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American officials are issuing an alert following the arrest in the United States of the brother of a high-ranking member of the Zetas drug cartel. According to the New York Times, federal officials arrested Jose Treviño-Morales on Tuesday morning as part of a money laundering investigation. The newspaper reported that Treviño-Morales is accused of using champion race horse ranches in New Mexico and Oklahoma to launder millions of dollars in drug money for the Zetas. The New York Times reported that Treviño-Morales is the brother of Miguel Angel Treviño-Morales, a high-ranking Zetas leader known as Z-40. The U.S. Embassy in...

WESLACO - A former Drug Enforcement Administration agent predicts an increase in Chinese immigrants crossing illegally into the Rio Grande Valley. "The Chinese organized criminals - especially when it comes to human smuggling - will team up with anybody that will assist them in transporting people from China to the U.S. via Mexico... The Zetas are well organized in smuggling people in the U.S.," says Phil Jordan, a former DEA supervisor. Agents found the connection between the two organizations by investigating the Zetas' biggest moneymaking operation - drug trafficking. "The Chinese have always been involved in precursor chemicals that are...

Violence like this along the border is getting worse and is already spilling over into the US and Texas. When will the Obama Administration and the Federal Government step up to do more to protect our own border from this escalating violence? The car bomb article today from the associated press (see below) is yet another example of this escalating violence. If you live on the border, massive gun battles and explosions can be heard on a nearly daily basis. Here are some articles I have posted about border violence just in the last year. I barely even scratch the surface: SHOCKING Texas/Mexico Border WARZONE...

The two most important criminal organizations in Mexico are engaged in all-out war, and the most spectacular battles are being fought for the cameras as the combatants pursue a strategy of intimidation and propaganda by dumping ever greater numbers of headless bodies in public view — the victims most likely innocents. No longer limiting themselves to regional skirmishes, the older, established drug-smuggling Sinaloa cartel is now fighting the brash, young paramilitary Zetas crime organization across multiple front lines in Mexico in a desperate fight, according to U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials and security analysts on both sides of the...

MEXICO CITY — The army charged Monday that the top leaders of the hyper-violent Zetas drug cartel ordered underlings to leave 49 mutilated bodies in a northern Mexico town square, then had banners hung around the country denying responsibility in an effort to have their enemies blamed for the massacre. The allegation came during a news conference to present the alleged Zetas local leader detained in the killings, Daniel Jesus Elizondo Ramirez. He allegedly got orders from Zetas leaders Miguel-Angel Trevino Morales and Heriberto Lazcano to dump the bodies in the town square of Cadereyta in the border state of...

MEXICO CITY — Banners have appeared in northern Mexico signed by the Zetas drug cartel saying the gang was not responsible for killing 49 people whose mutilated bodies were found on a highway in a neighboring state. An employee of the prosecutors' office in northern San Luis Potosi state says the banners were hung from overpasses in the city of Ciudad Valles. The banners were found early Tuesday. The employee was not authorized to speak on the record, and did not give the precise wording of the banners.

Tamaulipas law enforcement officials confirmed the ghastly find made by employees at a popular shopping area in the state capital of Ciudad Victoria: dismembered bodies left in bags. Authorities were called about 7:30 a.m. to the Soriana Tamatan Shopping Center in the city that lies about 200 miles south of Reynosa. In the bed of a compact Chevrolet pickup, authorities found the remains of three men who had been chopped to pieces and stuffed into several bags, said a Tamaulipas law enforcement official who requested anonymity for security reasons. Initially authorities believed that more bodies had been in the pickup,...

Some days are bloodier than others in Mexico. Yesterday in the border city of Nuevo Lardo -- just across the Rio Grande from Laredo, TX -- police found nine bodies hanging from an overpass and another fourteen decapitated bodies nearby as reported by The Associated Press: "the city . . . has recently been torn by a renewed turf war between the Zetas cartel, a gang of former Mexican special-forces soldiers, and the powerful Sinaloa cartel, which has joined forces with the Gulf cartel, former allies of the Zetas." Los Zetas apparently has taken responsibility for yesterday's carnage as reported...

New images are coming in of that brazen attack carried out in front of a Nuevo Laredo police station. A car bomb went off. in west nuevo laredo just after eight a-m Tuesday. It happened only hours after seven men were killed in the streets. Witnesses say they heard the loud explosion and saw flames several miles away. Two people were reportedly hurt in the attack and transported to area hospitals. No police officers were hurt, eventough their offices are only a few hundreds feet away. Soon after the incident a massive gunfire reportedly broke out between the Mexican military...

Mexican authorities confirmed a ghastly find outside of the Nuevo Laredo City Hall, where 14 bodies were found inside a parked vehicle Tuesday morning. About 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, the bodies were found stuffed inside 10 garbage bags, according to information released by the Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office, known as the PGJE. The vehicle, which was described as a green 1996 Voyager minivan with no license plates, was parked in front of City Hall. The bodies’ identities were not released, but the men were described as being between the ages of 30 and 35. The slayings are attributed to fighting between...

-excerpt- In recent months, authorities say, they have begun to see the first signs that the Zetas are providing paramilitary training and equipment to the Maras in exchange for intelligence and crimes meant to divert law-enforcement resources and attention

It’s hard to uphold a reputation as a devoutly religious terrorist group if you make millions selling cocaine. Just ask Hezbollah. Last month, the US government filed suit against a number of American and Lebanese businesses that allegedly helped bankroll the Lebanese terrorist group. The civil indictment in Manhattan blew the lid off a vast criminal network that included money-laundering, cocaine deals and more — including 30 US car dealerships that helped the group launder cash. As one investigator quipped, Hezbollah is the “Gambinos on steroids.” The indictment charges Hezbollah kingpin Ayman Joumaa with smuggling more than 100 tons of...

A South Carolina man was gunned down by federal agents Saturday in Laredo after a sting targeting U.S. soldiers who wanted to work for the Zetas drug cartel went wrong, federal prosecutors said. Former Army 1st Lt. Kevin Corley, 29; Army Sgt. Samuel Walker, 28, both of Colorado Springs, Colo.; Shavar Davis, 29, of Denver; and Jerome Corley, of South Carolina, drove into Laredo Saturday armed with two semiautomatic rifles, a knife and a .300-caliber bolt-action rifle equipped with a scope and a bipod, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court. They were in Laredo, prosecutors allege, to...

The body, along with a banner, was discovered early Monday morning at Reforma and Paseo Colon in Nuevo Laredo. According to reports, the victim, in his twenties, had been tortured and beaten severely. He was tied and bound, and his arms and legs were cut off, then he was beheaded. The banner included a message from the zetas for any rival cartels, saying the victim's fate would be the same for anyone considering coming into their territory. This discovery comes after another violent weekend across the border in Nuevo Laredo, with several shootouts in the streets and more people being...

Here’s a lesson to the Hackers for the 99%: You’re not anonymous once you get caught. And you’ll always get caught, because, um, the internet was designed by the Department of Defense. And that’s a group that doesn’t want anyone to remain anonymous for long.  In fact, they are so good at tracking people down-with extreme prejudice- that they can make sure a very large bomb fits in a very tiny place. But that’s not your biggest problem. No your biggest problem is that hubris led you to a confrontation with Mexican drug lords who have all sorts of contacts...

The Obama Administration insists that there is no evidence of drug cartel spillover violence from Mexico into the United States but the dead bodies which continue piling up on the north side of the border stubbornly belie the President's absurd claim. Yesterday police in Baytown, TX arrested three men with suspected ties to a Mexican drug cartel for their alleged roles in a 2004 murder in the Gulf Coast town as reported by KTRK: "all three subjects have active ties to the hyper-violent Zeta Drug Cartel, a Mexican drug trafficking organization, and have been operating throughout Texas, including Baytown and...

MONTERREY, Mexico – Imprisoned members of the hyper-violent Zetas drug cartel stabbed and bludgeoned 44 members of the rival Gulf cartel to death and then staged a mass escape, apparently with the help of prison authorities, officials in northern Mexico said Monday. Rodrigo Medina, governor of the northern state of Nuevo Leon, said the prison's director and three other officials have been fired and are under investigation for purportedly helping in the escape. The same was done with 18 prison guards. "Unfortunately, a group of traitors has set back the work of a lot of good police," Medina told a...

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...