DOJ says Mexican cartels operating in over 1,000 U.S. cities

Mexican-based transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) were “operating in more than a thousand U.S. cities during 2009 and 2010, spanning all nine Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) regions,” according to the U.S. Justice Department’s National Drug Threat Assessment of 2011. According to the report, the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) assesses with “high confidence” that Mexican-based TCOs “control distribution of most of the heroin, marijuana, and methamphetamine available in the United States” and production of these drugs in Mexico “appears to be increasing.” “The organizations control, simultaneously use, or are competing for control of various smuggling corridors that they use to regulate drug flow across the border.” “Conditions within these border communities along both sides of the Texas-Mexico border are tantamount to living in a war zone in which civil authorities, law enforcement agencies as well as citizens are under attack around the clock,” the report says...more