welsh
Junkmaster
Looks like drug wars on the border are getting worse-
1000 deaths is usually what you need to have an "official" war.
And where do the guns come from?
So we have a border trade- Drugs and immigrants come over from Mexico, while guns go over the border to support the drug dealers.
And the gangs and their guns come back over the border into the US.
Seems like a mess.
Drug gangs battle at Mexico border | Print | E-mail
Global
By Agencies
Mexico has deployed soldiers and heavily armed federal police in the border city
Gun battles between suspected drug gang members have left about 15 people dead in the Mexican city of Tijuana, near the border with the US.
Police said rival factions of the local Arellano Felix drug cartel opened fire on each other on Saturday along one of Tijuana's main roads, using rifles and machine guns in the early hours of the morning.
Rommel Moreno, attorney general of Baja California state, said: "Today shows we are facing a terrible war never seen before on the [US-Mexico] border."
Eight suspects and one federal police officer were reported injured in the fighting.
The suspects are being held on suspicion of weapons possession, among other possible charges.
Police recovered 21 vehicles, many with bullet holes or US licence plates, and a total of 54 guns at various points in the city where the battles broke out, Agustin Perez Aguilar, a spokesman for the state public safety department, said.
'Drug battles'
Heavily armed federal police patrolled across Tijuana following the gunfight.
Soldiers and police guarded the city's main hospital where the wounded were being treated to prevent any attempt by drug gangs to pull them out.
Daniel de la Rosa, Baja California's state police chief, said fresh troops from Mexico City were arriving in Tijuana, which borders San Diego, California.
Felipe Calderon, Mexico's president, has sent thousands of troops to Tijuana and Baja California state since taking office in December 2006.
Some 25,000 soldiers and federal police are deployed to fight cartels in drug hot spots across Mexico.
But despite the military crackdown on drug trafficking, nearly 3,000 people died in Mexico's drug war in 2007.
A further 900 have already been killed in the first quarter of this year.
1000 deaths is usually what you need to have an "official" war.
Gang guns down Mexico police chief | Print | E-mail
Global
By Agencies
The government has sent thousands of troops to areas where drugs cartels operate [AP]
Armed men, thought to be part of a drugs gang, have killed a police chief in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, casting doubt on the effectiveness of the authorities' latest crackdown on gang violence.
Manuel Cordova, the state police chief, was shot as he traveled in a truck in the city of Tapachula on Saturday, state authorities said.
Felipe Calderon, the Mexican president, said on Saturday that the fight against organised crime would continue.
"We will double our offensive against the enemy because more energy should be the response to greater violence," he said in a speech commemorating Cinco de Mayo holiday.
Calderon has sent thousands of troops to states on the US border and other areas in the country where drugs cartels operate.
But despite the campaign, violent attacks and execution-style killings have continued.
Funded by money from the drugs trade, gangs are known to have bribed poorly paid police officers and regularly out-gun local police by using assault rifles and grenade launchers.
Drug-related violence has lead to 700 deaths in Mexico so far this year.
On Thursday, gunmen attacked the police chief of Cancun, killing one of his bodyguards although the police chief himself escaped unharmed.
Earlier in the week, masked gunmen killed five soldiers in a shootout in the western state of Michoacan.
Local police officers have occasionally been assassinated by gangs, although it can be unclear whether they are targeted because of their own involvement with organised criminals or in retribution for trying to catch them.
And where do the guns come from?
U.S. Guns Arming Mexican Drug Gangs; Second Amendment to Blame?
Officials: More Than 90 Percent of Weapons Used by Mexico's Drug Gangs Come From the U.S.
By BRIAN ROSS and RICHARD ESPOSITO
April 22, 2008—
U.S. gun stores and gun shows are the source of more than 90 percent of the weapons being used by Mexico's ruthless drug cartels, according to U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials.
"It's a war going on in Mexico, and these types of firearms are the weapons of war for them," said Bill Newell, the special agent in charge of the Phoenix field division of the ATF, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which has primary law enforcement jurisdiction for investigating gun trafficking to Mexico.
"It's virtually impossible to buy a firearm in Mexico as a private citizen, so this country is where they come," said Newell.
But U.S. efforts to stop the smuggling of tens of thousands of guns to Mexico, including high-powered assault weapons, have been hampered by lenient American gun laws and the Bush administration's failure to give priority to anti-gun smuggling efforts, officials tell ABC News for a report Tuesday on ABC News' "World News With Charles Gibson."
President Bush said today at a press conference that Mexican President Felipe Calderon again raised the issue of guns at their meeting in New Orleans.
Mexico's strict gun laws are being subverted by the easy availability of weapons in the U.S., the Mexican attorney general, Eduardo Medina-Mora Icaza, told ABC News. "The Second Amendment," said the attorney general, "is certainly not designed to arm and give fire power to organized crime abroad."
More than 3,400 people have been killed by the drug cartels in the last 15 months, 2,000 of them law enforcement officials, according to the Mexican attorney general.
U.S. and Mexican officials say they have traced most of the thousands of high-powered weapons seized from the drug cartels to gun dealers in Texas, California and Arizona.
Assault weapons made in China and Eastern Europe, resembling the AK-47, have become widely and cheaply available in the U.S. since Congress and the Bush administration refused to extend a ban on such weapons in 2004.
Under federal gun laws, gun dealers are not required to report multiple purchases of such weapons because they are classified as rifles.
"If you were to go into a gun store and buy 20 of these, there is no requirement by the gun dealer to fill out a multiple sales form," said the ATF's Newell.
The drug cartels' weapons of choice include variants of the AK-47, .50-caliber sniper rifles and a Belgian-made pistol called the "cop killer" or "mata policia" because of its ability to pierce a bulletproof vest.
"It's in high demand by your violent drug cartels, their assassins in Mexico," said Newell of the ATF. The gun can fire a high-powered round used in a rifle.
An ABC News investigation found the "mata policia" and a wide range of assault weapons prominently displayed at gun stores along the border in Texas, the state providing the most weapons to the drug cartels, according to the ATF.
Under Texas and federal law, there is no waiting period for the purchase of such weapons and no restriction on how many can be bought at a time.
U.S. officials say there is little they can do to go after licensed gun dealers because large purchases, dozens or hundreds at a time, are legal for U.S. citizens and legal immigrants with an INS green card unless a gun dealer suspects the purchase is being made for someone else.
ATF agents say legitimate gun dealers will often report suspicious activities, but that a small but significant number looks the other way.
"I have personally worked cases where gun dealers have willfully allowed hundreds of guns to leave their gun store knowing that they were going into the wrong hands," said Newell.
While the Bush administration has asked for an additional $100 million to combat drug violence on the border, only $948,000, less than one percent, has been allocated to the ATF under the White House proposal.
"We need a lot more resources," said the ATF's Newell.
"It sure shows a lack of concern on our part for this piece of the problem," said Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., who has introduced legislation to give the ATF an additional $15 million to improve border efforts.
So we have a border trade- Drugs and immigrants come over from Mexico, while guns go over the border to support the drug dealers.
Catching smugglers - on way to Mexico
by Sean Holstege - Apr. 23, 2008 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic
GREEN VALLEY - Thousands of border agents, dozens of checkpoints and hundreds of miles of barriers are set up to stop contraband and illegal immigrants getting into the United States.
But little more than a chance roadside inspection stops smugglers going the other way.
That imbalance shows no sign of changing soon, but it has given rise to a novel experiment under way in Pima County. There, the Sheriff's Department has set up an 11-member unit to disrupt southbound smugglers and bandits who steal drugs and hijack people coming north. The sheriff's Border Crimes Unit, established a year ago, added a second full-time squad in December.
"For every load that comes north, something goes south to fund that activity," said Lt. Jeff Palmer, who is in charge of the team. "For as much as we are catching, there is tenfold getting through. It's a war zone."
There is a growing recognition among Arizona criminal investigators that choking off southbound guns and cash can effectively disrupt Mexican drug- and human-smuggling cartels.
The logic goes like this: Seize a ton of marijuana, and cartels grow another crop. Arrest an illegal immigrant, and he'll try again. But if investigators stop the southbound smugglers, they can seize the profits that make smuggling worthwhile and the guns used to protect the profits.Investigators estimate that thousands of firearms and hundreds of millions of dollars are smuggled from Arizona to Mexican cartels every year.
To put a tiny dent in that, Palmer's group cruises the highways by day to pull over suspicious southbound vehicles, looking for gunrunners and cash couriers. At night, the officers camp out in the deserts south of Tucson scouring the brush with night-vision equipment looking for bandits, who rob immigrants and smugglers.
When deputies arrest and interrogate bandits or gunrunners, they pass along any intelligence about northbound smuggling operations to federal investigators.
Ambushing ambushers
On a recent night, under a waxing moon and stiff breeze, Jeremy Butcher dons his deputy's jacket and peers through a thermal scope on a tripod. The unit's Bravo Squad is perched on low bluff overlooking the desert near Green Valley.
In grainy hues of gray, the scope picks up the bright outlines of the still-warm saguaro cactuses. Blurry images of rabbits and deer come into view. Watching animals helps find humans because they get spooked when people approach.
Suddenly, after two hours of feet-shuffling boredom, Butcher sees a line of people picking its way down a footpath. A check through the night-vision scope confirms that 10 people, less than 100 yards away, are headed straight for Bravo Squad.
"You never know who you are dealing with. They blend in. They're chameleons, and that makes it dangerous," said Sgt. David Rodriguez, Bravo's commander.
This group looks like illegal immigrants. No sign of weapons or heavy backpacks often worn by pot-smuggling mules.
The group disappears in an overgrown wash. About an hour later, Butcher glimpses someone's head peering over the rocks about 50 feet away.
It's the last contact of a slow night, but Rodriguez doesn't report the activity until the shift is over two hours later.
"It's a tradeoff. They are here illegally and broke U.S. law. But we don't want to give away our position, and we have a mission to fulfill," Rodriguez said.
He had to negotiate access to the private property, which hadn't been patrolled in months, and doesn't want to lose the vantage point. The night before, his team saw blacked-out trucks driving through the brush there. The vehicles were stopped and yielded weapons, camouflage and five suspects.
Deputy Sharlene Tzystuck was the first to catch a bandit. She was parked last month in a marked patrol car near Arivaca when she spotted a truck with a cracked windshield and a nervous-acting driver.
"I got behind them and lit them up, and they didn't stop. Their hands were going and they were talking, and I could just tell they didn't know what to do," Tzystuck recalled with a wide grin.
After driving through somebody's yard, the occupants bailed out and ran through the desert. They left behind a van with blankets, ski masks, backpacks, food and AK-47s. The truck belonged to a Mesa woman who told Tzystuck that her son "takes off every month for a few days" but that she never asked questions.
The arrest has led to a federal investigation of a suspected bandit ring.
In another bandit case, deputies found plastic water bottles filled with rocks and suspended from fishing line across a busy smuggling trail. When illegal immigrants or mules trip the wire, the rattling alerts the bandits, who ambush them.
It was a string of violent ambushes near Tucson in 2006 that led to the creation of the Border Crimes Unit. Palmer reports the unit has made about 60 arrests since December, resulting in 40 referrals for prosecution and about 80 opened investigations.
The numbers aren't large, but deputies on the new unit say that they are still perfecting their tactics and that their work has opened important investigations.
Stopping guns, money
Gun and cash seizures also have been small, Palmer said.
"We are still looking for that big haul. We know they are out there," he said, reporting about $5,000 in cash and a couple of dozen weapons seized since December.
That load included a .50-caliber rifle, which is designed to pierce tank armor. Mexican cartels have been buying them in Arizona to attack the army and to assassinate high-ranking officials who travel in armored convoys.
Rodriguez's team found little on its recent patrol of Interstate 19 in the Green Valley area.
Deputies pulled over a Chevrolet SUV after they saw it tailgating a commercial truck. Sgt. Greg Bargar led his drug-sniffing dog, Rudy, over to the truck and the dog began pawing at the windows and wagging his tail. Ultimately, he found a concealed auto-parts box containing a plastic bag of marijuana. The driver was cited and released.
Rudy is not there to find somebody's personal stash but to establish a legal cause to search vehicles. Drug money is often steeped in drug residue, and Rudy can find it. In some cases, better-equipped U.S. customs agents are brought in with density meters to find hidden compartments where drug money is hidden.
It's all part of the learning curve of the new experimental team, funded by the county budget and federal Homeland Security grants.
Putting it all together
Don't expect to see a flurry of southbound checkpoints on Arizona highways anytime soon.
Simple checkpoints cost about $15 million, and the Fourth Amendment protects citizens against unlawful searches and seizures.
Some state and federal agencies conduct random traffic stops and targeted inspections on southbound smugglers, based on investigative leads. But those agencies have broader missions mandated and limited by law.
Customs agents have the authority to stop southbound traffic, but only at ports of entry and only if they suspect that export laws are being violated. To screen all Mexico-bound traffic, Customs and Border Protection would have to build facilities at each port of entry, and each facility would cost tens of millions of dollars. It also could disrupt the flow of commerce and tourism.
"Our main focus is to stop threats entering the country," said Brian Levin, a Customs and Border Protection agent.
For now, Pima County's Border Crimes Unit remains a thin line of defense against southbound smugglers and the violence they perpetuate.
Key to that defense is the partnerships the unit has forged with other agencies and the information they share. It leads to more precise patrols and stakeouts, which generate more leads to break apart smuggling rings.
The Pima County Sheriff's Department is one of a dozen agencies that belong to a regional border-crime task force of investigators.
"This has got to be a regional approach," Palmer said. "It's bigger than any agency. . . . It's a huge, huge problem."
And the gangs and their guns come back over the border into the US.
Seems like a mess.
