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Mexican cartels feeling the pressure

Little more than a year after President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against Mexico’s powerful drug cartels, the gangsters seem willing and able to strike back with a vengeance.The arrests last week in Mexico City of 11 heavily armed men, whom authorities say were assassins for the Sinaloa Cartel led by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, suggest the crackdown is having an impact, officials say.

Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, a top anti-narcotics official in the federal attorney general’s office, told Mexican interviewers that he had been the target of at least two assassination attempts in the past month.

“They plan to generate violence to force a retreat by authorities,” Genaro Garcia Luna, Calderon’s secretary of public security and one of Mexico’s top cops, said last week.

But, Garcia vowed, “There will be no retreat. We are not going to take a step back. The fight against crime is going to to be permanent, systematic.”

Departure from the norm

If both sustained and successful, such resolve may well mark a dramatic departure from the norm in Mexico’s decades-long dance with its criminal empires.Since the country became a major transshipment point for South American cocaine headed for U.S. consumers in the 1980s, Mexico’s politicians and security forces tended to treat the crime of drug trafficking as a nuisance — and too frequently as a source of illicit gain.

Over the years, some gangsters, including cartel bosses, were jailed or killed, and some police officers and soldiers were also slain on anti-narcotics operations.

But the leaders of the cartels rarely targeted senior officials or challenged the state — as they did in Colombia — because high-level government officials never really presented much of a threat to their smuggling business.

The old style might have been best defined in the 1990s when Mexico’s drug czar, an army general praised by U.S. agents for his crackdown on Mexico’s leading trafficking gang, was convicted of working for a rival group.

But if that were once the way of things, some American and Mexican officials insist it’s not anymore. Since taking office 13 months ago, Calderon has made the crackdown on drug cartels the anchor of his administration.

“Our intention is to make it so complicated for them to come through Mexico that they will seek to smuggle through somewhere else,” a senior Mexican official said, speaking on condition he not be identified.

U.S. partnership

More than 40 tons of cocaine have been seized since the crackdown began in December 2006. Top crime bosses have been extradited to face U.S. courts.Soldiers and police have battled cartel gunmen on the streets of border cities. Intelligence-gathering has been enhanced, and more importantly, acted on.

“People who have come here, who have talked to the Mexican government, who have engaged, really see a distinction here, a real expression of political will,” said David Johnson, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for narcotics and law enforcement, who was in Mexico City last week for talks with Mexican officials.

Johnson is helping shepherd the Bush administration’s proposal to give Calderon’s government $1.4 billion worth of law enforcement technology and training in the coming years to aid in the fight.

The plan faces concerns in the U.S. Congress, which is expected to vote on it by this summer.

“We think it’s appropriate that America be a partner to try to work with the (Calderon) administration, to try to push this process forward,” Johnson said.

Daunting challenge

Mexican security forces and senior officials “must be capable of confronting all the costs, all the risks … including in lives offered to achieve the Mexico we desire,” Calderon said Friday in an offhand comment to the Mexico City newspaper El Universal.But even with such unwavering will, and with the proposed U.S. aid, the challenge facing Calderon seems daunting.

With annual earnings estimated at $10 billion, Mexico’s drug gangs are deeply embedded in the country’s economy. That’s especially true along the key cocaine smuggling routes and in areas where marijuana and heroin poppies are grown and where crystal methamphetamine is manufactured.

Cartels have upper hand

Drug gangsters control complete towns and wield influence in wide swaths of entire states. Some local and state police forces, despite periodic purges of personnel, effectively remain in the gangs’ employ.Supplied with weapons smuggled from the United States and elsewhere, the cartel’s foot soldiers are often better armed than the security forces.

Although leading traffickers like Guzman make the headlines, scores, even hundreds of smuggling gangs operated across the country. With such a lucrative return, gang bosses who are jailed or killed are quickly replaced by their ambitious lieutenants.

Mexico’s smugglers grew more powerful and wealthy this decade as Colombia’s cartels splintered into smaller organizations under the weight of that country’s anti-narcotics efforts.

‘Superior’ capabilities

At the same time, the fall of Mexico’s one-party government at the ballot box, accompanied by the growing political power of state and local governments, made it easier for gangsters to gain more political influence here, said John Bailey, a Mexico expert at Georgetown University.”Decentralization and inter-party competition complicates this whole thing,” Bailey said. “The state and local fellows don’t have the firepower or intelligence network to take on these guys. “

Still, Calderon’s senior officials insist they’ll prevail.

“The great challenge in this effort is to prevent them from taking root,” Garcia, the public security minister, said.

“Their logic of trying to generate violence to intimidate authorities is not going to work,” he said. “The capabilities of the Mexican government are superior.”

Calm prevails – Military still in control of the bordertowns

NUEVO LAREDO - The people of the Mexican cities along the Texas border have not been left unprotected in the wake of the disarming of more than 1,000 municipal police officers earlier this week, officials said Thursday.All of the city police are reporting to their respective bases and some are assigned to patrols “on foot and on bicycles, since it’s impossible to use their patrol cars because of the inspections being carried out by the Army,” said Nuevo Laredo Police Chief Alfonso Olvera Ledezma.

Later, Olvera Ledezma said that six patrol cars had been reactivated and were in use in various parts of the city. Seized firearms that pass inspection could be returned as early as Monday, officials said.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Mexican Army was cautioning that its soldiers are not searching private homes as part of this latest anti-crime initiative. The statement came after reports that men dressed as soldiers had raided several homes, confiscating goods and cash.

Olvera Ledezma said anyone who is the victim of assault or other crime should report it to the authorities.

“If someone needs police help, they should call 066, the number for emergencies,” Olvera Ledezma said. “They will be channeled to C-4 (headquarters), and they, in turn, will notify the state and local police who are patrolling the city.”

Olvera Ledezma emphasized that state police, federal agents and the Army itself were involved in protecting the population. In some cases, city police officers are working side-by-side with state police officers.

On Tuesday, soldiers and federal agents swooped into the border towns of the state of Tamaulipas, relieving every single officer of his or her firearms, radios and other police equipment as he or she reported for duty. All officers were given a drug test, and their credentials are being intensely scrutinized as the federal government continues its major offensive against drug traffickers. Firearms are undergoing ballistics tests to determine whether they have been involved in any drug crimes, and to ensure they meet licensing requirements.

An estimated 500 officers are in the Nuevo Laredo city police force. As of Thursday, 367 officers had been tested, and only two had tested positive for drugs. The rest of the force is expected to take the drug test, approved by Nuevo Laredo Mayor Ramón Garza Barrios, by the end of the week.

Meanwhile, the Mexican Army spokesman told reporters that soldiers are patrolling the streets at this point, not serving search warrants. Some residents have reported that men dressed as soldiers have burst into homes, going through the premises and confiscating electronics, household goods, jewelry and even cash.

“We are not conducting any raids,” said the spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We know we need an order from a federal judge.”

The Army is, however, continuing with its checkpoints in neighborhoods to the east, west and south of the city, inspecting vehicles and searching for suspects, he said.

On Thursday, soldiers were readily seen in various parts of the city; there was no sign of any city police officers.

Mayors of the border cities and Tamaulipas Gov. Eugenio Hernández Flores reached an agreement to ensure the safety of their people, a state official at the capitol said, resulting in more state police assigned to the border regions for the time the Army will need to review the city police officers’ credentials and firearms.

Mexico Crackdown – Federal forces in control of border

Nuevo Laredo Police, disarmed and suspended once again!

Special forces of the Mexican Army and federal agents surrounded municipal police headquarters early Tuesday all along the South Texas-Mexico border, seizing more than 1,000 police officers’ firearms and other equipment and holding an unspecified number at military headquarters.”It was a direct order from the highest level,” said a spokesman for the Army stationed in Nuevo Laredo. “Faith has been lost in the city police working in Tamaulipas.”

Nuevo Laredo Mayor Ramón Garza Barrios said his office was aware of the drastic action to be taken by the federal authorities, and is in complete support of the effort to get rid of corruption along the border.”General DEM Rigoberto García Cortez, garrison commander, had notified us,” the mayor said. “It’s part of the anti-crime operations that (national authorities) have activated in our city.”Nuevo Laredo streets, as well as those in Miguel Alemán, Río Bravo, Valle Hermoso, Reynosa y Matamoros, are now patrolled by heavily armed soldiers, federal agents and state police as every city police officer was relieved of duty until officials can ascertain whether any are involved with drug traffickers.

In Nuevo Laredo, some 500 officers were pulled off the street and disarmed. An untold number are in detention at the Army headquarters.

In 2005, the Army disarmed 600 local police and 40 of them were taken to Mexico City for interrogation at the federal public safety office. Several months later, firearms were returned to a select group of officers who underwent extensive background checks and completed new training designed to clean up the department.

All the weapons seized Tuesday were taken to the garrison in Nuevo Laredo to be checked by ballistics experts to determine whether they had ever been used in drug-related crimes.

In addition to checking the firearms, each officer’s personal documents and backgrounds will be under a microscope. Drug tests were administered to every officer.

The Army spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said every city grants its officers a license to use firearms. The checks will verify whether the weapons being carried by officers match the licenses they were issued.

The actions of the special forces, known by the Spanish acronym of GAFES, alarmed many officers in the six cities that border South Texas.

“They have us (stunned). If they know who to take, then they should fulfill their responsibility,” said one officer, who asked not to be identified. “They have lists. They have been working for some time on gathering intelligence and they know the bad officers.”

In Reynosa, soldiers and federal agents surrounded police headquarters. Some officers said they were afraid because the agents might make mistakes and arrest people who aren’t connected to drug traffickers. The police headquarters in Matamoros also was surrounded by armored vehicles, as agents and soldiers commandeered weapons and began checking identification.

Garza Barrios said that as soon as city police officers pass the inspection, they will be returned to the streets but no time frame has been established for that.

UPDATE: Nuevo Laredo Police back on the job without weapons or vehicles

Nuevo Laredo’s police force is back to its patrolling duties Wednesday but without their firearms, said city spokesman Alberto Rodríguez Wednesday morning.

All they have are night sticks and shields, he said.

El Norte (Monterrey) reported in the early afternoon that the police were being required to remain inside the city’s police station.

In a follow-up phone conversation with Rodríguez this afternoon, he said that the police don’t have access to their patrol vehicles either.

Officers are just doing foot patrols in some part of the city, he said.

No officers have been arrested and they are no longer being required to remain at police headquarters by the military, he said.

The 450-member police force is taking its normal shift changes, he said. It appears many officers remain at police HQ.

“They were just playing soccer right now,” said Rodríguez.

Local authorities ordered drug tests on the officers.

Police do not know when they will be given their weapons or vehicles or normal job descriptions back.

Mexico captures 11 hit men from powerful Sinaloa drug cartel

Eleven alleged hit men for a powerful drug cartel were captured Tuesday at two Mexico City mansions stocked with grenades and automatic weapons — a day after Mexican authorities reported nabbing one of the cartel’s reputed leaders.Police said it was the first time they have found a safe house linked to the cartel in the capital city.

“Yes, the cartel is operating here in Mexico City,” said Edgar Millan, top commander of Mexico’s national federal police, at a news conference following pre-dawn raids on two houses in southern Mexico City. Eight men were arrested in one raid and three in the other.

Millan said the men, whose identities were not released, were part of three cartel “commando” groups that may have been preparing attacks in response to a federal crackdown on drug trafficking.

The suspects were lined up in the homes’ spacious living rooms and presented to reporters alongside caches of seized weapons, including 20 fragmentation grenades, automatic weapons, rifles, and materials presumably intended for constructing a drug lab.

Police also found 40 bulletproof vests, eight of which bore the initials FEDA, which Millan said was likely a Spanish acronym for “Arturo’s Special Forces.” Authorities also found an unspecified amount of cash in one of the homes.

Arturo Beltran Leyva is one of five brothers believed to be top lieutenants of the Sinaloa drug cartel, based in the northwestern Mexican state of the same name. A second brother, Alfredo Beltran Leyva, was arrested early Monday in the Sinaloa capital of Culiacan with two suitcases containing $900,000, an assault rifle, a luxury SUV and 11 expensive watches, the army said.

The U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Tony Garza, praised Monday’s arrest as “a significant victory.”

Army Gen. Luis Arturo Oliver Cen said the arrested Beltran Leyva commanded two groups of hit men for the cartel, whose reach extends from the northwestern state of Sonora to the southern state of Oaxaca. He was allegedly in charge of transporting drugs, bribing officials and laundering money for the cartel, which is led by Mexico’s most-wanted drug lord, Joaquin Guzman.

Guzman escaped from federal prison in 2001 in a laundry cart after bribing guards.

Alfredo Beltran Leyva’s arrest follows two weeks of bloody confrontations along the U.S.-Mexico border between federal agents and gunmen suspected of working for the Arellano Felix and Gulf cartels, rivals of the Sinaloa.

Soldiers also randomly stopped cars in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, in search of assailants who shot and wounded a state police chief on Monday night. The attack came the day after a Juarez police captain was shot to death in his patrol car.

Also Monday, gunmen firing from a car shot and killed Judge Ernesto Palacios in a suburb of the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, police said. He had been overseeing the trial of two alleged hit men arrested in 2005.

History of Mexican Special Forces (GAFES)

With the occupation of the northern frontier of Mexico by the Mexican military, I thought it would be interesting to see just who these guys are. What I found was a very proud, highly trained and specialized force that could stand shoulder to shoulder with any Army unit in the world.

The Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (Special Forces Airmobile Group, GAFE) is a very powerful special forces unit of the Mexican Army’s Special Forces Corps, trained by the world’s special forces.

There are a total of nine battalions, one High Command GAFE unit and one other group is assigned to the Infantry Parachutists Brigade.

Within the structure of the unit there are regular, intermediates and veterans. The regulars usually operate more as light infantry. The intermediates are mainly instructors with medium ranks such as lieutenants and captains, they are also known as the COIFEs, considered by many the Mexican Green Berets. They carry out the most delicate black ops, they are known as the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales del Alto Mando(High Command GAFEs). The GAFE motto is “Todo por México” (Everything for Mexico).

History of GAFES

It was created in 1986 as the “Fuerza de Intervención Rápida” (Rapid Intervention Force) to provide security for the World Cup soccer games in Mexico City. The French Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale (GIGN) trained the group in special weapon and counter-terrorism tactics. On June 1. 1990, the group adopted its current name.

Eight years later the GAFEs saw action fighting the EZLN guerrillas in Chiapas, Mexico. Nobody knows for sure, except for the army, the operations they carried out.

Nowadays the army special forces continue fighting the war against drug cartels in Mexico. They have successfully captured many big drug leaders such as Benjamin Arellano Felix and Osiel Cardenas Guillen of the Cartel del Golfo.

Training

Since its creation they have received a wide variety of training from different special forces groups from around the world. The Army unified all the knowledge by creating in 1998 the Escuela Militar de Fuerzas Especiales ( Special Forces Military School). Later on changing its name to Centro de Adiestramiento de Fuerzas Especiales (“Special Forces Training Center”), located in the foothills of the Iztaccíhuatl volcano, on May 1, 2002. The basic special forces course lasts 6 months.

The training takes on various forms.

• Jungle/Amphibious/Combat Diving: Jungle and Amphibious Operations Training Center in Xtomoc, Quintana Roo. Training also takes place in different scenarios in the state of Guerrera.
• Urban/Intervention: San Miguel de los Jagueyes, La Casa de la Muerte ( Killing House) in Puebla and Temamantla, Estado de México.
• Mountain: El Salto, Durango and Guerrero.
• Desert Operations Training Center: Laguna Salada and Baja California
• Airmobile/Airborne: Air Force base of Santa Lucía, Estado de México and Guerrero.
• High mountain: Nevado de Toluca, Iztaccíhuatland Pico de Orizaba volcanoes.

Transportation and Weaponery

The UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter in addition to the MI-17/8, CH-53 Yassur 2000, MD-530F & Bell 212/412 helicopters, make up the air fleet of GAFES.

The weapons preferred are varied. FX-05 Xiuhcoatl, HK G3 assault rifles, M4 carbine, HK MP5 submachine gun, BARRET .50, HK PSG-1, REMINGTON 700 & the Fusil de Precisión Morelos sniper rifles, Remington M1100 tactical, Mossberg 500 shotguns, B-300, RL-83 Blindicide & RPG-7 rocket launchers, HK P7M13, Beretta 92F & Colt .45 pistols, M249SAW light machineguns, MGL Mk-1, and M203 40mm grenade launchers.

Now, any of you right wing nut cases up for a friendly little border war?

Back to Mexico; U.S. hands over suspected killer

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents met Mexican federal agents on the Lincoln-Juarez International Bridge on Wednesday to transfer custody of a prisoner wanted in Mexico for homicide and drug trafficking, authorities said.Officials with the Agencia Federal de Investigacion, who took custody of Juan Garcia-Flores, 36, said he is wanted in Guanajuato and the border state Coahuila.

Though ICE officials only confirmed the alleged drug trafficking, AFI agent Jesus Garcia said Garcia-Flores was also being sought on homicide charges in Mexico.

He declined to comment on how long Garcia-Flores had been sought by Mexican law enforcement. Garcia did not clarify whether the alleged homicide occurred in Coahuila or Guanajuato.

According to ICE, Garcia-Flores sold and distributed marijuana in Mexico.

U.S. officials turned Garcia-Flores over to Mexican agents after he served a five-year prison sentence at the Three Rivers Correctional Institute, located about 120 miles northeast of Laredo.

Shackled and surrounded by at least three ICE agents at all times, Garcia-Flores, dressed in a gray sweatshirt and sweatpants, carried a small duffel bag and walked across the bridge in silence. He was met in the middle of the bridge by at least a half-dozen AFI agents bearing automatic guns across their chests.

After being unshackled at the ankles by U.S. agents, AFI authorities strapped a body armor vest on Garcia-Flores before escorting him into Nuevo Laredo.

On the U.S. side of the Lincoln-Juarez International Bridge, ICE agents from San Antonio’s Special Response Team and Laredo’s ICE division secured the perimeter before walking onto the bridge. They entered through a gate located at the dead-end corner of Santa Ursula Avenue and Zaragosa Street.

ICE agents also sat inside a vehicle at the corner of the streets holding rifles and other vehicles blocked in the van carrying Garcia-Flores.

Garcia-Flores’ prison sentence in the United States was the result of a March 2003 conviction for possession of more than 100 pounds of marijuana with intent to distribute, ICE said. Nina Pruneda, a spokeswoman for ICE, said he was also arrested in 1990 for possession of cocaine.

On Nov. 29, 2007, Garcia-Flores was released from Three Rivers and taken into ICE custody. At that time he began immigration proceedings, which includes appearing before a judge in immigration court for a determination on his status in the United States, Pruneda said.

The prisoner transfer Wednesday is an example of the cooperation between Mexican and U.S. officials to catch criminals on both sides of the border, Pruneda said. Anytime someone is wanted for a crime in Mexico, ICE does its part to help, and vice versa, Pruneda said.

“Those who think they can outrun the reach of the law by hiding out in the United States will find out otherwise,” said Marc J. Moore, field office director for ICE detention and removal operations in San Antonio, in an e-mailed statement. “ICE is working closely with our law enforcement counterparts both here and abroad to ensure that the United States is not used as a refuge for criminals or violent offenders.”

Aeromóvil Special Forces Group (GAFES) deployed from Matamoros to Nuevo Laredo

Arriving on board military transport at Nuevo Laredo International Airport, 250 members of Aeromóvil Special Forces Group (GAFES), Mexico’s equivalent of the US Army’s elite Ranger’s, boarded a convoy of 32 military vehicles to be dispersed at various points around the city. The troops will be garrisoned with the cities 1st Motorized Cavalry Regiment here in Nuevo Laredo.

The arrival occurred at the same time that the mayors of the border cities of Tamaulipas met privately in Ciudad Victoria with Governor Eugenio Hernandez Flores and authorities of the Federal Security Service.

The Federal Security Service is a division of the PFP.

Elements of GAFES were quickly dispersed to various locations around the city, from Blvd. Colon to the western colonias of the city.

The troopers were also stationed at both bridges in Nuevo Laredo to assist IFA or Mexican Customs in searching vehicles entering Mexico for prohibited items such as weapons and other contraband.

The seizure of weapons and ammunition smuggled in from the United States is a priority in President Calderons initiative against the cartels.

In addition to troops in Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa received 600 troops, Matamoros 400 with assistance of Naval Marines from their bases east of Matamoros on the coast.

All highways at this point have manned checkpoints to check vehicles going in both directions.

U.S. attorney general announces stepped up effort to stem weapons trafficking to Mexico

The United States is giving Mexico access to an electronic database to help trace weapons smuggled from the U.S. into the hands of well-armed Mexican drug gangs, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Wednesday.The database, known as e-Trace, has already been installed at U.S. consulates in the northern cities of Monterrey and Hermosillo and in the western city of Guadalajara. It will be expanded to the remaining six consulates by March, and should be available in Spanish soon.

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