Mexico Trucker Online Articles

Mexican Troops number 3,000 arrive in Cd. Juarez

More than 3,000 Mexican soldiers arrived in Juárez this weekend as part of Joint Operation Chihuahua. (Photos courtesy of Joint Operation Chihuahua )

More than 3,000 Mexican troops arrived during the weekend in Juárez as part of what authorities have described as a frontal assault on crime in the coming weeks.

The new soldiers, which are in addition to the 2,000 already assigned to Joint Operation Chihuahua, were deployed after a meeting last week among high-level Mexican government officials in Juárez.

More troops, including intelligence units, are expected to arrive in the next few days, said Enrique Torres, a spokesman for Joint Operation Chihuahua, which began a year ago in the federal government’s battle against drug cartels and rising crime.

On Sunday, two green army Hercules cargo planes and two Mexican air force transport planes landed in Juárez, bringing 1,200 troops, Torres said. On Saturday, 2,000 soldiers rolled into city streets on convoys of Humvees, army pickups and cargo trucks.

Juárez city officials said that within two weeks the anti-crime patrol force will number 8,000 — including 5,000 soldiers, 1,600 city police and 1,000 federales.

“We need the support of citizens united,” Juárez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz, who has received death threats, said in a statement. “This is a fight of Juárez against crime. It is everyone’s fight.”

Convoys with 2,000 Mexican soldiers arrived Saturday, and the Mexican army flew 1,200 soldiers into Juárez on cargo and transport planes on Sunday.

The violence, which has claimed more than 300 lives this year in the Juárez area, continued during the weekend with at least nine homicides since Friday, including two police officers slain Saturday morning in the town of Praxedis G. Guerrero in the valley east of Juárez.

Chihuahua state investigators said Praxedis officers Luis Fernando Porras Fuentes, 35, and Janeth Mares Lujan, 22, were killed when 117 rounds were fired from assault rifles at their truck.

In another incident, Jose Eduardo Olvera Lastra, 33, reportedly a bouncer, was fatally shot in the parking lot of the Rodeo Discotheque on Avenida Lincoln near the Bridge of the Americas.

In another case, police identified Belen Vega Perez, 39, as the woman shot to death late Friday in the back seat of a black Chevrolet Impala with Texas plates. It was unclear whether Vega was a resident of Texas.

Two 9 mm bullet casings were found at the scene.

Daniel Barrunda – EPT

Ramos and Compean Released from Prison

Former U.S. border patrol agents and now convicted felons Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean were released from prison Tuesday, but will remain in a community confinement program until March 20, U.S. Bureau of Prison officials said.

The two agents had been in prison since 2007. President George W. Bush commuted their sentences before he left office.

Traci Billingsley, bureau of prisons spokeswoman, said Tuesday that the two men are out of prison and under the “supervision of the community corrections office for a period of community confinement.”

Community confinement means the sentenced person has to spend the last phrase of their sentence either in a halfway house or in home confinement.

Dallas criminal defense lawyer Ed Mason, who represented Compean in his appeal, said Tuesday morning that he had not yet talked to Compean but was awaiting his phone call.

“I think he might be on his way to El Paso,” Mason said in a telephone interview. “We haven’t been able to talk to him yet.”

Billingsley said she could not release where the two agents would spend the last month of their sentence, but it is possible they could spend it at home.

Compean had been in the Elkton Federal Prison in Elkton, Ohio. Ramos was at the Phoenix Federal Prison.

The two former agents were convicted of shooting a drug smuggler and then trying to cover it up. Compean was sentenced to 12 years and Ramos to 11 years in prison. Both agents were found guilty of civil-rights violations and discharging a irearm during the act of a crime, an offense that includes a mandatory 10-year sentence.

Not “American Heroes” or “Patriots” but two felons back on the streets of America. At least with these two, we won’t have to worry about a recurrence of their crimes.

SOURCE: El Paso Times

It’s harvest time in Mexico and Ultralight flights are the new method to haul drugs

Craft can evade radar along border, feds say

NOGALES, Ariz. – On Oct. 10, Jesus Iriarte hauled a load of pot from Sonora across the U.S. border.

The Mexican national was like hundreds of other drug couriers except for one important distinction: He transported the marijuana by strapping it to a motorized hang glider, something that looks like a lawn mower in the sky.

Federal customs agents say radar-dodging ultralights may be an emerging trend among drug smugglers looking for new ways to outwit increased surveillance.

But the planes aren’t the safest strategy.

In the past four months, three of the kite-winged aircraft crashed while hauling loads of marijuana into Arizona.

There is no telling how many other pilots successfully delivered loads, but the outcome for those who failed is telling:

• Juan Hernandez Torres, 34, of San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora, died Nov. 18 when his machine smashed into a Yuma lettuce field.

• An unidentified pilot clipped a power line in December while being chased by a Customs and Border Protection drone. Because the suspect was paralyzed in the crash near Tucson, prosecutors elected to deport him to Mexico rather than file charges.

• The third smuggler, Iriarte, awaits a prison sentence after pleading guilty in U.S. District Court. He was caught after crash-landing in Marana, nearly 80 miles north of the border.

Rick Crocker, deputy special agent in charge for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Tucson, said the low-cost, low-flying aircraft present a new challenge for drug interdiction, not to mention Homeland Security.

“The ultralight smuggling may be due to the hardening of the border (with greater enforcement),” Crocker added. “We’re trying to get a handle on it.”

Stealthy alternative

Small airplanes were frequently used for delivering drugs to America in the 1980s and ’90s.

But improved radar, interceptor aircraft and an Aerostat surveillance blimp near Fort Huachuca took such a toll that smugglers abandoned the tactic.

More than a decade later, ultralights have emerged as a cheap, stealthy alternative. With a triangular fabric wing, the plane is powered by a rear propeller and maneuvered by a pilot seated on what resembles a tricycle.

Standard models hit speeds of 70 mph, with a range of 300 miles. They hug the ground to drop loads without ever touching down and can land without a full runway.

Ultralights are extremely sensitive to wind, however, and not designed for cargo. Crocker said Hernandez Torres died when he attempted to drop his marijuana load in Yuma using a release trigger that failed on one side of the plane.

Americans mostly fly ultralights for sport. The Sky Gypsies, an organization of U.S. enthusiasts based in Arizona and New Mexico, go on sightseeing tours to remote mountains and canyons.

Still, Neil Bungard, U.S. manufacturer of the Air Creation model and an FAA training instructor, said there is an obvious attraction for smugglers.

“You can fly tree level for as far as you want to go. You’re under the radar. It’s a perfect machine for carrying loads of under 300 pounds,” Bungard said. “I don’t know what you’d do as an agency to stop it.”

John Kemmeries, who distributes ultralights in Arizona, noted that those benefits come with significant peril. “They’re getting killed and thrown in jail,” Kemmeries said. “These aircraft are designed to carry a person, not a payload.”

As of January 2008, Bungard said, FAA regulations required recreational licenses for ultralight pilots, plus upgrades making the machines meet airworthiness standards. Some owners put their planes up for sale rather than deal with the expense. Mexico has no certification requirement for ultralights and no licensing for pilots of the aircraft, Bungard said. As a result, anyone south of the border can buy and operate the machines without regulation.

“They don’t get proper training,” Bungard said. “And they wind up hurting themselves.”

A minimal expense

Mexican drug cartels are notorious for treating employees as expendable.

They also are renowned for creative methods of getting around Border Patrol agents or past drug-sniffing dogs and X-ray machines at inspection stations.

On a single Friday in January, for example, motorists at Arizona border crossings were caught with drugs concealed in gas tanks, mufflers, radiators, tires, engine compartments, car batteries, ceilings and seats.

Shipments are hidden in everything from soap boxes to dirty diapers. Some smugglers ingest narcotics in baggies. Others dig tunnels or hide giant loads in agricultural shipments or trains.

But all those methods face an inspection gantlet, whereas ultralights can slip through remote canyons. Two-seaters are offered on the Internet for about $20,000, a minimal expense considering the estimated $180,000 value of a single marijuana load.

Crocker would not discuss details of ICE investigations except to say, “We’re trying to identify where the aircraft are purchased, who the bad guys are and the whole nine yards.”

Iriarte, meanwhile, may be considered fortunate compared with the other pilots. He was not injured during a harrowing chase.

Crocker said Iriarte was picked up by radar while flying over the border near Nogales and was pursued by helicopter to Marana, where he made a crash landing in the desert. Iriarte ran to a waiting all-terrain vehicle, which he also crashed while trying to flee. Investigators seized about 220 pounds of pot.

Faced with up to 20 years in prison, Iriarte signed a plea deal. He is expected to spend about three years behind bars.

Iriarte’s attorney, Charles Slack-Mendez, said he believes the government is being especially tough on ultralight smugglers because the aircraft represent a potential national-security problem.

He also suggested the flights may escalate soon because, at Mexico’s marijuana farms, “it’s harvest time right
now.”

SOURCE:AzCentral

So what does this tell us boys and girls? Fences ain’t going to stop the influx of drugs. Only a reexamination of existing drug policy will make a difference

The fallacy of Mexico as a failing state

Yann Kerevel writes at Allterdestiny;

f anyone has been following headline’s in the U.S. press about Mexico in the last month or two, you might have noticed a lot of alarmist and sensationalist garbage being thrown around suggesting that Mexico is coming close to collapse, is a “failed state” or a “narco state.” Fox news has been spreading this message, along with a number of political commentators on the Sunday morning talk shows, and even Rolling Stone.

The violence in Mexico is worrying, and cause for concern, but the rhetoric seems to lead the uninformed to think Mexico is more like Somalia. It is definitely not.

Further following the above referenced article, we go to an article which appeared in the Wall Street Journal written by Stephen Haber, who is a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution and a professor of political science at Stanford University. The article written by Professor Haber entitled Latin America’s Quiet Revolution states in part,

Mexico — which is most decidedly not a failing state — there has been a quiet but substantial movement toward the creation of societies that are characterized by increased economic opportunity, social mobility and political democracy. This is not to say that Brazilians have achieved the same standard of living as the Dutch, or that the rule of law operates in Mexico as it does in Canada. It is to say, however, that these countries have undertaken a series of economic and political reforms that make them vastly different places than they were two decades ago…..

Mexico provides a similar example. From 1929 to 2000 a single party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), monopolized political power. After decades of corruption, economic mismanagement and arbitrary actions against the property rights of citizens — which included the expropriation of the entire banking system — the PRI was finally forced from power in 2000, when voters elected Vicente Fox, the presidential candidate of the center-right National Action Party (PAN). Voters again elected a PAN candidate, Felipe Calderón, in 2006.

Since 2000, PAN governments have enacted reforms that have enhanced the rule of law by establishing the legal principle of innocent until proven guilty, mandated government transparency through a freedom of information act, eased access to credit by increasing competition in financial services and encouraged homeownership via reforms to contract and banking law. Some sense of Mexico’s transformation can be gleaned from one fact: In order to run competitively in the 2006 election, leftist Andres Manuel López Obrador had to jettison most of his left-wing stances during the campaign in order to be competitive with the PAN — and he lost anyway.

Many of Mexico’s reforms are of a variety that only a CPA might find exciting. Not surprisingly, they have gone unnoticed in the foreign press. A 2001 reform allows banks to write mortgage contracts as bilateral trusts, in which the bank is both trustee and beneficiary, instead of as liens on property. This new form of contract means that a mortgagee can no longer default on a loan and prevent repossession for years on end by using the country’s notoriously inefficient bankruptcy courts, because the assets being collateralized are held by the trust and are not part of an individual’s bankruptcy estate. As a result, banks are more likely to make housing loans in the first place. Coupled to additional reforms that created a system of private housing accounts financed by payroll taxes, and that created a federal mortgage society that operates in a manner similar to Fannie Mae, homeownership has been placed within reach of millions of Mexican families.

Recent reforms have also encouraged competition in financial services. As a first step, the government allocated charters to nonbank financial intermediaries that could make housing and automobile loans. As a second step, it granted bank charters to retail giants, including American-owned Wal-Mart, thereby allowing families of modest means to open accounts and obtain credit to finance the purchase of consumer goods. The bottom line: Living standards, as measured by infant mortality rates, life expectancy and years of education, have all improved in Mexico over the past decade.

The Mexican state is weak when compared to the U.S., but incredibly strong when compared to places in Central Asia or Africa that are usually called failing states. There are no foreign troops on Mexican soil. There is no martial law. Garbage is picked up, streets are swept and children go to school. Middle-class couples take weekend getaways, and drive there on highways as good as those in the United States. After falling for a decade, Mexico’s homicide rate increased in 2008, because the Calderón government courageously decided to take on the drug traffickers. If it keeps rising, it may soon be as high as that of…Louisiana.

From the Foreign Policy Blog, we’re seeing similar analysis;

are we now in danger of painting the situation as more dire than it actually is? To be sure, a country that had more than 5,300 citizens killed in drug-related violence last year isn’t in good shape. But from reading recent U.S. commentary and analysis, you’d think Mexico is the next failed state. This isn’t sitting well with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, and his government is pushing back against their country’s erroneous depiction as Pakistan south of the border.

Now, of course the Mexican government is supposed to say that things aren’t as bad as recent U.S. coverage would have us believe, but to some degree they have a point. I’m still horrified and alarmed about what’s going on in Mexico, but here are a few reasons to keep our feet on the ground — for now.

1.The narcogangs still seem to be largely focused on fighting each other, not on bringing down the Mexican state. They have stepped up attacks on Mexican officials, police, and the army, but more out of necessity because Calderon has taken the war to them. As yet, there is no alliance unifying all of the narcogangs into one force that seeks to challenge and topple the Mexican state. Now, this could still happen, and even if it didn’t Mexico could still be fatally compromised, but thus far the gangs are still mostly killing each other.

2. The gangs have no political agenda; their main goal remains selling dope. They are not providing basic services to Mexico’s citizens, nor are they trying to create a parallel system of political order to rival the Mexican state and erode its legitimacy in the eyes of the people. In fact, even if most Mexicans think the gangs are winning, they by all accounts still hate them and what they are doing to the country. In that sense, Mexico’s gangs are not a true insurgency. There are signs — literally, in this sense — that the gangs are beginning to compete for the allegiances of the Mexican people and wage a strategic communications battle against Calderon. This is a troubling development. But for now, these campaigns are not focused on advancing rival forms of gang-led governance; their goal is simply to brand their cartel opponents as illegitimate in the eyes of the Mexican people.

3. Calderon’s government is fighting for its life, but it hasn’t lost (yet). In fact, there is still a chance that the worsening trend of the past few years actually reflects a problem getting worse before it gets better. Calderon may yet break the backs of the gangs, and the recent surge in violence may reflect the increasingly desperate actions of cartels that, for the first time in Mexican history, are now up against an adversary that is not content merely to look the other way, but is instead willing to do what is necessary to reclaim his country. Even if he succeeds, for his troubles, Calderon will likely spend the rest of his life after government in exile from his own country out of fear for his life.

I know the alarmists and fear mongers such as Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck and others choose to ignore these facts as they don’t align with their agenda, but the state of the union of Mexico, is Good!

Another excellent source for information about Mexico is Latin Intelligence Blog They tackle some of the same issues as we do here and have many of the same concerns.

One article I thought particularly pertinent in view of Secretary Napolitano’s recent announcement to crackdown on weapons smuggling from the US into Mexico for the cartels, and the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre taking the position that they would oppose any effort to stop sales for this purpose, is this one entitled
Why is the United States backing Mexican drug gangs? and An Update on the Previous

This is not new news. The U.S. government recognizes that U.S.-purchased weapons are fueling Mexico’s violence. In fact, ATF acting director Michael Sullivan said last year that investigators have traced 90 to 95 percent of weapons seized in Mexico to the United States. William Hoover, Assistant Director for Field Operations at ATF said in a congressional testimony last year that “It is a major challenge for ATF to adequately identify and disrupt the illegal sources of firearms and ammunition, while participating in the interdiction of shipments firearms and ammunition destined for Mexico.”

What’s impressive is the lackluster response to such a serious problem. About 100 U.S. firearms agents and 35 inspectors patrol the border for gun smugglers, compared to 14,400 Border Patrol agents that patrol northward movements.

Detained Mexican beauty queen Laura Zuniga, released from custody

Prosecutors ruled Friday that a Mexican beauty queen be released from house arrest after investigations in a drug and weapons case turned up no evidence against her.

Laura Zuniga, 23, was detained in western Mexico on Dec. 23, in a vehicle along with seven men, some of them suspected drug traffickers. Authorities found a large stash of weapons, ammunition and $45,000 with them inside a vehicle.

She was stripped of one of her crowns — the title she won in the Hispanoamerican Queen pageant in October — but still holds the beauty title of the northern state of Sinaloa, long known as a center for Mexico’s drug cartels.

Prosecutors on Friday said Zuniga should be released and local media reported that she left custody later that day.

The Attorney General’s Office said in a statement that “no information was found that tie (Zuniga) to any criminal activity.”

The Bolivia-based organizer of the Hispanoamerican Queen pageant, the Gloria Promociones company, said in a statement in December that Zuniga lost her crown for “failure to comply with the regulations of the title she represents.”

The company said the title would be given to runner-up Vivian Noronha of Brazil.

No one answered phones at numbers listed for Gloria Promociones in Bolivia on Friday.

Zuniga also placed third in the Miss Mexico contest, whose winner competes for the Miss Universe title. As third-runner up, she was expected to represent Mexico in the 2009 Miss International contest.

Prosecutors said a judge had agreed to extend the house arrests of the seven men detained along with Zuniga.

DHS Chief Napolitano – “U.S. to crack down on gun smuggling”

It’s about damned time!
The country’s new homeland security chief said Friday that the Obama administration is mapping out a crackdown on the flow of firearms smuggled to Mexico’s murderous drug gangs operating along the Texas border.

Janet Napolitano said she had directed the Customs and Border Protection service “to find guns going south and interdict them.” Additionally, the homeland security secretary said she will give Mexican authorities access to a government database to trace the U.S. origin of seized weapons.

U.S. and Mexican officials have been investigating organizations in Houston and elsewhere believed to have smuggled large numbers of weapons into Mexico. On Friday, a second man pleaded guilty in Federal Court in Houston to illegally purchasing military-style weapons that ended up with Mexican drug cartels.

“A growing wave of criminal violence in Mexico’s border communities and in the interior of the country, fueled by the availability of guns and currency smuggled south from the U.S., poses a serious threat to Mexico’s security,” Napolitano said, “and portends deepening problems for our nation’s border regions.”

Assault rifles

Napolitano, a former federal prosecutor, battled gun runners while serving as governor of Arizona. She said she had stepped up discussions with officials of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Mexican law enforcement to combat U.S.-based gun smuggling, which enables Mexican drug lords to outfit their paramilitary gunmen with assault-style weapons.

Guns bought in the U.S. that end up in Mexico have become an irritant in bilateral relations.

President Barack Obama promised Mexican President Felipe Calderon at a pre-inauguration summit in Washington on Jan. 13 to take stronger action against gun running.

Calderon is waging a relentless offensive against Mexican drug gangs that are threatening his nation, deploying some 30,000 security forces into northern Mexico More than 5,400 civilians, drug operatives and security forces were killed in Mexico last year. About 90 percent of the 28,000 weapons seized from drug gangs over the last two years originated in the United States.

Napolitano said she was working to give law enforcement agencies in northern Mexico immediate access to the ATF database known as E-Trace. The ATF, a branch of the Justice Department, already has installed E-Trace technology at nine U.S. consulates in Mexico to provide points of access.

Napolitano said expanding access to the database would allow U.S. authorities to analyze patterns of weapons flow and bring prosecutions.

She said that she had not “thought about” the possibility of asking Congress to restore a decade-long federal ban on assault-style weapons that expired in 2004 under the Bush administration.

ATF official William McMahon told the Houston Chronicle in December that his agency had not assessed whether expiration of the assault weapons ban in the United States in 2004 had played a part in the flow of U.S.-bought weapons into the hands of drug cartels.

ATF says it has boosted efforts to alert more than 3,700 federally licensed firearms dealers near the border to spot the U.S. citizens serving as straw weapons buyers who can make up to $100 a weapon for purchasing firearms for drug cartels.

ATF: Houston man ‘prolific’ gun buyer for cartels

A Houston man has admitted to illegally purchasing military style weapons as federal agents continue their probe into an underground pipeline that gets Houston-bought guns into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said Juan Pablo Gutierrez was a “prolific” purchaser among a group of 23 arms traffickers who bought at least 339 firearms for Mexican organized crime syndicates in 2006 and 2007. At least 40 of the guns were later recovered at crime scenes in Mexico and Guatemala as gangsters wage a protracted war against one another and the Mexican government, the bureau said.

Gutierrez, 24, is to be sentenced in March after pleading guilty in early January to eight charges he lied to Carter’s Country gun store employees about whom the guns were for.

Houston the No. 1 source

According to an affidavit prepared by ATF agent Carla Mayfield, during a 2-month period Gutierrez spent $17,801 — believed to be all in cash — on 20 guns.

A judge ordered 28 weapons, including 10 Bushmasters, which are civilian versions of the M-16, be forfeited to the government.

The ATF contends Houston is the No. 1 origin for weapons later recovered in Mexico.

Taking down Gutierrez stands to be significant, as federal agents have a rare chance to go after higher-ups in the smuggling organization, should they persuade Gutierrez to cooperate.

His attorney could not be reached for comment Friday, and a woman who answered the phone at Gutierrez’s residence said he would have nothing to say.

In December, John Hernandez, 25, also of Houston, pleaded guilty as part of the same investigation.
Hernandez was accused of buying nearly two dozen guns, including one used in an attack that left four police officers and three government secretaries dead in Acapulco, Mexico.

The ATF has been tight-lipped about its probe, but court documents offer a glimpse of the investigation.

After a routine inspection of Carter’s Country records in 2007, “numerous people were identified who had made suspicious purchase of firearms in that each purchased a large number of military firearms,” ATF agent Mayfield stated in the affidavit.

U.S. gun laws under fire

The organizations are known to get their weapons by employing U.S. citizens with no felony convictions so they can pass federal background checks.

The weapons are illegal in Mexico. Still, there were as many as 5,400 gangland murders in Mexico last year.

Much of the mayhem has been unleashed along the U.S.-Mexican border. The Mexican government has repeatedly asked the U.S. government to do more to stop the flow of guns.

Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico’s ambassador to the United States, said Washington should better enforce gun laws and shut down weapons traffickers.

The National Rifle Association objects to any attempt to link Mexico’s problems to U.S. gun laws.

“The root cause is Mexico tolerates a level of lawlessness that most civil societies won’t,” NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said.

US Border Patrol agent arrested on bribery charges

FBI agents have arrested a U.S. Border Patrol agent accused of accepting $39,000 in bribes and using his personal vehicle while in uniform to drive narcotics across the U.S.-Mexico border in his patrol area.

Border Patrol Agent Eric Raymond Macias, who was stationed in Deming, turned himself in to FBI agents Friday at their Las Cruces offices, the FBI said.

Macias allegedly accepted $39,000 in bribes from a witness who was cooperating with investigators in exchange for helping the person smuggle what the agent believed was marijuana and cocaine through the border, according to records filed in U.S. District Court.

Macias is accused of telling a person he believed to be a drug smuggler what route to take to avoid Border Patrol agents in southern New Mexico, an affidavit said.

He also is accused of transporting cocaine in his personal vehicle while in uniform through a Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 10 west of Las Cruces, the affidavit said.

The incidents allegedly took place from September 2007 to February 2008, court records showed.

Macias’ arrest follows a two-year investigation by the FBI, the Homeland Security Department’s Office of Inspector General and the internal affairs office at the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. He was released on a $5,000 bond.

Border Patrol spokesman Doug Mosier says his agency is “cooperating fully” with the investigation.

Mosier says all Border Patrol agents go through rigorous training that ncludes integrity on the job. Background investigations are done on all agents.

“These are isolated cases. We don’t feel like it speaks for the reputation, track record and professionalism that the Border Patrol has maintained since 1924,” Mosier said. (In a rat’s ass they’re isolated!)

An FBI spokesman and Macias’ attorney did not return telephone messages left Wednesday seeking comment.

The questions that needs to be asked is why this “BP Hero” is not being charged with drug smuggling, and other Federal charges in relation to using his position to facilitate breaking the law?

SOURCE: El Paso Times & AP

Drug-related kidnappings in El Paso hard to pin down but ICE stands by 6

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency counts six kidnappings last year while the El Paso Police Department contends there were none at all.

Three major law enforcement agencies are in disagreement over the number of kidnappings in El Paso last year that were connected to the drug trade and ongoing cartel war in Juarez.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency counts six kidnappings while the El Paso Police Department contends there were none at all.

“We have not had one kidnapping related to anything going on in Mexico reported to the El Paso Police Department,” Officer Chris Mears, a department spokesman, said this week.

The FBI, which is responsible for investigating kidnappings, puts the number somewhere in between six and zero.

FBI spokeswoman Andrea Simmons said the agency opened investigations last year into “less than 10” kidnappings, “some of which have been drug related.”

“The FBI has not seen six drug kidnappings,” Simmons said. “We’ve had less than that.”

She later said the number was, in fact, “far fewer than six.”

No one with the three agencies, which regularly communicate with one another, can explain why their numbers are so different.

But the Police Department and FBI tend to count kidnappings that are reported to them while Immigration and Customs (ICE), which doesn’t investigate kidnappings, keeps track of cases it hears about and documents, whether another law enforcement agency investigates them or not.

Drug war resolution coming back to City Council

The discussion about kidnappings in El Paso and drug-related violence in Juarez arose at an El Paso City Council meeting two weeks ago because of a resolution that the city’s Border Relations Committee brought to the council for approval.

The resolution was intended as a sympathetic gesture toward Juarez. But it gained national attention when the council approved it with a 12-word amendment that city Rep. Beto O’Rourke added calling for congressional debate on the legalization of drugs.

Mayor John Cook vetoed the resolution and the council sustained the his veto last week ago. But the original resolution – without O’Rourke’s amendment – is coming back to council for consideration Tuesday.

O’Rourke cited Newsweek magazine’s Dec. 8 report, headlined “Bloodshed On the Border,” which attributed the assertion about six drug-related kidnappings in El Paso to Kevin Kozak, acting special agent in charge of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s office of investigations in El Paso.

“For now, drug organizations prefer to abduct their quarry in the United States and spirit them across the border before harming or killing them,” the article stated. “Kozak says that in the past year, a half-dozen kidnappings tied to narcotraffickers have taken place in El Paso.”

Mears said he was surprised by the report of kidnappings in El Paso and made inquiries about what the Police Department knew, expecting a flood of media calls.

The calls never came but Mears was ready with an official response.

“Upon hearing that, we double checked because we routinely meet with the local officers of the federal agencies, and nobody, no federal agency, has any information about any kidnapping out of El Paso,” he said.

But Kozak stood by his agency’s figures in an interview today with NewspaperTree.com. He also provided details about some of those kidnappings and an update on the current situation in Juarez.

The kidnappings, he said, have been discussed at inter-agency briefings involving officers from the Police Department and the FBI.

The first drug-related kidnapping case ICE learned of in which the victim was taken through El Paso to Juarez actually occurred in Indiana in December 2007. ICE isn’t including that in its list of El Paso kidnappings, but it was associated with the cartel war that was beginning to heat up in Juarez, Kozak said.

In January, an unidentified man was kidnapped in El Paso and taken to Juarez over a 2,000-pound marijuana drug debt. Kozak said the report of the crime was credible but ICE never learned the victim’s identity or fate.

The second case of the year came in February when ICE learned of a planned kidnapping. Kozak said ICE referred it FBI and learned the kidnapping attempt was made and foiled near the airport.

“We were informed that the person was kidnapped later, and we haven’t seen or heard from that person, but we shared the information with Mexican authorities,” he said.

The case of Ricardo Calleros-Godinez

The third kidnapping, also in February, was that of Miguel Rueda, a convicted cocaine smuggler, who was snatched in El Paso and taken to Juarez.

Federal court records say U.S. federal agents caught the alleged kidnapper, Ricardo Calleros-Godinez, who is in custody and awaiting trial in El Paso. Rueda is serving a 15-year sentence on the smuggling charge.

Calleros and Rueda worked together transporting and selling drugs. When law officers intercepted a load of marijuana that Rueda was transporting to Iowa, he “incurred a drug debt with Calleros,” records state.

Calleros allegedly arranged to have Rueda kidnapped and held until the debt was paid. Rueda was trussed up with duct tape and driven to Juarez in the back of a car.

Rueda told federal authorities he was released four or five days later after transferring the ownership of land belonging to his family in Juarez to Calleros.

In the course of its role in that case, Kozak said, ICE learned of two other kidnappings allegedly involving Calleros that have not led to charges but did go down in ICE’s records for the year.

“The final El Paso kidnapping was in March ’08 and involved and individual who escaped while being taken to the border by managing to stab one of the kidnappers with a knife,” Kozak said.

In each case, he said, the kidnappings involved people who were involved in the drug trade but were not U.S. citizens.

“We believe the majority are Mexican nationals who may have been here,” he said. “They were not innocent persons in their home but people tied to Mexican drug trafficking.”

Asked if the pace of killings and violence seems to be letting up in Juarez, Kozak said it is not.

“We have frequent, almost daily contacts with authorities in Juarez and unfortunately the violence that is narcotics related doesn’t seem to be diminishing,” he said. “We haven’t seen any sign of changes in narcotics trafficking, in how they communicate or how they exercise command and control.”

While El Paso has not entirely escaped the drug war between the Juarez and Sinaloa cartels, and possibly others, Kozak said, emphasized that nothing has happened to anyone in El Paso who is not involved in the drug trade.

Juarez council members sleeping in El Paso?

Another assertion that has been difficult to pin down was contained in a recent article in the Dallas Morning News, which reported that members of the Juarez city council are their spending nights in El Paso and commuting to work for safety reasons.

“Other newcomers include the Juarez mayor and other city officials, who commute to work daily, said state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh,” the article read.

It quoted Shapleigh directly as saying, “Just like the good people of Houston took in the refugees from New Orleans, El Pasoans will also help the refugees from Juarez.”

Shapleigh, however, did not answer or return NewspaperTree.com’s repeated calls on the subject this week.

Mayor John Cook, who has close ties with some the Juarez mayor and some city council members, said he is not aware that any of them are coming to El Paso at night for their safety.

“They would have to rent a bus, though,” he joked. “There’s 19 of them.”

Drug Rehab a cost effective alternative.

While the drug rehab cost these days can be high, higher still is the cost of not doing anything to treat drug addiction.

by David Crowder