speaking in a slow, soft voice, Reta, 22, told jurors that he had been in a team of hit men headed by Gabriel Cardona, an admitted Zeta...

The mission was supposed to be a textbook "controlled delivery" - a routine trap by law enforcement officers using a secret operative posing as a truck driver to bust drug traffickers when their narcotics are delivered to a rendezvous point. Instead, things spun out of control. Shortly before the marijuana delivery was to be made Monday afternoon, three sport-utility vehicles carrying Zetas cartel gunmen seemingly came out of nowhere and cut off the tanker truck as it rumbled through northwest Harris County, sources told the Chronicle. They sprayed the cab with bullets, killing the civilian driver, who was secretly working...

<p>Four days before his Houston crew allegedly killed a federal informant and tried to hijack a load of pot, Eric De Luna was stopped by police as he a left a stash house, where officers found assault rifles and bulk narcotics.</p>

MEXICO CITY — As gangster wars rampage along the Gulf Coast and northeast Mexico, federal officials have poured in thousands more troops — an emergency move punctuated by Wednesday's slaughter of least 31 inmates in a prison gang riot. With the region looming as this winter's primary battleground in Mexico's criminal wars, some 13,000 army soldiers, plus several thousand more marines and quasi-military federal police now patrol Tamaulipas state, which borders Texas from Laredo to the Gulf. Bloody riot The inmates were killed as members of rival gangs butchered one another inside a state prison in Altamira, an industrial port...

I have warned and written about this particular subject for over three years—since before Obama was elected—aka “coronated.“ It is only now that many others finally seem to be getting the message. However, this is not something to be criticized. It is to be applauded, as it means they are finally and inexorably awakening to the truth. They are to be applauded and not insulted. I noticed this morning that—after a few of the latest Obama assaults on the US Constitution and liberties of We-the-People—some in the media

A series of recent law enforcement actions indicates the depth of Iranian-tied criminal activity in Mexico may be greater than previously known. In October, a Texas-car salesman was arrested in connection with an Iranian plot to kill Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington. Prosecutors say officials in Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps believed they were dealing with a "large and sophisticated" Mexican drug cartel to carry out the hit. A $100,000 down payment on the hit shows the Iranians were comfortable dealing with the cartel representative, who in fact was a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) informant. Earlier this month, prosecutors in Virginia...

MEXICO CITY (AP) — When convoys of soldiers or federal police move through the scrubland of northern Mexico, the Zetas drug cartel knows they are coming. The alert goes out from a taxi driver or a street vendor, equipped with a high-end handheld radio and paid to work as a lookout known as a "halcon," or hawk. The radio signal travels deep into the arid countryside, hours by foot from the nearest road. There, the 8-foot-tall (2-meter-tall) dark-green branches of the rockrose bush conceal a radio tower painted to match. A cable buried in the dirt draws power from a...

An entire municipal police force in Mexico has been disbanded as part of a campaign to root out corruption and improve security in the face of drug-related violence. More than 900 officers in Veracruz-Boca del Rio are losing their jobs.The move comes three months after 35 bodies were found dumped on a main road in the municipality, which includes part of the city of Veracruz.

Drug Enforcement Administration agents have raided an Oklahoma car dealership that the government suspects may be one of about 30 such businesses in the U.S. involved in funding the terrorist group Hezbollah. DEA agents say the car lot of Ace Auto Leasing in Tulsa is part of a huge network that is selling cars and drugs -- and then using the money to support terrorism against the U.S., myfoxphoenix.com reports. During Friday's raid, agents could be seen carryout out filing cabinets and other items. They also questioned employees and took inventory. "They're making big time money and it's going right...

MEXICO CITY — Mexican authorities said Tuesday that an alleged founder of the Zetas drug cartel had an arsenal of 169 guns when he was captured Monday, and may have been linked to the abduction of nine Mexican marines. Navy spokesman Jose Luis Vergara said suspect Raul Lucio Hernandez Lechuga oversaw Zeta operations around the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, where nine marines disappeared earlier this year. Vergara said a suspect was killed and a marine wounded in a firefight that erupted during Hernandez Lechuga's capture Monday in the Veracruz state city of Cordoba. The bust was the result of...

Outlaws lurking as many nationals soon will return from U.S. for holidays. Alfonso Cabañas isn’t driving to Monterrey, Mexico, to visit family this Christmas. Not after what happened the last time. Three years ago, the 31-year-old lawyer was headed south on one of Mexico’s toll roads when he pulled over for a group of men who had placed orange traffic cones across the highway and were directing motorists to the shoulder. It was too late when he saw the guns. “As you’re driving, you see these people waving you down, asking you to pull over and pull you aside. You...

Terrorists from several Middle Eastern groups have infiltrated Latin American countries -- especially Mexico -- in order to plot and carry out attacks against the United States, according to an alarming exposé broadcast this week by the world’s largest Spanish news network.

"The Iranian Threat" ("La Amenaza Irani"), a documentary that looks at Iran's growing political, economic and military ties in Latin American, will premiere Dec. 8 on the Univision Network ... the documentary also looks at the threat Iran's ties pose to the Latin American regions and the United States.The documentary, which was produced in collaboration with Univision News' Investigative unit, reveals exclusive findings, including secret video and audio recordings that provide a rare window into an alleges Iranian-back cyber attack against the United States from Mexico ... also features unseen video footage from extremists linked to Iran and an interview...

The news out of Houston that a group of criminals is staging armed raids on illegal gaming rooms in that city contains a very important wrinkle for our consideration — these violators are also police impersonators, and by all indications in the video these thugs have stepped things up quite considerably in their tactics — and tactical training. We’ve reported extensively here on PoliceOne in recent months on the variety of issues related to police impersonators, but today’s news presents us with an array of additional considerations to contemplate — not the least of which is the idea that HPD...

Mexican organized crime cartels' smuggling of drugs and the illegal entry of “Special Interest Aliens” (SIAs) who may pose a threat to national security into the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) in Texas has risen so quickly that US Border Patrol and law enforcement officials now refer to the "Valley" as “the new Arizona," Homeland Security Today has learned. While drug and human smuggling in Arizona continues at a brisk pace, the “Valley" has become “ground zero” on the southern border for narco-trafficking and the illegal smuggling of citizens from countries other than Mexico, officially referred to by Customs and Border...

Mexico's ultra-violent Zetas drug cartel released a communique challenging Mexico and the United States. "Message to the nation, the government, and all of Mexico and to public opinion: The special forces of Los Zetas challenges the government of Mexico and its federal forces," said the communique, which was signed by Zetas leader Miguel Angel Treviño Morales, also known as Z-40. The Zetas were formed in 1999 Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, known as "El Lazca," who along with three other soldiers deserted an elite special operations unit within the Mexican army to become the armed wing of the Gulf drug cartel. The...

With Operation Fast and Furious headlining the news, there is no doubt civilian arms have been trafficked into Mexico. However, many of the arms used by Mexican cartels are NOT supplied by civilian gun outlets in the United States. Based upon the statistics I have compiled, our State and Defense Departments may be the premier suppliers of weaponry to Mexican drug cartels — not the US civilian.From 2003-2009, over 150,000 Mexican soldiers deserted from their ranks. Drug cartels became so confident in their recruitment of military personnel that they posted help wanted ads for hit men, traffickers, and guards. When...

Mexico City – The bodies of 26 men were found inside two SUVs and an automobile abandoned on a busy avenue in Guadalajara, one of Mexico's largest cities, prosecutors said Thursday. The vehicles, which had Mexico City tags, were left at an intersection in the Vallarta San Jorge section of Guadalajara, the capital of the western Mexican state of Jalisco, the state Attorney General's office said. Investigators initially said 23 bodies were at the crime scene, but they later found three more inside the vehicles, Jalisco Attorney General Tomas Coronado said. The crime scene is near a supermarket and the...

A multi-agency undercover drug bust in Texas spun out of control Monday afternoon when a civilian working for law enforcement was killed and a police officer injured in what has been described by the local press as a “Mexico-style” attack. The incident occurred in Texas' Harris County, where parts of Houston are located, when the secret operative disguised as a truck driver delivering a 300 pound package of marijuana was driving through the northwest part of the county to a rendezvous point. Out of nowhere three sport-utility vehicles carrying alleged Zetas drug cartel gunmen cut off the 18-wheeler truck and...

One man was killed and an undercover sheriff's deputy wounded Monday in a shootout between a drug task force monitoring an 18-wheeler and hijackers who tried to take control of the truck in a northwest Harris County neighborhood, officials said. One of the attackers was also injured, struck by an officer's vehicle when he tried to shoot the officer, authorities said. The Harris County sheriff's deputy and other members of a multi-agency narcotics task force were watching the truck, thought to be carrying drugs, about 2 p.m. Monday near Hollister and Bourgeois when several vehicles approached the truck and opened...

The mission was supposed to be a textbook “controlled delivery” — a routine trap by law enforcement officers using a secret operative posing as a truck driver to bust drug traffickers when their narcotics are delivered to a rendezvous point. Instead, things spun out of control. Shortly before the marijuana delivery was to be made Monday, three SUVs carrying alleged Zetas Cartel gunmen seemingly came out of nowhere and cut off the tanker truck as it rumbled through northwestern Harris County, sources told the Houston Chronicle. They sprayed the cab with bullets, killing the civilian driver, who was secretly working...

Gunmen in the Mexican border city of Acuña kidnapped and killed three police officers, authorities said Monday. Acuña Public Safety Department said in a statement that the three were on patrol in the same unit when the assailants kidnapped them early Monday. The officer's bodies were found an hour later in a residential area of Acuña, which is across the border from Del Rio, Texas. They had been shot and their hands were handcuffed, the police department said. Authorities say the Zetas and the Sinaloa drug cartels are fighting each other to control smuggling routes in the state of Coahuila,...

Twenty Charged in Chicago with Various Drug Trafficking Offenses, Including Five Allegedly Tied to the Mexican “Zetas” Cartel

WESLACO - Cartels only care about getting their product from Mexico into the U.S. One cartel member tells CHANNEL 5 NEWS they won't let anything stop them, even if it means torturing people. "I've never killed," the mans tell us. "I've seen how they do it. They kill anybody." He wants out of the cartel, but death is almost always the only way out. He's telling his story from the shadows. "They never let you move up. You are just working, working, working, and that's it," he describes. The man tells CHANNEL 5 NEWS the cartel bosses make the big...

Laredo police on Tuesday and Wednesday rounded up five people they say carried out hits for the notorious Zetas drug cartel on this side of the Rio Grande. Customs officers on Tuesday night detained Nicolas Reyes Sanchez, 48, identified in an arrest warrant affidavit as the supervisor of a group of Zetas operating in Laredo, as he attempted to enter the U.S. at one of the city's international bridges. Starting early Wednesday, police launched a series of raids nabbing four more people accused of being Sanchez's subordinates and taking part in three homicides last year. Another man was arrested on...

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- The decapitated body of a man was left Wednesday at the same monument in the border city of Nuevo Laredo where the corpse of a woman purportedly killed in retaliation for her postings on an anti-crime website had been left previously, authorities said. A photo of the scene indicates the man was killed for reporting criminals on social media sites, raising fears drug cartels are increasingly targeting bloggers.

An international group of online hackers is warning a Mexican drug cartel to release one of its members, kidnapped from a street protest, or it will publish the identities and addresses of the syndicate's associates, from corrupt police to taxi drivers, as well as reveal the syndicates' businesses. The vow is a bizarre cyber twist to Mexico's ongoing drug war, as a group that has no guns is squaring off against the Zetas, a cartel blamed for thousands of deaths as well as introducing beheadings and other frightening brutality. "You made a huge mistake by taking one of us. Release...

WESLACO - It's been six years since CHANNEL 5 NEWS spoke with members of Los Zetas. Back then, they told us they were already in the United States and it was only going to get worse. Now CHANNEL 5 NEWS is speaking with a law enforcement officer about how things have changed since 2006. The officer has asked we conceal his identity so the cartels or his peers can't find out. We're going to call him "Pete". "There's people that wait to see when you leave work," he says. "Pete" says his family would be in danger if his identity...

The nephew of imprisoned Gulf Cartel kingpin Osiel Cardenas Guillen was arrested by U.S. authorities in Port Isabel during a traffic stop. Rafael “El Junior” Cardenas Vela was arrested Thursday night by Port Isabel police and was later charged by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents with immigration charges as well as possession and conspiracy to possess narcotics with intent to distribute, court records show. As of Tuesday night, Rafael Cardenas remained in federal custody. Cardenas was pulled over while he drove in a personal vehicle with an attractive woman, a local law enforcement official confirmed. Rather than get an...

Actions by Mexican drug cartels are “consistent” with what the U.S. would consider to be “terrorism or insurgency” in other parts of the world, a State Department official told lawmakers on Thursday. “I do acknowledge that many of the facts on the ground, the things that are being done by those organizations, are consistent with what we would call either terrorism or insurgency in other countries,” William Brownfield told a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on emerging threats and security in the western hemisphere. Brownfield, assistant secretary at the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, was responding to...

MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Felipe Calderon said Friday that the violence-plagued Gulf coast state of Veracruz had been left in the hands of the brutal Zetas drug cartel. Calderon has complained in the past that previous governments allowed Mexico's cartel problems to grow and didn't do enough to stop them. But he hasn't previously suggested a state was largely turned over to traffickers. In comments to a meeting of crime victims' groups in Mexico City, Calderon did not say specifically who he thought was responsible. "I believe Veracruz was left in the hands of the Zetas, I don't know...

AUSTIN – The Texas Department of Public Safety is warning parents about drug cartels recruiting Texas high school students. DPS officials say they caught a 12-year-old boy driving a stolen pickup truck containing more than 800 pounds of marijuana last week. Last month, two Texas teenagers were lured to Mexico where they were kidnapped, beaten, ransomed and released in a remote area along the Rio Grande River. In one Texas border county, more than 25 juveniles were arrested for drug trafficking within the past year. “Mexican cartels have corrupted nearly an entire generation of youth living in Northern Mexico and...

WASHINGTON - US President Barack Obama said on Thursday "individuals in the Iranian government" were aware of the alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington, and they must be held accountable. "We believe that even if at the highest levels there was not detailed operational knowledge, there has to be accountability," Obama told a joint news conference with the visiting South Korean president.

The White House said on Wednesday that senior members of Iran's Quds force participated in the alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, and that the United States would hold Tehran accountable. "It's clear that senior levels of Quds force were engaged in the plotting," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters, saying that Washington would respond by intensifying efforts to isolate Iran. The Quds Force (Persian: نیروی قدس, translit. Niru-ye Qods), (or Qods Force) is a special unit of Iran's Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution (Revolutionary Guard). It has been described as "tasked with...

WASHINGTON—U.S. authorities said Tuesday they had charged two men in an Iranian-directed plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S. The alleged assassination plot would represent an escalation in the confrontation between mostly Shiite Iran and mostly Sunni Saudi Arabia, two longtime Middle East rivals. The charges are also a rare instance of Washington accusing Iranian groups of fomenting terrorism on U.S. soil. Elements of the Iranian government were ready to spend $1.5 million to hire what they believed was a drug-cartel hit squad from Mexico, said U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Prosecutors filed several criminal charges against...

MCALLEN - Cartel members may be living next to you, down the street or in your neighborhood. You might never know unless you see it on the news. Examples include the deadly shooting on Expressway 83 in McAllen three weeks ago. The man who died was a Gulf Cartel operative. The McAllen Police Department won't give us any information about him or show us his picture. They won't even talk about the shooting. The truth is we may never know the exact number of cartel crimes that might be happening in the Valley. What we can tell you is two...

VERACRUZ, MEXICO - A group of self-confessed Zeta killers is behind bars in Mexico. They were arrested after a series of roundups in the Mexican state of Veracruz. The Mexican government hopes to send out a clear message with the arrests: there's no excuse for murder. The Mata-Zetas, or Zeta Killers, first made the announcement last month online. They pledged to help execute members of the Zeta Cartel. Mexican officials believe the men are associated with the Cartel de Jalisco-Nueva Generacion. They are believed to be behind the execution of 35 people in Veracruz last week. Members of the Mexican...

Mexican security forces have found 32 bodies at several locations around the eastern city of Veracruz, according to the authorities, only two weeks after 35 corpses were dumped on a busy street in the Atlantic port. Just two days after the Mexican government unveiled a plan to lay down the law in the state of the same name, police and marines found the bodies in three different areas of the city, the navy said in a statement on Thursday.

Nothing there about gunwalking is there? Nor is there any mention of Fast and Furious, which had yet to be launched as part of the surge described. But that is the point, say my sources. Policy is strategy enunciated. Tactics flow from strategy. The policy that got the Obama administration into trouble was the surge and the desire, in the words of Napolitano, for "more prosecution of actual arms dealers who are intentionally and knowingly putting arms into the hands of the smugglers." This fit with the Obamanoids preconceived notion -- promoted by the Brady Campaign, the Mexican Government and...

MEXICO CITY -- Police have arrested a former Mexican professional wrestler accused of being one of the four members of the Zetas drug cartel who planned the casino arson that killed 52 people. Jose Alberto Loera is also known for his Lucha Libre name "El Voltaje" or "Voltage." Federal police regional security official Luis Cardenas Palomino said 28-year-old Loera was captured with two other men Tuesday in northern Mexico and flown to Mexico City where he was shown to the news media. He is the 12th suspect to be arrested in the case. Six others remain at large. Gunmen entered...

Janet Napolitano spent much of the spring sounding like a broken record ensuring that the U.S.-Mexico border is safe when the reality is that stretches are controlled by drug-trafficking organizations. A new federal report exposing the ugly truth about the southern border has left President Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary with egg on her face. Published by the Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center, the document contradicts much of what Napolitano has preached in the last few months during highly publicized jaunts to the crime-infested region. Remember this? The Mexican border “is as secure as it has ever been.” Or what...

Safer Than It’s Ever Been! Really!By Mark Krikorian September 29, 2011 9:46 AM Both the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal agree that, since illegal crossings are down at the Mexican border, it’s time to proceed to amnesty and huge increases in immigration (9 percent unemployment? Who cares!). The border is safer than it’s ever been, in the words of DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano. The only thing left to do is dig a moat and fill it with alligators, joked President Obama.Well, someone didn’t tell the two retired generals who’ve just released “Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment�: During the...

MEXICO CITY — The Mexican government said it is investigating videos posted on the Internet in which a gang of masked men vow to exterminate the violent Zetas drug cartel, and said it opposes such vigilante methods. At least two videos have been posted by a group believed linked to the powerful Sinaloa cartel that calls itself the "Mata Zetas," or "Zetas Killers." The Zetas were founded by deserters from an elite military unit and are known for their brutality. In the most recent video, posted over the weekend, the group says it is attacking the Zetas because people are...

Gunmen in northern Mexico have shot dead three relatives of a police officer being held over a deadly arson attack on a casino last month. The officer's father, stepmother and stepbrother were killed in their home in the city of Monterrey. Police believe it was an act of revenge by the Zetas drugs cartel, after the officer named gang members allegedly involved in the casino attack. The blaze killed 52 people and caused revulsion across Mexico. Police officer Miguel Angel Barraza is one of six suspects detained in connection with the 25 August arson attack on the Casino Royale in...

Terror filled the streets of Rio Bravo as a group of men, presumably Zetas, threw at least five grenades at two bars and one business, injuring at least three people. Rio Bravo is across the Rio Grande from the Pharr-Donna Area. The attack began about 2:30 p.m. Saturday when a group of men in an SUV and a passenger car drove by the two bars and lobbed three grenades at the bar “La Lola” in the city’s East side, said a Mexican law enforcement official not authorized to speak to the media. He added that one grenade didn’t explode. Moments...

Two 17-year-old high school boys have been charged with killing a classmate in Brownsville, TX, and authorities including the FBI are investigating whether the murder is tied to the Mexican drug cartels. While the actual facts in the Brownsville case remain to be flushed out, the Mexican cartels otherwise increasingly have been recruiting U.S. juvies to carry out their dirty work. Police in Laredo, TX report that Los Zetas is signing up U.S. teenagers as young as thirteen to carry out enforcement hits on the north side of the border. Two such teens -- Rosalio Reta and Gabriel Cardona --...

DALLAS -- A shadowy Mexican drug gang that sprang from the Texas-Mexico border region just a dozen years ago has made North Texas a key hub in a criminal enterprise that now extends through Central America and into Colombia, law enforcement officials say. The notoriously brutal group known as the Zetas has used family and personal connections to make the Dallas area into a sophisticated distribution point, moving cocaine, pot and methamphetamine to other U.S. markets and sending weapons, ammunition and millions of dollars in bulk cash back to Mexico, authorities say.

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...

Vice President of Intelligence Fred Burton demonstrates how video surveillance footage is used to reconstruct the recent arson attack in Monterrey, Mexico. Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy. In this week’s Above the Tearline, we’re going to show you how agents utilize video surveillance tape to reconstruct the crime using the recent casino fire in Monterrey, Mexico, as an example. Let’s take a look at the first video, which takes place before the crime occurs............