The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) states the threat of terrorism from the northern border is higher than from the southern Mexico border, given the large expanse of area with limited law enforcement coverage. DHS reports networks of illicit criminal activity and smuggling of drugs, currency, people, and weapons across the northern border.
The report focuses on whether federal agencies are working together to secure the vast stretches of the border owned by the federal government.
The study points out critical gaps in security along the U.S.-Canadian border that limit the ability of Customs and Border Protection to fully secure the border—gaps including a lack of interoperable communications systems and limited sharing of intelligence and information between local and federal officials.
U.S. Customs head Alan Bersin told a US Senate Subcommittee earlier this month that even though the Canadian border sees far fewer arrests than the US/Mexican border, the Canadian border is considered a 'more significant threat' by Customs and DHS.
Although certainly not marred by the bloody narco-violence like Mexico, there are concerns that radical Islamists would attempt to enter the USA through Canada to carry out attacks. In December 1999, an Algerian national was arrested at Port Angeles, WA after entering the country from Victoria, BC when a search of his vehicle turned up plastic bags filled with explosives and some homemade timing devices.
The bust by federal agents didn't happen on the southwestern border. It was in Michigan's rural Thumb region next to a soybean field. The remote airport here in Sandusky offers a smooth runway at any hour to anyone who needs it, a perfect landing spot for brazen drug smugglers who can cross the Great Lakes from Canada in minutes.
Beefed-up enforcement along the Mexican border has made smuggling more challenging for criminal cartels using the major southern routes, but drugs continue to flow across the porous northern border through airstrips like this one as officials look for new ways to fight back.
Tracking rogue planes at low altitude with their transponders off is “like trying to pick a needle out of a haystack,” said John Beutlich of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, who oversees air and marine operations from Washington state to Maine.
“Shoot, we're just a big cherry to pick and didn't realize it,” said Joe Allen, manager of the Sandusky airport, 145 kilometres northeast of Detroit.
He installed a fence to keep cars from meeting planes at the runway, but the property is not staffed at night. Border agents could offer just two signs asking people to call an 800 number if they see something unusual.
Canada is a significant source of high-quality marijuana and the amphetamine Ecstasy. More than 2 million doses of Ecstasy were seized on the northern border in 2009 compared to just 312,000 in 2004, the Drug Enforcement Administration said, offering a snapshot of what's popular and what gets confiscated.
Most shipments come by road. But the 2009 flight from Ontario to Michigan, the subject of a recent federal trial, provided insight into drug operations that use small planes. Officials don't know how frequent such flights are but consider the vulnerability alarming.
Matthew Moody and nephew Jesse Rusenstrom, both from Amherstburg, Ontario, were the couriers captured that night in Sandusky. Their job was to enter the country through Detroit, meet the Canadian plane and deliver the drugs to others in the U.S. They also put 27 kilograms of cocaine worth more than $500,000 on the return flight to Guelph, Ontario.
Matthew Moody and nephew Jesse Rusenstrom, both from Amherstburg, Ontario, were the couriers captured that night in Sandusky. Their job was to enter the country through Detroit, meet the Canadian plane and deliver the drugs to others in the U.S. [In addition to the 79kg of pot and 400,000 ecstacy pills they had flown in and were apprehended with] they also put 27 kilograms of cocaine worth more than $500,000 on the return flight to Guelph, Ontario.
It was just one in a series of shipments. Mr. Rusenstrom said he met the drug plane at least 10 times at other tiny airports in the Thumb region — Marlette, Ray, Lapeer — as well as in Greenville in western Michigan and an airport in Pennsylvania. The pilot activated runway lights from the cockpit, a standard practice in aviation.
Mr. Rusenstrom, testifying at the trial of an accomplice, Robert “Romeo” D'Leone, said hundreds of airports were studied on Google Maps.
“We would go around looking for airports, seeing if there was fences or cameras,” the 21-year-old told jurors.
Mr. D'Leone, who lives in the Toronto area, stopped his trial and pleaded guilty on April 14. Mr. Rusenstrom and Mr. Moody co-operated, pleaded guilty and were recently sentenced to time served in custody. The U.S. still wants to extradite four others in Ontario who are accused of major roles, including the pilot.
Some jurors were alarmed by the revelations during the D'Leone trial.
“You always hear Homeland Security has an eye on everything. It's surprising that airfields aren't manned 24 hours,” Robert Simpson, 47, told The Associated Press.
The Sandusky airport has spent $2,000 on cameras and hopes to install more. “We're outside radar,” Mr. Allen, the manager, said, running his finger over a map of Michigan's Thumb. “You can come and go as you please. You don't even have to file a flight plan.”
The minimal help he received from border authorities — warning signs — had to be fixed before he posted them: They referred to suspicious boats, not planes.
NEW YORK: Another locale popular with smugglers and organized crime on both sides of the border is the Akwesasne Indian Reservation just outside of , which straddles the borders between New York State, Quebec and Ontario along the St Lawrence River.
The area's unique geography and patchwork of jurisdictions on both sides of the border has had the attention of smugglers and bootleggers since Prohibition. In more recent years, local residents will either run contraband across the border themselves- either in snowmobiles during wintertime or motorboats when the St Lawrence is navigable- or charge landing fees to smugglers for using their property.
Illegal immigrants, hydroponic marijuana and Ecstasy are usually smuggled into the USA from the Canadian side while illegal firearms, cocaine and untaxed tobacco or alcohol make their way north. Some estimates say that 20% of Canadian grown marijuana smuggled into the USA moves through the Akwesasne/St Regis reservation.
While there are some cigarette factories on the US side of the reservation, the sale of tax free cigarettes on reservation stores has caught the attention of groups like the 'Ndrangheta, Hells Angels and Bulgarian Mafia who will often purchase cigarettes in bulk then turn around and sell the untaxed cigarettes in high tax municipalities like New York City, Montreal or Toronto.
The Mexican naval secretariat confirmed the shootout at a Zeta encampment on an island on the reservoir used by the Zetas to stage marijuana loads to be transported by boat into the United States. The island is located less than two miles northeast of Nueva Ciudad Guerrero, Tamps., across the border from Falcon Dam.
The bloody fight ensued on Mother’s Day when marines were patrolling the area in boats when they found the camp, officials said in a statement released Monday.
Upon seeing the marines, Zeta gunmen opened fire. A dozen cartel members were killed in the battle. One marine died, as well.
Officials noted no arrests after the shootout, but said they seized 19 firearms, including a Barrett .50-caliber sniper rifle and a 5.56 mm machine gun. Marines also seized gun magazines, ammunition, protective vests and other field equipment that was transferred to Reynosa.
Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez said he learned of the deadly shootout when member of the local media contacted him late Monday morning. Had Mexican officials alerted their U.S. counterparts to the shootout, Gonzalez’s deputies would have been able “to react accordingly,”
The shootout capped a busy week along the northern Tamaulipas border for Mexican marines, who killed two suspected cartel gunmen Saturday afternoon in Valle Hermoso, about 25 miles south of Brownsville. Marines also seized weapons and a vehicle Thursday in Matamoros, and rescued a kidnap victim Wednesday in Camargo, across the border from Rio Grande City.
U.S. Border Patrol agents reported tha the seizure happened in the rural Starr County community of La Casita on Wednesday, April 20th.
Court records were not immediately available but Border Patrol agents reportedly spotted a Dish Network van exiting a brushy area near the Rio Grande River.
Working on a tip that are drug smugglers are now using counterfeit vehicles from well-known companies as a cover, Border Patrol stopped the van.
Border Patrol agents reported immediately noticing a strong odor of marijuana.
Investigators looked inside and found 100 bundles with close to 3,000 pounds of marijuana worth $2.3 million dollars inside.
In another case, a truck painted with DirecTV and other markings was pulled over in a routine traffic stop in Mississippi and discovered to be carrying 786 pounds of cocaine.
Police said they became suspicious because the truck carried the markings of DirecTV and several of its rivals. An 800 number on the truck's rear to report bad driving referred callers to an adult sex chat line.
Of course, there are concerns that more competently 'cloned' vehicles with EMS, fire or law enforcement markings could be used by smugglers to evade scrutiny from police and the Border Patrol or terrorists to gain access to otherwise secure areas.
The former agent, referring to Shi'a Muslim terrorist group Hezbollah, added, "They certainly have had successes in big-ticket bombings."
Some of the group's bombings include the U.S. embassy in Beirut and Israeli embassy in Argentina.
However, the group is now active much closer to San Diego.
"We are looking at 15 or 20 years that Hezbollah has been setting up shop in Mexico," the agent told 10News.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, U.S. policy has focused on al-Qaida and its offshoots.
"They are more shooters than thinkers … it's a lot of muscles, courage, desire but not a lot of training," the agent said, referring to al-Qaida.
Hezbollah, he said, is far more advanced.
"Their operators are far more skilled … they are the equals of Russians, Chinese or Cubans," he said. "I consider Hezbollah much more dangerous in that sense because of strategic thinking; they think more long-term."
Hezbolah has operated in South America for decades and then Central America, along with their sometime rival, sometime ally Hamas.
Now, the group is blending into Shi'a Muslim communities in Mexico, including Tijuana. Other pockets along the U.S.-Mexico border region remain largely unidentified as U.S. intelligence agencies are focused on the drug trade.
"They have had clandestine training in how to live in foreign hostile territories," the agent said.
The agent, who has spent years deep undercover in Mexico, said Hezbollah is partnering with drug organizations, but which ones is not clear at this time.
He told 10News the group receives cartel cash and protection in exchange for Hezbollah expertise.
"From money laundering to firearms training and explosives training," the agent said.
For example, he tracked, along with Mexican intelligence, two Hezbollah operatives in safe houses in Tijuana and Durango.
Hezbollah has already established a presence in the tri-border region of South America, where the borders of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay converge around Iguazu Falls. Mexico has also been home to a number of Lebanese migrants for the past century- some of whom have alerted Mexican and American intelligence to the possibility of Hezbollah operating in Mexico.
The vast Sonoran desert is the expressway for drug smugglers to get their goods into the U.S.
DEA agent, Todd Scott says, "You've got a clear line of sight all the way here to the roads that they coordinate with smuggling loads on. Continue that way a little further that way and you've got Mexico."
Scott stood on a spot known as a spider hole. It's on the Tohono O'odham Nation where you can easily see 10 miles out on a clear day, "It allows you to observe law enforcement whether it's border patrol or TOPD , DEA anybody operating in this area from this position," says Scott.
This is where Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel hides surveillance teams. People live there 30 to 60 days at a time.
Scott says they act as air traffic controllers, "The smuggling loads come across in either human mule trains or vehicles and the scouts here use night vision goggles or binoculars coordinate those movements of those loads with the radios."
Early Thursday, U.S. Border Patrol agents Edward Rojas Jr. and Hector Clark were stationed near Gila Bend, on assignment with a task force, when they got a call about marijuana smugglers moving toward Interstate 8.
Even veteran officers talk about the adrenaline rush that comes with such a call, which causes a sort of tunnel vision. Rojas and Clark sped west on a frontage road parallel to railroad tracks, slightly ahead of a freight train going in the same direction at over 60 mph.
The conductor and engineer would later tell investigators that they sounded the locomotive whistle several times. Suddenly, the agents' vehicle turned left onto a private rail crossing, immediately in front of the 4,600-ton train.
Agents Clark and Rojas were the first Border Patrol agents killed in the line of duty since the December 2010 shooting of Brian Terry outside of Nogales, AZ. After the wreck, deputies from the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office recovered 300 pounds of marijuana and detained eight suspects a few hundred yards from the crash site.
The federal drug agents discovered the AK-47-type assault rifles wrapped in cellophane and hidden inside two giant trash barrels. Agents believe the confiscated weapons were heading to drug cartels in Mexico. Problem is, a serial number on at least one of the weapons traces back to the ATF.
The DEA arrests took place on April 13 and the DEA has expressed an interest in keeping the seized weapons as evidence in their own case and separate from the now infamous Fast and Furious investigation.
Agencia Guatemalteca Noticias Photo
GUATEMALA: At least 27 people were massacred at a ranch in the restive northern Peten province along the borders with Mexico and Belize last weekend.
The massacre, which stretched from Saturday into Sunday, took place on a coconut farm in the lawless region of Peten province, a porous region on the Mexican border known as a gateway for drug trafficking.
It was one of the worst mass killings since the end of Guatemala's 36-year civil war in 1996, authorities said.
Police were investigating a link between the ranch killings and the murder of Haroldo Leon, the brother of one of Guatemala's biggest drug kingpins, Juan Jose "Juancho" Leon, who was killed in 2008.
Local reports said the ranch belonged to Haroldo Leon, who was gunned down with three of his body guards in another part of Peten early Saturday.
Hours later, heavily armed members of Mexico's Los Zetas drug gang raided the ranch, tying up their victims before killing them and then writing in blood threatening messages on the walls of the house, cops said.
One of the messages read, "Salguero, we're coming for you." Police did not say who Salguero was.
Police said that the victims - including two women and children - worked at the farm.
Late Sunday, authorities said they found one survivor of the massacre, who had pretended to be dead. Cops didn't release any other details about the survivor.
Authorities in Guatemala arrested a former member of the Kaibiles, a special operations unit of the Guatemalan Army, in neighboring Alta Verapaz province after coming across information left behind in a recently abandoned Zetas encampment in the same province where the ranch massacre took place. Hugo Gomez Vazquez was arraigned in court and charged with obstruction of justice, kidnapping, extortion and accesory to murder. The prosecution presented a recording of a telephone conversation where Vazquez was apparently negotiating a ransom after the abduction of a relative of the ranch's owner who was later killed and decapitated prior to last weekend's massacre.
TAMAULIPAS: Mexican federal police arrested a leading member of the Gulf cartel after raiding his birthday party at a ranch in Reynosa, Tamaulipas.
Gilberto Barragan Balderas "is considered one of the main leaders of the Gulf Cartel" and is the subject of a $5 million reward by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, said Ramon Pequeno, head of anti-drug operations for the federal police.
Barragan Balderas was allegedly in charge of the cartel's operations in Miguel Aleman, across the border from Roma, Texas. Police captured him at a party at a ranch near another border city, Reynosa, which is across from McAllen, Texas.
Police said the party was apparently in honor of Barragan Balderas' May 19 birthday. Two alleged associates were also arrested in the raid, which also netted an assault rifle and three pistols.
According to the DEA, Balderas' duties included obtaining advanced information regarding military and state police patrols and mobile checkpoints in order to protect drug shipments for both the Zetas and the Gulf cartel prior to the organizations violent 2010 split. Since then, he was supposedly tasked with defending the territory from any Zetas incursion.
The fact that the DEA has a US$5 million reward out for Balderas is a pretty good indicator that he wasn't exactly a small fry in the Gulf organization.
ELSEWHERE IN MEXICO: Not surprisingly, human trafficking continues to be a lucrative side business for many of the drug cartels.
Smuggling in decades past was the business of small independent operators who helped migrants cross once they reached the U.S. border. But evading U.S. authorities has become much more difficult with increased border enforcement in recent years. At the same time, Mexico's migrant routes have become much more dangerous, controlled by drug gangs that see new moneymaking opportunities in kidnapping and extorting those who cross their territory.
The harder the trip, the higher the price. Guatemalan officials, who estimate 300 to 500 undocumented nationals cross the border each day into Mexico, say those migrants are paying double what they did two years ago, as much as $10,000 for the hope of gaining work in the United States.
Unlike those running drugs, guns or other contraband, people smugglers lose virtually no upfront costs when migrants are intercepted by authorities or escape.
In the case of Mexico's southern border, no one can say exactly who the organized smuggling groups are. Some say that large transport rings operate separately from Mexico's brutal drug gangs, such as the Zetas or the Gulf Cartel, who stick to kidnapping and extortion.
Some say they are all in collusion, including authorities. Both local police and federal immigration agents have been arrested in recent raids on kidnapping operations in Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas.
"It's clear that they're immigration agents, federal police, Zetas, maras, the whole gamut, along with local crime groups," said the Rev. Alejandro Solalinde, a Catholic priest who runs a migrant shelter in Oaxaca. "Those who make money off migrants are all part of the same mafia."
Added to all this is the fact that organizations like the Zetas or Gulf cartel will target the migrants transiting through territory controlled by them and extort them, hold them for ransom or press them into service as drug mules.
Mayor Eddie Espinoza, Police Chief Angelo Vega and city Rep. Jose Blas Gutierrez were arrested on allegations of firearm violations, stated the indictment that was released Thursday afternoon by the U.S. attorney's office in New Mexico.
Espinoza was charged with one count of conspiracy, three counts of making false statements in connection with acquisition of firearms and three counts of firearms smuggling.
Vega was charged with one count of conspiracy. Gutierrez was charged with one count of conspiracy, seventeen counts of making false statements in connection with acquisition of firearms and 19 counts of firearms smuggling.
Federal agents executed a search on the offices of the Columbus Police Department, Mayor Epspinoza's home, 7 other residences in Luna and Doña Ana counties as well as a business establishment. The raid has effectively shut down Columbus 4-man police department, with deputies from the Luna County Sheriff's department in charge of patrolling the area for the time being.
Besides being targeteed by a raid from Pancho Villa in 1916, Columbus has had a fairly tumultuous history with its police department in the recent past. According to a 2009 Los Angeles Times article, the dilapidated building that housed the police station was shut down because of a faulty lock on the door to the evidence room and two off-duty officers were suspended and another injured after a barroom brawl that left the small town's police force down to one man.
Last week, federal prosecutors charged that chief of police Vega was paid $20,000 in protection money and used police vehicles for smuggling firearms while using his police credentials to buy body armour and tactical equipment to re-sell to the cartels.
The two agents reported the incident to a duty supervisor, and the agent and marijuana were subsequently turned over to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
Border Patrol spokesman Kenneth Quillin said charges were pending in the case.
Corruption cases involving border police have increased in recent years as the U.S. government has ramped up recruitment in a drive to secure the southwest border with Mexico
ELSEWHERE IN ARIZONA: Three Mexican nationals who identified themselves as members of the Sinaloa Cartel were charged on multiple weapons and narcotics conspiracy charges after attempting to purchase heavy weaponry. The three had indicated to informants that they were interested in Stinger missiles, a pair of AT-4 Anti Tank weapons.
The indictment alleges that David Diaz-Sosa, Jorge de Jesus-Castaneda and Emilia Palomina-Robles arranged to procure a military style arsenal for roughly $400,000 and made a down payment for the weapons using nearly 15 lbs of crystal methamphetamine and another $143,000 in cash in separate transactions. Court documents identify Diaz-Sosa and De Jesus-Casteneda as being in the country illegally while Palomina-Robles is a non-citizen resident.
The indictment also alleges that the men were going to divide up the weapons among themselves and smuggle them across the border into Mexico
CALIFORNIA: I mentioned this in passing earlier, but a Border Patrol agent in Southern California nabbed a van full of illegal aliens that were in United States Marine Corps uniforms. The white van itself featured a defaced US Government liscense plate, and the agent- a Marine veteran- became suspicious of the van's occupants when the driver didn't know the Marine Corps birthday and the occupants of the van were unfamiliar with the USMC 'Oo-RAH!' salutation. The arrest took place in the mountains along Interstate 8 at a checkpoint some 45 miles east of San Diego.
The government case contends that Esparza-Cruz entered the “United States without inspection through the City of Del Rio southbound tollbooth lanes.”
Once the truck entered the country ICE Agents ordered “mobile surveillance in order to verify the authenticity of the vehicle.”
Esparza-Cruz allegedly imitated a process used by Border Patrol when they deport illegal aliens back to Mexico using Border Patrol trucks. Luckily ICE agents observed the BP truck and were able to make the arrest.
“They’d just drive through without presenting themselves for inspection because no one questioned a Border Patrol vehicle,” officials explained.
In 2006, Border Patrol agents southwest of Tuscon, AZ came across a van in the desert that was painted to look like one of their vehicles. The drivers abandoned the vehicle after a short pursuit and fled back into Mexico, leaving behind some 30 immigrants locked in a cage the smugglers installed in the back of the vehicle. Over the past few years, smugglers and drug traffickers have also taken to applying realistic graphics to vehicles and trailers marked for Wal Mart, FedEx, DirecTV and others while moving contraband.
WASHINGTON D.C.- The Assistant special agent in charge of the ATF's Phoenix, AZ office is now cooperating with Congressional investigators in an inquiry stemming from the Bureau's 'Operation Fast & Furious'.
Special Agent George Gillett Jr was the one in charge or overseeing the day-to-day operations of Fast & Furious from the Phoenix office.
Gillett, who supervised the group running the Arizona component of Project Gunrunner, known as "Fast and Furious," initially dismissed those concerns and previously ordered ATF agents to avoid all communications with whistle-blowers who were cooperating with the congressional inquiries, several agents said in interviews.
Now, though, Gillett is talking. In a letter Friday to ATF management, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, disclosed that Gillett was cooperating with a congressional inquiry and had participated in two preliminary meetings with investigators.
Gillett, who was named to the Phoenix field office's No. 2 post in June 2008, previously served as an ATF field supervisor in Los Angeles.
After repeated refusals by the ATF and the Justice Department to provide detailed information about the conduct of the Gunrunner investigation and how the guns found at the scene of Terry's death got into criminal hands, Gillett's decision to come forward is crucial, agency sources said.
Early on, Agent John Dodson came forward as a whistleblower after two weapons from the 'Fast & Furious' operation were found at the scene of a December 2010 Arizona shoot-out that killed Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.
ARIZONA: You know how gun control advocates have been lobbying for stricter gun control laws in the USA citing the number of American weapons turning up at crime scenes in Mexico? I initially derided such claims as unmitigated bullshit, but it turns out they were more on the nose than anybody thought. But what nobody banked on was that the cartels and Mexican criminals were arming themselves thanks in large part to the complicity of the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms.
BATF Agent John Dodson has come forward and in an interview with CBS went on record as saying that allowing suspect sale of firearms to straw purchasers in Arizona go through before they were smuggled to Mexico in a tactic known as letting the guns 'walk'.
Agent Dodson and other sources say the gun walking strategy was approved all the way up to the Justice Department. The idea was to see where the guns ended up, build a big case and take down a cartel. And it was all kept secret from Mexico.
ATF named the case "Fast and Furious."
Surveillance video obtained by CBS News shows suspected drug cartel suppliers carrying boxes of weapons to their cars at a Phoenix gun shop. The long boxes shown in the video being loaded in were AK-47-type assault rifles.
So it turns out ATF not only allowed it - they videotaped it.
Documents show the inevitable result: The guns that ATF let go began showing up at crime scenes in Mexico. And as ATF stood by watching thousands of weapons hit the streets... the Fast and Furious group supervisor noted the escalating Mexican violence.
One e-mail noted, "958 killed in March 2010 ... most violent month since 2005." The same e-mail notes: "Our subjects purchased 359 firearms during March alone," including "numerous Barrett .50 caliber rifles."
Dodson feels that ATF was partly to blame for the escalating violence in Mexico and on the border. "I even asked them if they could see the correlation between the two," he said. "The more our guys buy, the more violence we're having down there."
Senior agents including Dodson told CBS News they confronted their supervisors over and over.
Their answer, according to Dodson, was, "If you're going to make an omelette, you've got to break some eggs."
There was so much opposition to the gun walking, that an ATF supervisor issued an e-mail noting a "schism" among the agents. "Whether you care or not people of rank and authority at HQ are paying close attention to this case...we are doing what they envisioned.... If you don't think this is fun you're in the wrong line of work... Maybe the Maricopa County jail is hiring detention officers and you can get $30,000 ... to serve lunch to inmates..."
Agent Dodson and others knew that allowing the guns to walk wouldn't end well, and their fears were confirmed in December 2010 when two guns from Fast & Furious were recovered from the scene of an Arizona shootout that killed US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.
Not surprisingly, Mexican authorities were kept in the dark about Fast & Furious as well. Mexican diplomats have petitioned the US Department of Justice for more details regarding the operation over the weekend.
Dodson has formally sought protection as a whistleblower under Federal law and has been providing information to the Senate Judiciary committee, chaired by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA).
ELSEWHERE ALONG THE BORDER: Speaking of the late Agent Brian Terry, documents detailing the Dec 14th gunbattle outside of Nogales, AZ in which the Border Patrol agent was killed indicates that the Border Patrol agents were instructed to use non-lethal beanbag rounds in their shotguns.
The documents say the group of illegal border entrants refused commands to drop their weapons after agents confronted them at about 11:15 p.m. Two agents fired beanbags at the migrants, who responded with gunfire. Two agents returned fire, one with a long gun and one with a pistol, but Terry was mortally wounded in the gunfight.
Terry's brother, Kent Terry, said the other agents who were there that night told him that they were instructed to use the non-lethal beanbags first. It's a policy that doesn't make sense to Kent Terry.
"You go up against a bandit crew that is carrying AKs, and you walk out there with guns loaded with beanbags - I don't get it," Terry said in a phone interview from Michigan. "It's like going to the Iraqi war with one knife. It boggles my mind. ... These guys (Border Patrol agents) are professionals; they should be able to use their judgment call on their own."
[snip]The Terry family remains upset about allegations that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed a gun smuggler it was investigating to purchase and smuggle into Mexico the weapons used in the shootout in which Terry died. The Justice Department has denied the allegations, but U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, continues to insist on the validity of the claims.
"Your government is telling you to use beanbags, but you are selling guns back to the Mexicans," Kent Terry said. "There's a lot of questions that they haven't answered."
The Border Patrol has declined comment, citing the ongoing investigation.
OK....let me just come right out and say that this is like the layer cake of bad ideas.
Let me count the ways: I guess to start off with, expedited border crossings from Mexico mean that some criminal enterprise is going to take advantage of this which will most likely lead to expedited drug smuggling or human trafficking, abetted by corrupt officials on both sides of the border.
Last I heard, things like weigh stations, logbooks, preventative maintenance, hours of service, and safety inspections were these whimsical, novel foreign concepts to the majority of truckers on the Mexican side of the border. Even if Mexico reciprocates and allows American truckers to drive further into Mexico's interior, there's the the matter of rampant crime in the form of hijackings and roadblocks set up to rob drivers or steal their cargo. Either that or set it on fire as part of an impromptu blockade while one cartel or another lays siege to a Mexican city.
And lastly, I fail to see how allowing more Mexican trucks onto US highways would benefit the American economy or create American jobs- union or non-union.
MEXICO CITY: A Major in the Mexican Army is suspected of leaking information to drug cartels, training hitmen and enforcers through a private security company and funnelling weapons from the Mexican military to cartels like Los Zetas, according to a US diplomatic cable released on Wikileaks.
"Based on statements from a former cartel member turned witness code-named 'Jennifer,' PGR (federal attorney general's office) has accused González of passing information related to the activities and travel plans of Mexican President Felipe Calderón to the Arturo Beltran Levya organization (ABLO).
"González also stands accused of leaking military intelligence, training ABLO hit men through a private security company and supplying military weapons to various (drug trafficking organizations), including los Zetas."
The cable also alleges that another official working for the Calderon administration leaked copies of his medical file to drug traffickers.
CHIHUHUA: The 20 year old woman who found herself in the limelight in 2010 for becoming police chief of the border town of Praxedis G Guerro after her predecessor was murdered and beheaded by narotrafficantes was fired on Monday after failing to show up for work.
City officials released a statement saying that the mayor had decided to remove Marisol Vallez Garcia from office after she failed to show up after a leave of absence in which she had to attend to a family emergency. She was accompanied by a local official as far as the International Bridge connecting El Provenir with Ft. Hancock, TX last week.
Marisol Valles, then a 20 year old criminology student studying at the University of Guadlajara, was the only person willing to take the job and was sworn in on October 18, 2010 a year after the previous police chief was kidnapped, murdered and beheaded and his severed head left outside the Paxedis G Guerro police station.
Valles is reportedly seeking asylum in Texas after her infant son was being treated for an unspecified illness there. She also was reportedly subjected to a number of anonymous death threats during her brief tenure as police chief.
The agents were unarmed during the attack, as Mexico prohibits foreign law enforcement officers from carrying weapons inside the country. Investigators discovered as many as 83 bullet casings at the scene of the shooting.
Zapata and Avila stopped at a Subway along the highway for lunch. As they left the restaurant, an SUV closed in on their Suburban from behind, tailing the agents.
Zapata tried to speed up, but the SUV kept pace and pulled up side-by-side. The passengers flashed assault rifles at the agents and sped ahead down the highway, out of sight.
A second vehicle came from behind, tailing the agents until they met the first SUV they’d seen minutes before.
The two vehicles had boxed in the agents on the highway and crawled to a stop. Gunmen surrounded the agents’ Suburban.
“They were screaming ‘Get out! Get out! Get out!,” one U.S. law enforcement official, briefed but unauthorized to speak on the case, told The Monitor.
The agents showed their U.S. diplomatic papers to the gunmen, showing they were federal agents. But the gunmen refused to relent.
Zapata shifted the vehicle in park, which automatically unlocked its doors. The gunmen tried to pull the agents from the vehicle. But they managed to close the doors.
Zapata’s window was open a crack, allowing the gunmen to stick an AK-47 assault rifle and a pistol through the opening. They “shot indiscriminately,” the official said, striking Zapata several times in the abdomen and Avila twice in the leg.
Within a week of the deadly ambush, soldiers from the Mexican Army arrested six Los Zetas members in San Luis Potosi. Zapata Espinoza, aka 'el Piolin' or 'Tweety Bird' because of his short stature, was identified by Mexican military officials as a leader of a Los Zetas hit team based around San Luis Potosi.
A spokesman with the Mexican Army said that Espinoza claims to have mistaken the Suburban as a vehicle for a rival cartel, despite the diplomatic plates and Zapata and Avila identifying themselves as US Agents. Members of Mexico's Armed Forces have arrested the local leader of Los Zetas in Coahuila over the weekend.
GUERRERO: Gunmen in the resort city of Acapulco targeting taxicabs killed at least a dozen people last weekend- nine cabbies and three passengers according to officials. Police in the state of Guerrero arrested four suspects carrying guns, grenades and a machete that they believe was used to decapitate some of the victims.
Gang members in Acapulco have been known to recruit cabbies to transport narcotics or simply extort money from them. The attacks came just hours before a popular international tennis tournament was set to take place in Acapulco.
Authorities had also recovered the bodies of four men whose hands and feet were bound with duct tape from near the Guerrero state capital of Chilpancingo. Judging from the bruising on the victim's bodies, its thought they gang members tossed them from a 600ft tall bridge while they were still alive.
TAMAULIPAS: At least 159 inmates in a Nuevo Laredo prison walked out of a service entrance overnight on Thursday in what's being described as the largest jailbreak in Mexico in recent years. Earlier this year, 85 inmates escaped from a prison in Reynosa, Tamaulipas- across the Rio Grande from McAllen, TX. This brings the total number of prison escapees this year to more than 200 just for the state of Tamaulipas.
One police official said that there are indications of complicity on the part of the prison guards and the chief warden for the facility is reportedly missing as well.
Federal police and soldiers were brought in to patrol the area and search for the escapees.
Police and military stormed into the town of Apatzingan, near the state capital of Morelia, where Moreno was believed to be hiding. In the ensuing firefight, Moreno and three other La Familia gunmen were killed along with five officers and three civilians. A spokesman for the Federal Police said that the death toll could be higher since some fleeing La Familia gunmen were seen taking their dead and wounded with them.
In response to the raid, La Familia gunmen blocked most of the exits around Morelia with stolen vehicles that were then torched (see above photo).
Although relatively new, La Familia Michoacan is unlike most other criminal organizations in that they have been known to recruit from drug rehabilitation centers throughout Mexico, portrays themselves as Robin Hood-esque defenders of the downtrodden and keeps their members in line with quasi religous indoctrination. This fervor does not prevent them from carrying out brutal murders or torturing opponents, but rather it classifies such activities as 'divine justice'. However, like other cartels, La Familia has been known to engage in human trafficking, extortion and mass production of synthetic drugs like methamphetimines.
NUEVO LEON: A car bomb exploded outside a minicipal police station in suburban Monterrey. Authorities say that three people were hurt and there was some damage done to the police building and nearby vehicles. This is the second car bombing south of the border this year and is believed to be a warning from one of the cartels.
Officials from the Department of Homeland Security returned the downed craft to Mexican officials before the National Transportation Safety Board could inspect it. Depending on the point of impact, the UAV was anywhere from ⅓ to ½ a mile within US airspace when it went down.
ARIZONA: US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed in a shootout with Mexican bandits in a mountainous area Northwest of Nogales, AZ on Wednesday. Terry was part of a 'BorTac' unit, shorthand for 'Border Tactical'- the Border Patrol's equivalent of a SWAT team charged with interdiction of smugglers and cross-border bandits.
Four suspects were taken into custody at the scene while a manhunt was underway for a fifth. FBI Agents and Santa Cruz County sherriff's deputies were combing the scene for further evidence after the shootout took place.
A Marine Corps veteran and born and raised in Michigan, Agent Terry's fuenral will be held in Detroit.
Drug sniffing dogs from the Border Patrol first detected the contraband when it crossed the border from Piedras Negras, Coahuila to Eagle Pass, TX in mid-November. From there, it moved to Chicago over Union Pacific rails.
According to the manifest, the shipment consisted of titanium pigments from Jalisco, and the pot was indeed concealed inside industrial 'super sacks'. Law enforcement kept the Chicagoland warehouse listed as the destination under survaillence before making any arrests and seizing the marijuana.
Mayor Santos Salinas Garza said that all 14 officers of the town's police department resigned the day after the late October attack in which grenades were thrown at the brand-new police station and the town's police cars were raked with machine gun fire. There were no fatalities in the nighttime attack and the officers were able to create an improvised blockade from the town's police cars.
The mayor said that the department hadn't received any specific threats but had noticed luxury SUV's with tinted windows in the days prior to the assault. The Los Ramones station had been open all of three days at the time of the attack. President Calderon is reportedly considering relieving most of Mexico's poorly trained, undermanned and outgunned municipal police departments of their duties and handing over the patrolling to state or federal agencies.
JALISCO: The director of the maximum security Puente Grande prison outside of Guadalajara has been arrested for suspected ties to organized crime.
Officials from Mexico's Federal Public Safety Department did not elaborate on the charges against Francisco Javier Gomez Meza. But an unnamed official said that Gomez came under investigation in 2008 while a part of the now-defunct Federal Investigative Agency during a sweeping corruption probe that led to the arrest of several top officials believed to be protecting members of the Beltran-Leyva cartel. Prior to that, Gomez was responsible for prison transfers of suspects and would oversee the deployment of officers throughout Mexico.
It is unclear why exactly Gomez was named to such a high profile position as the director of Puente Grande earlier this year while he was under investigation.
Antonio Ezequiel Cardena Guillen, aka Tony Tormenta (Tony the Storm) and four of his bodyguards were killed along with three Mexican Marines and a local reporter in the city just across the river from Brownsville, TX. The US State Department had taken out a US$5 Million bounty on Cardena after he took over Cartel operations from his brother Osiel, who was arrested in 2003.
Putting a 21st century twist on Mexico's age-old problems with entrenched corruption and influential criminal organizations was messages from residents of Matamoros circulating via Facebook and Twitter warning residents of cartel members using vehicles to block off streets and warning others to remain inside while the prolonged gunbattle between cartel gunmen and Mexican soldiers and Marines raged. A shaky video of a convoy of Marines in the back of pickup trucks and SUV's believed to those of Gulf cartel gunment speeding through the streets of Matamoros with gunfire in the background were circulating on YouTube.
Los Zetas- a group of narco-traffickers and enforcers with police and military training that formerly worked with the Gulf Cartel- hung up banners taunting the remaining members of the Gulf Cartel from pedestrian overpasses in the city. One such banner read "Again, the traitor's destiny is evident. There is no place for them, not even in hell".
While this is good news for Mexico's President Calderon and that country's armed forces, it's increasingly likely that the Los Zetas will attempt to move in and take advantage of their former employer's weakened state.
CALIFORNIA: Authorities in San Diego have unearthed a massive cross-border tunnel that connected a warehouse on the Tijuana side of the border with another warehouse some 600 yards north in the Otay Mesa section of San Diego.
Suspicious DEA agents kept the warehouse on the US side of the border under surveillance and tracked a vehicle from the warehouse, searching it as the tractor trailer approached a US Border Patrol checkpoint in Temecula, CA some 75 miles northeast. There, agents seized an estimated 10 tons of marijuana packed into cargo boxes.
Police, DEA and Border Patrol agents raided the Otay Mesa warehouse where another 15 tons of marijuana was found, as well as the entrance to the tunnel. Police on the Mexican side were alerter, where they seized another 4 tons of pot. The tunnel was described as being recently built and sophisticated, coming equipped with lighting and ventilation systems.
Martin Alejandro Cota-Monroy's body was found stabbed to death and with his severed head a few feet away in his suburban apartment back on October 10. Decapitation is a common tactic cartels employ to threaten or intimidate, with headless bodies being strung up from busy overpasses or severed heads being left in duffel bags in public places.
Both Cota-Monroy and the three men alleged to be involved in the brutal slaying are believed to have been in the country illegally. One suspect is in custody while three others are believed to have fled back to Mexico.
“If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, ‘We're gonna punish our enemies and we're gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us,’ if they don't see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election, then I think it's gonna be harder and that's why I think it's so important that people focus on voting on November 2,” Obama said in the interview, which was taped Friday in Los Angeles.
And what 'enemies' is the Commander in Chief referring to? Al Qaeda? A nuclear Iran? The Mexican cartels and their murderous enforcers?
Gosh no, you naive rubes. He's talking about Republicans- you know, the political party that's been out of power for the last four years.
Obama sought to place blame directly on Republicans, who he said have turned on Latinos by focusing only on border security, supporting Arizona’s immigration enforcement law and opposing the Dream Act, which would provide a pathway to citizenship for some students and those who serve in the military.
“Those aren’t the kind of folks who represent our core American values,” Obama said of Republicans
Yes, apparently focusing on border security and enforcing this nation's laws is contrary to core American values in Obama's eyes. I mean anybody who opposes wholesome Democrat supported legislative items like 0bamacare, Card Check, Cap & Trade or another stimulus clearly hates mom, baseball, apple pie and all things American.
Let that sink in. We have a sitting president of the United States of America who is exhorting one ethnic group to 'punish their enemies', referring to other US citizens as the 'enemy'.
A Colorado man is missing and presumed dead after he and his wife were attacked and pursued by smugglers in the waters on the Mexican side of Falcon Reservoir along the Texas/Mexico border.
According to a second, more comprehensive statement to Mexican investigators, Tiffany Young-Hartley, 29, said that she and her husband David Hartley, 30, were accosted by gunmen in three small boats as they were sightseeing along the Reservoir on separate jet skis on September 30. The gunmen opened fire, striking David as the couple fled according to her statement. Both Hartley and his jet-ski have been missing since then.
Only ranchers and steers populate the abandoned and partially submerged ruins, as well as a handful of anglers who remain along the Salado river, which flows into Falcon Reservoir. None told investigators they heard anything Thursday while out on the quiet waters.
“How would someone know where the incident occurred?” asked Rolando Armando Flores Villegas, the Tamaulipas State Police commander. “That place is very unsafe. Nobody lives there — only organized criminals. That’s their land.”
Flores has received reports of attacks on Falcon Reservoir, he said. But no one has alleged anything close to what Young-Hartley reported to authorities.
“Since everything is so calm over there, they could hear any noise,” Flores said of the anglers and ranchers in that area. “But they said they didn’t hear any gunshots or anything — and they didn’t even hear a Jet Ski.”
The case took an even more sinister turn last week when commander Flores' severed head was dropped off in a suitcase in front of a Mexican military base at nearby Miguel Aleman. Since then, authorities have suspended the search for Hartley's body.
Investigators in the USA and Mexico and a Texas-based national security think tank believe that the couple was initially mistaken for rival smugglers by the gunmen that accosted them.
This was necessary because the region is increasingly cut off from the rest of the country due to a struggle for territorial control between two of Mexico's cartels- the Beltran-Leyva and Sinaloa. Gunmen from the Beltran-Leyva cartel had taken over a string of ranches and pueblas between Altar, Sonora and the Arizona border 50 miles to the north. In retaliation, the Sinaloa Cartel has been patiently and methodically cutting off the area from the rest of the country, choking off food, mail and fuel deliveries to their rivals and an estimated 5,000 residents in the reigon.
I'm not a fan of the LA Times, but read the whole thing. Aside from the high profile and brazen acts of violence in places like Juarez or the grisly discoveries of mass graves in Taxco or Monterrey, the besieged villages in northern Sonora are an example of how the cartels are able to control vast tracts of rural land to expedite their lucrative human and drug smuggling routes.
