Mexico — Thousands of Mexicans are protesting in Mexico City and others are blocking roads and bridges into the U.S. They are protesting army operations against drug gangs that officials said was organized by the Mexican drug cartels. The protesters are demanding the army leave in another challenge for the Mexican government as it struggles to quell escalating drug violence since the Calderon administration ordered Mexican army troops into Mexican Border cities and many other cities throughout Mexico.

Mexican newspapers are reporting several hundred protesters carried signs in the streets of Mexico. In the northern city of Monterrey’ in front of the town hall protesters signs read in Spanish “Army Get Out! In a growing challenge to the military across Mexico, groups of taxi drivers, shop keepers and Mothers also blocked bridges that connect the border cities of Juarez, Tijuana and  Reynosa with U.S. Cities, stopping vehicles and foot passengers, police said.

The protestors in Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana blocked traffic for hours across three bridges connecting the city to El Paso, Texas, and California with Mexico. Similar protests broke out on bridges in the border cities of Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa, while demonstrators blocked roads in Mexico City.

It was the largest display of discontent against the army’s role in an anti-drug crackdown since President Felipe Calderon began deploying soldiers across the country two years ago to fight Mexican drug cartels. About 45,000 soldiers are now spread out across Mexico.

According to AP government and army officials claimed that drug cartels organized similar protests in Monterrey earlier this month to undermine the crackdown. Federal officials had no immediate comment on the protests.

Human rights activists say there are legitimate complaints about abuses by soldiers, including cases in which patrols opened fire on civilians at military checkpoints. But they say it is unclear who has been behind the demonstrations.

El Paso Times reports that the Calderon’s offensive was initially widely popular among Mexicans hopeful for an end to relentless shootings, kidnappings and killings. But drug violence has only surged and become more violent since he took office, with drug gangs beheading rivals and attacking police nearly every day. More than 6,000 people were killed in drug violence last year.

Border towns have been transformed by the crackdown, with soldiers in ski masks regularly rumbling down the streets in large convoys.

Some of the protestors, mostly women and children, blocked the Paso del Norte bridge leading from Ciudad Juarez to downtown El Paso. They shouted “soldiers, get out!” as they stood in front of about 20 troops in green army pickup trucks. One person held a sign reading, “Get out of Juarez, thieving abusive soldiers.”

Brenda Contreras, a 22-year-old mother of two, said the city has only become more dangerous since troops arrived. She said soldiers detained her 32-year-old husband during a raid at a car wash three months ago, and she has not heard from him despite filing a complaint with the Defense Department.

“I saw him on the floor and they wouldn’t let me get near him. Where he is, only the army knows. What am I going to tell my daughters?” she said.

Not all city residents, however, are against the army’s presence.

“Knowing that the soldiers are out there all over the city makes me feel that the city is more protected,” said Cynthia de los Santos, 32, a secretary at a Ciudad Juarez law firm.

In Nuevo Laredo, 150 people blocked three bridges leading to Laredo, Texas, for several hours. Many were masked men, but some were women and children.

Protesters also blocked bridges leading to Texas from Reynosa, the town’s mayor, Oscar Luebbert, told Mexico’s Radio Formula.

Luebbert also said a shootout erupted Tuesday between federal police and armed men in Reynosa, and authorities were trying to confirm reports that several people were killed.

“The situation is very critical,” Luebbert said. “The whole population is very alarmed.”

An official from the federal Public Safety Department said the shootout erupted when federal police came across a group of gunmen. Soldiers joined the fight when police asked for help, said the official, who was not authorized to give his name. He said at least four gunmen were killed and several police were injured.

Protesters also blocked two highways in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz and one road outside the state capital, Jalapa.

Nuevo Leon state police Chief Aldo Fasci said last week that crime organizations were paying people to protest against the army and that gangs were handing out backpacks full of school books, pens and paper to poor families who joined the demonstrations.

This recent protesting by the people of Mexico is spreading around the world, explosive anger is spilling out onto the streets of Europe. The meltdown of the global economy is igniting massive social unrest in a region that has long been a symbol of political stability and social cohesion.

It’s not a new trend: A wave of upheaval is spreading from the poorer countries on the periphery of the global economy to the prosperous core.

Riots are spreading across what is patronizingly known as the Third World. Furious mobs have raged against skyrocketing food and energy prices, stagnating wages and unemployment in India, Senegal, Yemen, Indonesia, Morocco, Cameroon, Brazil, Panama, the Philippines, Egypt, Mexico and elsewhere.

For the most part, those living in wealthier countries took little notice. But now, with the global economy crashing down around us, people in even the wealthiest nations are mad as hell and reacting violently to what they view as an inadequate response to their tumbling economies and incompetent political leaders.

In the mean time the police chief of the Juárez police department and three officers were killed in an ambush Tuesday.

Police operations director Sacramento Perez Serrano, 49, was being escorted by the officers when the four-door police pickup they were riding in was riddled with gunfire in the upscale Zona Dorada (Golden Zone) area of the city about 5 p.m.

Perez and the three officers died in the attack near Paseo de La Victoria and Ejercito Nacional boulevards.

“They were on their way to the Babicora (police) station when they were ambushed by an armed commando,” said Jaime Torres, city spokesman.

“They didn’t have a chance to defend themselves. They died in the patrol unit.”

Police, federal agents and soldiers are on “red alert” as an extensive man hunt for the killers continues, Mexican officials said. More protests are expected country wide in Mexico, according to Mexican officials.

Video: Protesters Block Bridges Between Mexico, Texas

EL PASO, Texas — Mexican Drug Cartel known member Jose Daniel Gonzalez was murdered on American soil in El Paso Texas. Gonzalez according to law enforcement was acting as an U.S. Government informant feeding important information about several Mexican Drug Cartel families. There modes of operations, drug routes and privileged inside information known only to high ranking Cartel members. Evan though Gonzalez was an active informant and was under U.S. Law enforcement protection the powerful Mexican Drug Cartels were still able to attack and kill Mr. Gonzalez.

According to Alicia A. Caldwell with the APNewsBreak reported today that the eight bullets that killed Gonzalez outside his home just doors from the El Paso City’s Police chief’s own home. The hail of automatic gun fire was fired at close range and left little doubt about their message.

Gonzalez, a Juarez cartel lieutenant shot on his quiet El Paso cul-de-sac this spring, has just come to light. According to reports Gonzalez was indeed working for U.S. officials as a confidential informant.

Sources close to the investigation has told the Laguna Journal. This maybe the first substantiated assassination carried out by Mexican Drug Cartel hit men although there have been others suspected assassinations in Phoenix, Alabama and elsewhere in the states. The feds suspect his slaying is the first time assassins from one of Mexico’s violent drug gangs have killed a ranking cartel member on American soil.

Caldwell’s report indicated that experts told her the murder represents a growing brazenness of the cartels on this side of the border that will most likely lead to more deaths.

“He got shot up close,” police chief Greg Allen said. “Whoever did it wanted to make sure it was known that it was for payback.”

Alerts send out to law enforcement last year warned that Mexican drug kingpins, including Sinaloa cartel chief Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, publicly gave hit men permission to cross the border in search of targets.

“There’s an increasing number of (cartel) leaders living in the U.S., probably either to escape law enforcement or their enemies in Mexico, so that’s one of the risks that has increased in the last few years,” said Stephen Meiners, a senior tactical analyst for Latin America at Stratfor, a global intelligence company based in Austin, Texas.

“There’s a possibility that this thing could get out of hand,” he said.

Shannon O’Neil, an expert on Latin America at the Council on Foreign Relations, said she knows of no other high-level killings in the U.S., but fears it won’t be the last.

“We have started to see more brazenness close to the border on the Mexican side and on the U.S. side,” O’Neil said. “Once you get these organizations firmly established in Mexico and the United States, you will have killings at all different levels.”

Gonzalez, a 37-year-old legal immigrant who lived with his family on a cul-de-sac in an expensive neighborhood, was shot May 15 2009 in front of his spacious home. His wife, Adriana Solis, and the couple’s two children fled not long after.

Two federal officials and one local official told the Associated Press that Gonzalez was handing over information about cartel activities to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which in recent years has taken a broader role in cross-border drug trafficking investigations. One of those officials said federal investigators were monitoring Gonzalez’s activities and whereabouts.

The officials spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly about the case. In a statement e-mailed to the AP, ICE spokeswoman Leticia Zamarripa said, “It is ICE policy to neither discuss nor comment on issues regarding confidential informants.”

Cartel-affiliated hit men have violently, and fatally, disciplined low-level, American-based drug dealers in the U.S. But El Paso police said Gonzalez was a lieutenant in the Juarez cartel, which traffics in marijuana, cocaine and heroin. The cartel was once among the most dangerous in Mexico, but has recently lost some standing because of arrests, deaths and infighting.

The L.A. Times is reporting that the El Paso police don’t yet have an official motive in Gonzalez’s slaying, but chief Allen said detectives are working on the assumption that a cartel colleague discovered he was discussing their illegal activities with federal agents.

Allen, who lives behind Gonzalez’s house and heard the shots from his backyard, told the AP that he and other local authorities knew Gonzalez had been involved with drugs in the past but had no idea he was both a ranking Mexican gangster and federal informant. He’s angry he wasn’t briefed about a case his department now must solve as a local homicide.

Cooperation is seen as crucial to the success of the federal and state law enforcement agencies that fill El Paso, one of the country’s largest border cities and a major inland port.

The week after the killing, during a tense meeting of a multi-agency group called the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, Allen said he told federal authorities that his future cooperation depended on them keeping his department informed of their activities.

“How’d you like it if this happened in your neighborhood?” Allen said he told the gathering.

The bullets that killed Gonzalez were fired at such close range that three may have traveled through his body and lodged in a neighbor’s stucco wall and a parked car. A bloodstain still marked the street where the neighbors sat to watch the kids play. Now, aside from Allen, people living in the Rancho del Sol neighborhood are too scared to speak publicly about Gonzalez or his family.

Aldo Valderrabano lives around the corner from the Gonzalez’s second home, a more modest 1,800-square-foot, two-story house they used to live in a little more than a mile away. He said the Gonzalez family moved to the $365,000, 3,300-square-foot home listed in Solis’s name, a few months after she mysteriously lost three fingers last year.

Valderrabano’s wife visited Solis in the hospital, and he said Solis would only say the fingers were lost “in an accident.” She had no other apparent injuries. The family hasn’t been seen since the shooting, although El Paso police spokesman Javier Sambrano said investigators are in contact with them. He said Solis and her children are staying at an undisclosed location, “a move they did on their own.”

Gonzalez is listed in business records as the only contact for El Nuevo Rey (”The New King” in Spanish) freight company, which shares an address with his home. Federal Express packages for the company continued to arrive daily on Gonzalez’s front porch for weeks after the shooting. Business records show the company had annual sales of about $84,000.

He is also listed as the sole contact at that address for Gonzalez Auto Parts, Letters And Colors Day Care and Transportes Gonzalez. Neighbors said they have seen no evidence of any activity related to these kinds of businesses at the house.

Valderrabano said Solis told him the family was from Villa Ahumada, Mexico, a small town south of Ciudad Juarez that has been virtually taken over by cartel fighters in recent months. She said Gonzalez manned a family-owned food stand in Juarez, a city of about 1.1 million that abuts El Paso and is now occupied by the Mexican army in the government’s battle against drug gangs.

But while in El Paso, Valderrabano said, Gonzalez and his family were very pleasant. The families’ children often played together.

“They were very quiet, we didn’t have any problems with them,” Valderrabano said.

Sources:

A/P

El Paso Police Dept.

El Paso Sheriff’s Dept.

DEA,

FBI

L.A. Times

The National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers (NAFBPO)

Photo’s: Crime Stoppers El Paso and A/P

For Related Articles go to: www.lagunajournal.com

Rosarito Beach Mexico: Mexican authorities say they are investigating a shooting of a U.S. Marine early yesterday morning in which Mexican marines shot and wounded Pfc. Joshua Kendall Monnet who they say was driving a vehicle near a checkpoint. 

Mexican military authorities based in Ensenada Baja said the marines at the checkpoint indicated to Monnet that he should stop his vehicle. They said the Mexican marines opened fire shortly thereafter. Most of the details that led to the shooting are being with hold by Mexican authorities. Calls to the Mexican Marines and other Ensenada civilian authorities shed very little light on what actually happened.

U.S. Marine authorities at Camp Pendleton California said the information was new to them; however they would be looking into the matter and check whether the shooting involved a Camp Pendleton Marine.

Gangland style executions of four people are believed Americans who were shot and killed near the main highway between Tijuana and Rosarito Beach. First reported by local police who were the first on the crime scene told the Laguna Journal by phone that five victims were executed, four of them appear to be Americans three men and a women. Police say,” we are withholding the names of the victims until relatives in the states can be notified”.  

La Mesa woman Libby Gianna Craig believed to be an American was among four people found shot to death in a canyon near Rosarito Beach in Baja California, official’s said.

The 28-year-old was in an area known as Morro Canyon along with three Afro-American males; Mexican police described three of the dead men as “Black Americans”. Early reports also said more bodies were found in a separate location at different points of Playas de Rosarito, reported some Mexican papers.

Shortly after the Baja Attorney General de Justicia del Estado took over the investigation the official word changed and the press was told of only four people killed three Mexican nationals and one female of Mexican decent and denied that the male victims were Americans.

This was a complete reversal from the on the crime scene investigating police officers who reported the three men were Afro-Americans and the names were being with hold pending notification of the next of kin in the states.

A high ranking Mexican army officer has told the Laguna Journal that he and others of received word to not talk with or report any American deaths to the media. Click on or Google Four or more Americans executed in Mexico

Many Mexico business owners and the Mexican Chamber Of Commerce have been complaining that the American media has been reporting that Americans have been executed, kidnapped for ransom and victims of other crimes while in Mexico. Juan Ortiz a Tijuana business owner told the Journal that business is down some 50% since those recent news reports.  “I don’t believe those reports all it is doing is scaring people and keeping them from coming to Mexico”. Mr. Ortiz said.

Reuters reported at 9:52 a.m. May 19,2008 dateline ROSARITO, Mexico reported four people believed to be Americans were shot in the head and dumped in a notorious drug-smuggling area in northern Mexico near the border with California, Mexican police said Monday.

Police in the beach town of Rosarito, across the border from San Diego, said they discovered the bodies of three men and a woman Sunday in an abandoned car in a remote patch of scrubland near the Pacific coast.

Police concluded the victims were U.S. citizens and said the three men were of African-American appearance, the woman was Caucasian and a U.S. driver’s license was found in the car, the spokesman said. Click on Four people believed to be Americans were shot in the head

All the shootings were apparently deliberate, targeted, not just random bystanders caught up in the wave of violence that has engulfed U.S. Mexican border cities, Mexican authorities said.

Details are sketchy but the first murder occurred after two PM in the colony in the ejido Mina Primo Tapia’s Fifth Municipality, where a late model vehicle was found abandoned with California plates. Inside the vehicle police discovered the body of an executed male subject, reported a spokesperson of the Rosarito police. Click on or Google: More Americans shot in Mexico

The Laguna Journal reported that four people, three African Americans and a white woman, was found shot in the head.

According to a Mexican policemen at the scene said, “The discovery occurred at kilometer four of the boulevard, under the bridge known as El Morro, where they located a 2nd vehicle a green Cadillac with white California, USA plates.” The officer went on to say in broken English “At 20 meters’ from the car, we found dead another man of dark complexion and a white woman, who apparently are also foreigners”. Those bodies have not been identified.

Elements of ministerial personnel and expertise of the Attorney General de Justicia del Estado, working at the crime scene where they collected evidence of multiple homicides.

Last week four Americans were shot and wounded as they were leaving the Arriba Chihuahua nightclub in the ProNaF tourist zone in the violent Mexican border city of Juárez.

Some 200 people have been killed in Tijuana so far this year. In 2007, there were more than 2,500 drug killings across Mexico and just since the beginning of this year more than 3500 people have been murdered in Mexico in what authorities blame on the Mexican cartels and their criminal gangs and Para-military forces. Click on or Google Dangerous Mexican/U.S. Criminal

Enterprises Operating Along the Mexican border

It is estimated that Mexico has 36,000 troops fighting the Mexican drug cartels and their Para-military units throughout the country. With the expected injection of more soldiers being sent to the U.S. Mexican border cities those troops will number near 40,000.

Calderon is seeking U.S. military aid under the provisions of the Merida Initiative, a multiyear $1.4 billion anti-narcotics package proposed by President Bush. Click on or Google: Merida Initiative Will It Work?

In recent months and after Mexican president Caldron dispatched the Mexican army and federal police to many interior cities and to Mexican cities on the Mexican U.S. border the level of violence has risen substantially.

As reported earlier this month in the Laguna/El Paso Journal many Americans are wondering when the Bush administration is going to raise the travel alert to its highest level “travel warning,” to forewarn American travelers to Mexico? How many American citizens are going to have to be shot, executed or kidnapped before the American government move to prevent needless deaths and issue the proper high alert of “travel warning,” for Americans?

Mexican drug cartels according to recent press reports have military style training camps on and near the border with the United States. These Training camps are for military-style killers. Federal authorities say these camps have Afghanistan and other middle eastern instructors who teach the latest military fighting tactics that are utilized in Iraq and Afghanistan by the Islamic radicals that are fighting and killing American and allied troops in those countries. Mexican officials admit they know of special training camps in the Mexican states of Tamaulipas and Michoacan, where newly recruited Zetas take intensive six-week training courses in weapons, tactics and intelligence gathering.

Iran is believed providing at least some of the money for this recruiting and training program. The training camps are teaching hit and run gorilla technique’s. Cells of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) have sent their seasoned veterans to oversee the training of the new troops and to direct the war against the Mexican government on behalf of the Mexican Cartels. Trained fighters from al-Qaida, Hizballah (Party of God) Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement) and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have been seen in Mexico and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has reported cells from these terrorist organizations are believed here in the U.S. as well. According to a well placed CIA operative.

The El Paso Journal has been told by an anonymous caller who claims to be an Lt. of a Mexican cartel said in advance, “that the Mexican drug cartels would be advertising for recruits to train as cartel soldiers to fight the Mexican army which has been sent to the border with the U.S. to extinguish the Mexican drug cartels”. Just today a week or so since he made the predictions banners where string across a main artery in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico advertising for recruits. He also said they would be advertising on the internet which has also happened. His predictions have been accurate so far. He told of the Mexican army coming to each border town before they did. The Journal has not reported any of his predictions to date without confirmation from other independent unrelated and reliable sources.

The Mexican government first realized that Islamic radical militants were already starting to infiltrate the country in statements by high-ranking Mexican officials prior to and following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks indicated “that Islamic extremist organizations has sought to establish a presence in Mexico”.

Former Mexican national security adviser and ambassador to the United Nations, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, stated, that “Spanish and Islamic terrorist groups are using Mexico as a refuge… In light of this situation, there are continuing investigations aimed at dismantling these groups so that they may not cause problems”. He also mentioned that the terrorist groups in question are located in the northern part of the country. “Islamic people” in Mexico sparked speculation among observers that the Lebanese Shi’ite terrorist organization Hizbollah have established cells in Mexico.

Remarks made by Mexican public officials indicate the real possibility that al Qaeda cells are present in Mexico and could potentially attempt to cross the U.S. southwest border to conduct additional attacks.

The former director of Mexico’s Center for Intelligence and National Security (Centro de Inteligencia y Seguridad Nacional—Cisen), Eduardo Medina Mora, remarked that the possibility of an al Qaeda attack against the United States launched from Mexico “could not be ruled out.”

National Migration Institute (Instituto Nacional de Migracion—INM) official Felipe Urbiola Ledezma made more alarming statements during remarks to the press, Urbiola said, “We have in Mexico people linked to terrorism and we are constantly observing unusual immigration flows…[people connected to] ETA, Hizbollah and even some with links to Usama Bin Laden.”

Other terrorist and criminal groups are in Mexico including the Russian mafia groups such as the Poldolskaya, Mazukinskaya, Tambovskaya, and Izamailovskaya have been detected in Mexico. The Moscow-based Solntsevskaya gang is also reported to be present in the country, as are other mafia gangs from Chechnya, Georgia, Armenia, Lithuania, Poland Croatia, Serbia, Hungary, Albania, and Rumania. Their major activities include drug and arms trafficking, money laundering, prostitution, trafficking in women from Eastern and Central Europe and Russia, alien smuggling, kidnapping, and credit card fraud.

Reforma a leading Mexican newspaper reported that U.S. intelligence agencies had detected a partnership between the Tijuana-based Arellano-Felix Organization (AFO) and Russian mafia groups based in southern California. In a separate story, Reforma reported that members of the former KGB-affiliated Kurganskaya group in San Diego had met with AFO operative Humberto Rodríguez Banuelos.

Reforma reported that for at least the last ten years the Russian mafia was supplying Mexican drug traffickers with radars, automatic weapons, grenade launchers, and small submersibles in exchange for cocaine, amphetamines, and heroin. It cited a 1996 sting operation in which undercover DEA agents posing as Russian mafia members sold Carillo Fuentes operatives 300 AK-47s and ammunition in Costa Rica.

Even ten years ago, ten Russians, including four known members of the Russian mafia, were arrested at Mexico City’s international airport when they arrived on a KLM flight from Amsterdam. The mafia members included Aleksandr Zakharov, one of the leaders of the Moscow mafia and founder of the Uralinvest, known to have a principal role in organized crime in Russia. Another detainee was Nicolay Novikov, a Uralinvest director who had been imprisoned on three previous occasions for arms trafficking. A third was Yevgeniy Sazhayev, who had been arrested on two previous occasions for drug trafficking. The fourth was Vladimir Titov, wanted for various assassinations and who had escaped from several Russian prisons with the help of the mafia. The four men, who were traveling with six women, were apparently en route to Acapulco and Cancún. The group was reportedly deported. The Interpol head in Mexico, Juan Manuel Ponce, corroborated accounts that the group had been carrying arms and a substantial amount of cash.

According to Mexican analyst Jorge Fernández Méndez, the Russian mafia bosses had come to Mexico in order to mediate in the gang war being fought between the CFO and various other groups for control of drug trafficking routes through Mexico in the wake of the death of Alejandro Paez.

It is well known that the Russian mafia is deeply entrenched in the criminal fabric of the Mexican drug cartels and still today plays an important roll in providing guns and other weapons to the cartels and are purveyors of, drug smuggling, money laundering, prostitution, trafficking in women from Eastern and Central Europe and Russia, alien and terrorist smuggling, kidnappings for ransom.

The self proclaimed Mexican drug cartel Lt. says,” that we will be offering Mexican soldiers very attractive pay packages and other benefits to cross over and go to work for us”. He told the journal we can look for that new development to be happening soon. He also predicts that “active current duty Mexican soldiers and Mexican Federal Police officers will be killed by well armed and trained cartel soldiers”.

Sources:

Hundreds being rounded- up and many Arrested in Juarez Mexico

The U.S. placed Mexico under a travel alert As Thousands of Armed Mexican Troops Patrol the Streets of Juarez

Linking of drug cartels on the Texas border with Middle East terrorist

President Bush’s top intelligence aide has confirmed that Iraqi terrorists have been captured coming into the United States from Mexico

Americans Being Kidnapped, Held and killed in Mexico

They’re known as “Los Zetas

Reforma Reforma Mexico City Newspaper.

Library of Congress Federal Research Division: Terrorism and Crime …

www.cnn.com

www.lagunajournal.com

www.limeshine.com

http://bajasur.craigslist.com.mx/lab/604707210.html

By Michael Webster: Investigative Reporter May 15, 2008 8:00 AM PST

As reported executively in the Laguna/El Paso Journal the Calderon administration was expected to rush more Mexican Army troops to the border cities of Juarez, Tijuana, Mexicali, Palomas and others. The first leg of that troop enforcement became an reality yesterday — Hundreds more Mexican army soldiers arrived in Juárez under the cover of darkness as part of Joint Operation Chihuahua, intended to augment the Mexican governments war against the Mexican Drug Cartels operating in Mexico. Juarez has been particularly hard hit with 300 plus murders that has rocked the city since the beginning of the year. Click on or Google:  Mexico’s National Security Cabinet expected to declare a state of emergency

It is estimated that Mexico has 36,000 troops fighting the Mexican drug cartels and their Para-military units throughout the country. With the expected injection of more soldiers being sent to the U.S. Mexican border cities those troops will number near 40,000.

Calderon is seeking U.S. military aid under the provisions of the Merida Initiative, a multiyear $1.4 billion anti-narcotics package proposed by President Bush. Click on or Google: Merida Initiative Will It Work?

In recent months, and after Mexican president Caldron dispatched the Mexican army and federal police to many interior cities and to Mexican cities on the Mexican U.S. border the level of violence has risen substantially, with some of it spilling into the United States. According to Jayson Ahern, the deputy commissioner of Customs and Border Protection.

“It’s almost like a military fight,” Ahern said. “I don’t think that generally the American public has any sense of the level of violence that occurs on the border.”

As the cartels fight for territory, this carnage spills over to the U.S., Ahern said — from bullet-ridden people stumbling into U.S. territory, to rounds of ammunition coming across U.S. entry ports.

At least Three Mexican border city police chiefs barely escaping with their lives have requested political asylum in the U.S. as violence escalates on the U.S. Mexican border where the Mexican drug wars are spilling across the U.S. border, a top Homeland Security official told The Associated Press.

In the past few months, the police officials have shown up at the U.S. border, fearing for their lives, according to Ahern.

They’re basically abandoned by their police officers or police departments in many cases,” Ahern told AP.

Ahern said the Mexican officials — whom he didn’t name — are being interviewed and their cases are under review for possible asylum.

U.S. humvees retrofitted with steel mesh over the glass windows patrol parts of the border to protect U.S. Border Patrol agents against guns shots and large rocks regularly thrown at them. At times agents are pinned down by sniper fire as drug and human smugglers try to illegally cross into the U.S.

In the last few weeks, the Mexican government began military operations on its side of the border against Mexican drug cartels and their gangs who are engaged in smuggling drugs into the United States.

LAGUNA JOURNAL ARCHIV

Mexican cartel Los Zetas paramilitary surrogates attacked and slaughtered an American in Phoenix Ariz. Police say the attackers were dressed in black military like combat uniforms very similar to known Mexican cartel paramilitary gangs.

Phoenix papers report that 6 Mexicans killed a Phoenix man who was found dead by police in a local neighborhood home riddled with more than 100 bullets. Google or click on: They’re known as “Los Zetas

The WorldNetDaily is reporting that some are calling a Mexican drug cartel hit performed by members of the active Mexican Army.

According to early and sketchy reports a Phoenix Police Special Assignments Units heard shots coming from a nearby neighborhood and began to drive toward the noise Sunday. Detectives said once police gained entry into the home, they found the body of Andrew Williams, 30, shot numerous times, according to Arizona Daily News.

“We have seen an increasing amount of these type of violent crimes in the past five months,” Phoenix Police Sgt. Joel Tranter said. “We want the public to realize that these types of crimes will not be tolerated in Phoenix.”

Former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., said Tuesday on 550 KFYI-AM that he had acquired an internal memo identifying one of the suspects as a former member of the Mexican military, and he interviewed Mark Spencer of the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association. The men were said to be wielding AR-15 assault weapons and wearing full body armor and black assault gear similar to uniforms worn by military and police tactical teams.

Detectives were alarmed to find more than 100 rounds of ammunition in the bullet-riddled home, along with marijuana and body armor, the Arizona Daily News reported. Just as more investigators appeared on the scene, they saw a suspicious red Chevrolet Tahoe driving through the neighborhood. As the officers gave chase three men jumped from the vehicle and ran, but police run them down and arrested them. Spencer said the men were intending to try and ambush the pursuing officers but had ran out of ammunition.

Daniel Garcia-Saenz, 24, Manual Garcia-Trejom, 25, and Rodolfo Madrigal Lopez, 19, each wore tactical clothing and Kevlar helmets and other weapons were found in the vehicle.

Police believe the hit was drug-related and are looking for three more suspects in the case.

This is but another example that the violence in Mexico has and is spilling over into the states, even through many politicians and even the ambassador to Mexico have said it was not happening. Google or click on: Mexican Drug cartels terror reaches deep into the U.S.

Drug-related violence has been escalating and reportedly is shifting from Mexico to U.S. border states since Mexican President Felipe de Jesus Calderon Hinojosa ordered troops to fight the cartels.

El Universal, a Mexico City-based newspaper, reported 38 people killed in Mexican drug cartels Tuesday, the highest number reported one a single day this year.

Eighteen of the deaths took place in Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, where 2,800 troops have been assigned to fight cartel trafficking and violence.

The newspaper reported more than 1,833 people have been killed in Mexico’s drug trade-related violence this year.

For years now US federal officials have reported that the Mexican drug cartels are operating in dozens of US cities, and have consolidated their control of the entire corridor of the supply chain of illegal drugs from deep in Mexico north to the U.S. border and beyond.

Nationwide, the Mexican drug cartels are now the dominant distributors of wholesale quantities of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines and marijuana in the United States. No other group is positioned better to expand there already nationwide operation and take over total distribution of drugs in the south eastern part of the country too, then are the Mexican drug cartels as they now do in the south western part of the country.

Mexican drug cartels through their segregate organizations control the lucrative methamphetamine trade, as the arrival of purer Mexican ice methamphetamine has replaced locally produced powder meth, according to the US Department of Justice.

Glen Beck of the popular show of the same name said,” Atlanta has become the latest battleground for Mexican drug cartels.”

“Their idea is to control the whole economic process of production and distribution,” said Georgina Sanchez, an independent security consultant in Mexico and executive director of a public safety policy institute.

In many areas of the United States the cartels have entered into partnerships with local gangs, in others they have directly assumed control of local drug distribution, analysts say.

According to Beck, “The Mexican side of the border is essentially a war zone with the Mexican government fighting, losing, or sometimes in collusion with the heavily-armed drug cartels.  You’re not going to see much about it in the mainstream media. And for some reason, this just isn’t a topic anymore.”

Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora says cartels have deeply penetrated city police forces. (Eduardo Verdugo – AP)

Gwinnett County, Georgia, where Atlanta is located is over 1,000 miles from our U.S. – Mexico border. They have already had nine drug-related kidnappings this year. In one incident it just happened a couple weeks ago, DEA agents raided a home and charged three men, all illegal aliens, with kidnapping and conspiracy to distribute cocaine after finding that they had bound and chained the victim to a wall in a basement in the town of Lilburn and beat him for nearly a week in an effort to collect $300,000 in drug debt.

“The violence in [American] cities has a direct cause and effect related to what is taking place in Mexico,” said Fred Burton, vice president for counterterrorism at Stratfor, an Austin-based private intelligence company.

“The farther north you go from the border, the less that is understood,” said Burton, who is a member of the Texas Border Security Council, which focuses on homeland security and economic development along the Texas-Mexico border.

The biggest worry for local law enforcement groups is that the cartels will bring with them violent methods honed during furious cartel wars in Mexico that have left thousands dead since 2006. In recent years, Mexican drug violence has reached new heights, with beheadings, videotaped executions broadcast on the Internet, and the targeting and killings of top Mexican law enforcement officials.

Beck, said, “There are no good guys in this story except the people who are on the front line, like Rodney Benson. He is the Special Agent-in-Charge of the Atlanta Field Division of the DEA.”

From excerpts from the program Beck asks, “Let’s start, what did I miss about that guy who was chained to the wall? Tell me a little bit about this.”

“He was a distributor of narcotics up the East Coast, and he was lowered down under a ruse to come down and see the Mexican suppliers here in Atlanta.

And when he went to a house just in the metro area, he was pulled into a garage where seven armed men took him, took him out, essentially beat him, brought him down into the basement of this house where he was shackled in this unfinished basement. And his hands were cuffed. Then they took rolls of duct tape and essentially his entire face, his nose, pretty much everything was just covered with tape.

And over the course of a week, we became aware of this. And what we ended up doing, Glenn, through a number of different investigative means, we found the house where this individual was being held. And what we did was we conducted a rescue operation. And this individual, when we found him, was chained in the basement, severely dehydrated and he was beaten as well. And we saved his life.” Benson said.

BECK: All right, is it true that some of these people that are kidnapping in Atlanta are as young as 16 years old? The kidnappers?

BENSON: We’re seeing younger individuals being deployed by Mexican cartel leadership up into the United States to work for these cartels. Google or click on: Mexican drug cartels infiltrating colleges and high school campuses in America

BECK: Okay, there are two people who have a little bit of credibility on this. There’s the Gwinnett D.A. that said this is not a blip. This is significant in what’s going on here. U.S. Attorney for the northern part of Georgia said, we are about to see the extreme violence that is happening south of the border happen here in America.

“Not a lot of people because nobody is really covering this in the mainstream media, according to Beck. Google or click on: Young girl raped and beheaded in Florida by Mexican traffickers

But we’re watching it. The violence south of the border is off the charts. It’s more violent there than it is in Baghdad or Afghanistan. They’re beheading people said Benson.
Beck, do you believe this is the kind of stuff that is coming our way if we don’t do something and pay attention to this?

What we’re doing, Glenn, is we’re aggressively attacking that problem. Clearly, Mexican drug trafficking organizations are the dominant force that we’re facing here in the metro area. They’re responsible for the lion’s share of cocaine and methamphetamine and marijuana and black tar heroin that’s being distributed here.

It’s coming here; it’s going up the Eastern Seaboard.

We’re facing a very — it’s a challenge for us. They’re getting more sophisticated. They’re absolutely armed to the teeth; AK-47s and other weapons. According to Benson.

BECK asks: And they’re targeting this county because this is a large Hispanic community. So these drug gangs are just kind of trying to blend in to the Hispanic community? What is the reaction for the community? Are they standing up? Or are they afraid? Google or click on: Mexican Drug cartels terror reaches deep into the U.S.

It’s not just that county, Glenn. What you have is multiple counties in metro Atlanta. Now we’re seeing it, too, in a big way in North Carolina.

The community is reporting information to police. And that’s what they should continue to do. There’s a steady stream of tips and leads that come into law enforcement that we’re able to react to and I don’t anticipate that stopping anytime soon. Said Benson.

“Their idea is to control the whole economic process of production and distribution,” said Georgina Sanchez, an independent security consultant in Mexico and executive director of a public safety policy institute

DEA agents say that the cartels’ incursions into the United States are spurring more secondary crimes, such as shootings, kidnapping, and murders.

Mexican drug cartels angered by a nationwide military crackdown on their drug and other criminal actives are striking back. This powerful group of organized criminals and their alliance, also known as the Federation, is a cooperating group of the major Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) also known as Mexican drug cartels and their Para-military units and gangs that share resources such as smuggling drug, human and terrorist transportation routes both in Mexico and on into the United states, money laundering trained paramilitary personal and warring equipment.

The Alliance was formed originally to counter the powerful Gulf Cartel. DEA agent said. But now with the Mexican army operating along their trafficking routes its having a negative effect on their business and costing them billions. According to Mexican drug enforcement agents who want to remain anonymous.

This dangerous alliance now coming together includes organizations headed by some of the most feared Mexican drug cartel leaders in the country. These organizations together will have the manpower and money to wage a real war with the Mexican government headed by Mexican President Felipe de Jesus CALDERON Hinojosa. This alliance will now have access to, RPG’s, machine guns, bazookas, and a whole variety of other cutting edge military arms as weaponry and communications equipment far more advanced than those of the Mexican army.

Ever since the war began, President Calderón has continually appealed to the United States for support. He is quoted as saying “I think the American government must do its part in this terrible battle” and has made several appeals to U.S. President George W. Bush directly for aid against the drug cartels. Click or Google: Merida Initiative Will It Work?

On October 22, 2007, Bush pledged US$1.4 billion in funding to Mexico to aid in the drug war. Additionally, it was agreed that the United States would supply Mexico with logistical assistance and equipment, training for its military and police forces, a number of U.S. Military helicopters, and X-ray machines. However, the assistance package did not include any U.S. troops, and direct military involvement is largely opposed by the citizenry of both nations. But during a recent closed door emergency meeting of high level Mexican government officials of the Mexican National Security Cabinet it was openly discussed and many were calling for Calderon to ask for U.S. troops and more U.S. training of Mexican soldiers and police. Click or Google: Mexico’s National Security Cabinet expected to declare a state of emergency

The drug cartel alliance is believed to now include: Juárez, Sinaloa, Los Negros, Tijuana, Gulf, (Los Zetas), Guadalajara, Sonora, and Colima drug cartels. And other cartels are being invited to join.

The board of directors of this alliance are believed the heads of the member cartels: Juan José Esparragosa-Moreno, Joaquín Guzmán-Loera, Carrillo family,Arellano Félix brothers, Ismael Zambada-García, , Arturo and Hector Beltrán-Leyva, Edgar Valdez-Villareal, Armando Valencia-Cornelio, and Ignazio Coronel-Villareal. And unknown others.

Even though some of the police chief’s and sheriff’s of U.S. Cities and County’s bordering Mexico say publicly they are not very concerned and claim they are well prepared for any type of event that may spill over into their communities. Even they recognize that the Southwest Border Region is the most significant national-level storage, transportation, and transshipment area for illicit drug shipments that are destined for drug markets throughout the United States. The DEA reports that the region is the principal arrival zone for most drugs smuggled into the United States; more illicit drugs are seized along the Southwest Border than in any other arrival zone. Mexican DTOs have developed sophisticated and expansive drug transportation networks extending from the Southwest Border to all regions of the United States. They smuggle significant quantities of illicit drugs through and between ports of entry (POEs) along the Southwest Border and store them in communities throughout the region. Most of the region’s principal metropolitan areas, including Dallas, El Paso, Houston, Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Antonio, Tucson and San Diego, are significant storage locations as well as regional and national transportation and distribution centers. Mexican DTOs and criminal gangs transport drug shipments from these locations to destinations throughout the country.

Homeland Security points out that the threat posed to the nation by Mexican DTOs that operate in Mexico and the Southwest Border Region extends well beyond drug trafficking to other criminal activities, including border violence, firearms trafficking,  alien and terrorist smuggling.

Violence is often associated with drug trafficking along the border; however, law enforcement officials have noted a significant escalation in the level of violence since the first of the year. Much of the violence occurring along the Southwest Border has been a result of conflict between the Gulf Cartel and the cartels opposing each other. Since Calderon’s ordering Mexican troops to battle the cartels, drug-related violence is on an increase and reportedly is shifting somewhat from the Mexican interior states to the states bordering the U.S. According to recent law enforcement and open source reporting indicates that cartel-related violence is still prevalent in a few Mexican cities such as Manzanillo, Monterrey and others.

The escalation of drug-related violence occurring along the border among DTOs increasingly involves DTO use of violent paramilitary enforcement groups. Mexican DTOs use such groups to protect operations and drug shipments as well as to target members of rival drug cartels and law enforcement officers. Los Zetas, the enforcement arm of the Gulf Cartel, may be the most technologically advanced, sophisticated, and violent of these paramilitary enforcement groups. Some Los Zetas members are former Mexican Special Forces soldiers and maintain expertise in the use of heavy weaponry, specialized military tactics, sophisticated communications equipment, intelligence collection, and countersurveillance techniques. Click on or Google: They’re known as “Los Zetas

Even before the armies arrival much of the violence attributed to conflicts over control of smuggling routes has remained in Mexico, some has spilled into the United States. Murders and kidnappings linked to Mexican DTOs as well as assaults against U.S. law enforcement officers are becoming increasingly common along the Southwest Border. Violence directed at law enforcement officers along the Southwest Border, primarily U.S. Border Patrol agents, often is intended to deter agents from seizing illicit drug shipments or as a diversion during drug smuggling operations. In addition, drug-related violence has expanded from Tijuana, Baja California Norte; Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua; and Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, into other geographic areas along the border, including Agua Prieta and Cananea, Sonora, and Palomas, Chihuahua. American kidnappings, and hostage situations attributed to this conflict are increasing, particularly in Dallas, El Paso, Tucson, Phoenix, San Diego and other U.S. border cities and towns. Click or Google: Americans Being Kidnapped, Held and killed in Mexico

Sources:

DEA

Mexican Federal Police

Mexican Officials

Juarez, Palomas, Tijuana and Mexico City police Dept’s.

Ranking Mexican army officers

Mexican and other open source reports

Laguna Journal

Mexican President Felipe Calderon said that he blames U.S. “corruption” for hampering his nation’s efforts to combat violent drug cartels.

“Drug trafficking in the United States is fueled by the phenomenon of corruption on the part of the American authorities,” he said.

Calderon also told the media that the main cause of Mexico’s drug gang problems was “having the world’s biggest consumer (of drugs) next to us.”

Corruption on both sides of the U.S. Mexican border runs deep and can be found in the highest levels of both the Mexican government as well as the U.S.

A high ranking member of the Caldron administration who will remain unknown said, “there is corruption in regards to Narco trafficking in both governments and when there is unlimited cash available that cash finds its way to the powers to be and has no borders when it comes to influence.”

With an estimated yearly income worldwide of over $300 billion in illegal drug sells, no wonder with that amount of cash it allows for an enormous amount of that cash to be distributed and liberally passed around to make things happen.

With cash like that available it should be no surprise that tons of illicit drugs find its way into the U.S. where the very agencies that are charged with stopping that drug flow are often the very ones who the Mexican drug cartels pay off with cash, and lots of it.

Carlos Rico, Mexico’s under-secretary of foreign affairs for North America, said at a meeting with Mex. congressmen that “it’s not up ” to the Mexican government to resolve the traffic of drugs towards the United States as long as that demand market exists.

According to news reports the Mexican president has blamed US “corruption” for hampering his nation’s efforts to combat violent drug cartels.

Felipe Calderon also told reporters that “Drug trafficking in the United States is fuelled by the phenomenon of corruption on the part of the American authorities,” he said.

The Mexican president launched a massive assault on drug cartels after entering office in late 2006 but the cartels have responded with campaigns of violence and intimidation that left thousands dead in 2008 and over 1,000 in 2009 so far.

Calderon acknowledged some Mexican officials had helped the cartels but said the US should ask itself how many of its own officials were implicated.

“It is not an exclusively Mexican problem, it is a common problem between Mexico and the United States,” he said.

“I want to know how many American officials have been prosecuted for this [corruption].”

Calderon, who has deployed thousands of troops to the troubled Mexico-US border regions to crack down on violence, also said that the US must halt the flow of weapons into Mexico, where the police and security services are often outgunned.

But he said recent talks with Barack Obama, the US president, had provided “a clearer, more decisive response, one which matches the magnitude of the problem which we face,” he said.

President Obama and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Adm. Michael Mullen recently discussed how the U.S. military can assist Mexico in addressing growing violence from drug cartels, according to a military official. Mullen told the President that the violence has reached crisis proportions on both sides of the border.

Mexican border cities, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean have suffered the brunt of the violence.

Last week at least 20 people were killed during a prison riot in the city sparked by violence between rival Mexican Drug Cartel gangs.

Another U.S. citizen was among the three decapitated bodies found in Tijuana, Mexican authorities said Saturday. Growing drug violence has made beheadings in Tijuana, Juarez and other Mexican towns more commonplace. With more Americans being added to that list over the past year.

At an high level meeting of Mexican Military and Mexican Government officials last week, in Cd. Juarez Mexican authorities said they plan to have 10,000 troops and Federal police deployed in Ciudad Juarez by the end of the week in a bid to quell the violence, along with 12,000 in the rest of Chihuahua and Baja states. Experts estimate more than 60,000 Mexican troops and Federal police patrol many cities in Mexico.

Two of Mexico’s deadliest drug cartels have reached a combined force of 100,000 foot soldiers, wreaking havoc across the country and threatening U.S. border states, the U.S. Defense Department told The Washington Times.

The cartels rival the Mexican army in size and have both Mexico and the U.S. in crisis mode as they deal with what they fear is a coming insurgency along the border.

“It’s moving to crisis proportions,” an unidentified defense official told The Times. The official also said the cartels have reached a size where they are on par with Mexico’s army of 130,000.

The U.S. Military is very concerned with the current violence on the U.S. Mexican border and with the Mexican Drug Cartels paramilitary capabilities. Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., commander of United States Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Commander says we have emergency reaction forces available and they are being staged and immediately available as emergency  “on call” units for use against terrorist and other threats on the nation’s border.

The Ft. Bliss 1st Armored Division soldiers will be available to defend homeland security, Renuart said.

Renuart, who visited Joint Task Force-North, last year which is under his command, declined to discuss any details of threats uncovered along the border with Mexico, but he said many agencies, including JTF-North, have made “it a very difficult border for someone to take advantage of.”

The U.S. border with Mexico extends nearly 2,000 miles along the southern borders of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. In most areas, the border is located in remote and sparsely populated areas of vast desert and rugged mountain terrain with vast open water of the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific oceans.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the federal agency with primary responsibility to detect and prevent illegal entry into the United States. The latest available data indicates that approximately 11,000 CBP agents patrol the nearly 6,000 miles of international border the United States shares with its neighbors Mexico and Canada.

“It is prudent for us to assume that any of these established trafficking routes, whether it’s human trafficking or drugs or arms or money, any of those could be used, and so we want to keep our eyes and ears on all of those to ensure that they are not used in that regard,” Renuart has said in the past.  

Possibly the greatest challenge will be to support National Guard and reserve forces feeling the strain of repeated deployments that also have depleted equipment supplies.  

“Our job at NORTHCOM is to ensure that if there’s a seam or a gap there that we’re thinking of how we could fill that with some other capability out of” the Defense Department, he said. “What that has forced us to do it is think about, ‘How do you solve that time/distance problem, even on a short-notice event. And so I have access to capabilities now that I didn’t have a year or two ago that I can move very quickly to fill that need.

“For example, if there were something that occurred in the El Paso area that the Texas National Guard might not have a capability immediately available to respond, but Fort Bliss did in an active-duty unit, then I would pull that active-duty unit out and make that available to the state to assist.”