Wilderness On The Border? 10 Articles On Border Violence

Senators Bingaman and Udall have introduced S.1689 which would create a 400 square mile swath of land along and near our southern border where law enforcement would be denied access with motorized vehicles or the use of mechanical equipment. In other words, our officers would be limited to being either horseback or afoot as they confronted the cartels and traffickers. Keep that in mind as you peruse these articles.

For my previous posts on this wilderness issue go here.

Mexican Police Chiefs of Two Border Cities Slain The deputy police chief in the northern Mexican border city of Nogales was killed along with his bodyguard, Sonora state police said Friday. Adalberto Padilla and bodyguard Ivan Sepulveda were shot Thursday night while traveling in a police vehicle. The assailants were described as men inside an SUV who opened fire with AK-47 assault rifles, the weapon of choice for Mexico’s drug cartels. A 16-year-old bystander was wounded during the attack in the city just across the border from Nogales, Arizona. In other drug-related violence, a local police chief and his brother were found decapitated in the northern state of Nuevo Leon, bordering Texas. The killers used the victims’ blood to paint the patrol vehicle with the initials “CDG,” signifying Cartel del Golfo, or Gulf cartel, one of Mexico’s most powerful drug outfits. Drug-related mayhem has claimed a dozen lives in Nuevo Leon over the past two days, including six gunmen killed in a clash with Mexican marines...

A Soldier, 2 Police Chiefs and 7 Civilians Killed in Northern Mexico At least 10 people including a soldier and two police chiefs were killed between Friday afternoon and Saturday in the states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon in northern Mexico, in a number of incidents presumably involving organized crime, officials said Saturday. The Tamaulipas information center said in a brief communique that “in Ciudad Victoria, the capital, an armed clash left four people dead, including one soldier,” in one of the bloodiest of recent incidents. The Tamaulipas information center said in another communique published in the town of Mante that Saturday morning “the lifeless bodies of the commander and the group chief of the Ministerial Police stationed in this municipality were found” riddled with bullets. The same agency also reported the discovery Friday afternoon of “the human remains of three people not yet identified, at the exit from the Victoria-Mante highway.” Added to these deaths was that of an unidentified woman who was killed during an operation launched by soldiers of the 7th Military Zone near Monterrey, the capital of Nuevo Leon state...

U.S., Mexican drug gangs form alliances Mexican drug cartels formed new alliances in 2009 with violent American street and prison gangs that helped tighten their stranglehold on the lucrative U.S. narcotics market, but competition among Mexican smugglers remains fierce and threatens more bloodshed in the United States, according to a Justice Department report. The 2010 Drug Threat Assessment, released Thursday, also says Mexican drug cartels control most of the illicit cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine trade into the U.S., along with much of the marijuana distribution. The cartels' tentacles reach every state, including some unexpected rural areas of the U.S...

Cartel Wars Gut Juárez, a Onetime Boom Town This violent border city is turning into a ghost town. Bloodshed from Mexico's warring drug cartels has sent those with means fleeing this former boomtown. Restaurants have moved north to Texas. The dentists who served Americans with their cheap procedures have taken their equipment south. Even the music is dying here. No solid number exists for the exodus, a matter of debate among Juárez's leaders. But the city's planning department estimates 116,000 homes are now abandoned. Measured against the average household size of the last census, the population who inhabited the empty homes alone could be as high as 400,000 people, representing one-third of the city before the violence began. That would mark one of Mexico's largest single exoduses in decades. Juárez finds itself in the crossfire between two rival drug gangs, the local Juárez cartel and the powerful Sinaloa cartel, both of whom want to control the city to smuggle drugs into the U.S., the world's biggest drug-consuming market, and capture a lucrative and growing local drug market. Since 2005, 10,600 businesses—roughly 40% of Juárez's businesses—have closed their doors, according to the country's group representing local chambers of commerce...

Juárez Violence Puts Factories on Defensive U.S. companies flocked to the border city of Juárez because it was one of Mexico’s most business-friendly cities. Now, an entire industry is adjusting to doing business in Mexico’s deadliest town. Just across the U.S. border from El Paso, Texas, Juárez has turned into a murderous battleground as two rival drug cartels vie for a lucrative entry route into the U.S. A dozen homicides a night isn’t uncommon. On Wednesday, Luis Raúl Macías Rosas, who was a manager at a Juárez maquiladora, was murdered within 600 feet of a military checkpoint, authorities said. Some executives now carpool to work in a convoy, fearing they could otherwise be abducted. Whole factory work forces are undergoing kidnapping training. Routes to and from the bridge in El Paso are now patrolled by armed military guard. “You have to ask God every day that you come back safe,” says a senior executive at one of the plants...

Rural towns across the border in Chihuahua bloodied by cartel violence People seem serene working the cotton and alfalfa fields in the rural community 50 miles southeast of El Paso. Fort Hancock is a stark contrast to the rural towns across the border in Chihuahua, where residents are victims of brutal daylight attacks at their homes and shops and on their roads. One of every four killings in and near Juárez has taken place in small rural communities that share a border with Texas towns like Fort Hancock. Because of fear, Mexican residents are fleeing these towns and seeking asylum in the United States through Fort Hancock's international bridge. These border agricultural towns in Chihuahua are better known as the Valley of Juárez, an area the U.S. State Department has said should be avoided. The violence-plagued towns are also adjacent to Tornillo, Fabens and San Elizario. On Thursday, two men were killed in the border town of Praxedis Guerrero, close to Tornillo. One was shot more than 40 times at a cell-phone shop. The U.S. Border Patrol said these are "hot corridors" for drug and human smuggling. Both the Sinaloa and Juárez drug cartels are fighting to control these passages...

Mexico drug hitmen terrorize towns on U.S. border Mexican drug hitmen are shooting up houses and terrorizing remote farming towns on the U.S. border, forcing residents to flee, as they try to secure key trafficking routes into the United States. In the latest flare-up of border drug violence, masked, heavily-armed men are torching homes, firing on shops and businesses and have killed at least three local politicians in a cluster of towns near the deadly drug war city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas...

Border States Face Growing Tension After the killing of two Americans last weekend, border states—Arizona, Texas, New Mexico—are ramping up efforts to confront the growing violence in Mexico. Last week, Texas Governor Rick Perry ordered a number of measures including the sending of helicopters to Mexico. In Arizona, the state attorney general made a trip south in an attempt to consult with Mexican officials. During their visit to Mexico City, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and senior administration officials formally announced changes in U.S.-Mexico security cooperation that had been in the works for months. The U.S. delegation met with their Mexican counterparts to officially unveil a "new stage" in bilateral cooperation. This comes three years following the first signs of an emerging drug cartel on the U.S.-Mexico border...

Mexican prison gang may target U.S. agents U.S. border officials are warning that the violent prison gang suspected of killing three people linked to the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, may retaliate against U.S. officers. A bulletin issued through the El Paso Intelligence Center is urging law enforcement officials along the border, particularly in El Paso, to wear their protective vests and alert their own family members to the threat, says Kevin O'Keefe, intelligence division chief for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The intelligence center is a consortium of federal, state and local agencies focused on border crime issues. Last week, more than 200 officers from 20 separate law enforcement agencies targeted the prison gang Barrio Azteca in a series of raids. Investigators were looking for information about the slayings that stunned U.S. officials in Juárez, neighboring El Paso and in Washington...

We're not a gang, we're a union, say the drug killers of Ciudad Juárez Sosa and Saenz are two senior members of the Artist Assassins, a drug gang working in Ciudad Juárez, the most violent city in the world. The 600 Artist Assassins and 1,200 Mexicles, another local gang, are employed by the Sinaloa Cartel — run by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the country’s most wanted man — to control the drug traffic passing through Juárez. But the Artist Assassins and the Mexicles are in the middle of a war with the Aztecas. With 7,000 members the Aztecas are the most powerful drug gang in Juárez and work for the rival Juárez Cartel. The leaders of these cartels are businessmen in hiding and the gangs act as their enforcers on the streets. Each gang has its own style, from their clothes and tattoos to their expressions. While the Artist Assassins are groomed and eloquent, the Aztecas are pallid, wear oversized jeans and padded jackets and seem slightly crazed. The Mexicles are perhaps the most normal-looking and are reserved and polite. The gangs have to be kept apart in prison and when they arrive inmates are asked with which group they would like to be housed. In March last year the Aztecas escaped from their cells and started a fight, in which 20 Mexicles and Artist Assassins were killed. Ciudad Juárez owes its murder rate — an average of six dead a day — to this rivalry. The gangs have decapitated bodies and hung them from bridges, killed children, pregnant women and, in February, 15 teenagers. They regularly kidnap for ransom and they extort nearly every business in Juárez. When one funeral home refused to pay it was burnt down and its owners shot...