136628_111128 TX Dps Thp Seizures

Border Security Operations Center 6100 Guadalupe St., Bldg E, Rm 108 Texas Ranger Division Austin, TX 78752 Texas Department of Public Safety Office (512) 424-7561 Fax (512) 424-7041

DPS & THP Daily Operations Summary With Border-Centric Open Source Reporting

Date of Report: November 28, 2011

Marijuana Seizures

Hydroponic Marijuana Seizures

Heroin Seizures

Methamphetamine Seizures

Currency Seizures

353 0 lbs 0 0 $ 14, 801

Cocaine Seizures

Hashish Seizures

Weapon Seizures

Xanax Seizures

Criminal Arrests

1 kg 0 1 0 6

Seizures: Currency – $14,801 USD; Criminal Arrests - 1 Reported by: THP Date/Time: 11/21/2011; 1501 hrs Location: IH-10, MM: 810/E, near Anahuac, Chambers Co. Following a routine traffic stop, a THP Trooper seized $14,801 USD (riding in a 2011 Chevrolet Express, bearing LA registration). A consent to search was requested and granted. A subsequent search revealed $14,801 packaged in multiple denominations in a manner consistent with criminal activity. The passenger did not know how much money was in his possession nor did he possess any documentation for the money. The passenger was not arrested. The currency was traveling from Houston TX, destined for Baton Rouge, LA. Seizures: Marijuana – 100 lbs; Criminal Arrests - 2 Reported by: THP Date/Time: 11/23/2011; 0730 hrs Location: IH-40, MM: 122/E, near Groom, Gray Co. Following a routine traffic stop, a THP Trooper seized 100 lbs of marijuana and arrested two subjects (riding in a 2012 Chevrolet Cruze, bearing NM registration). A probable cause search revealed the marijuana inside a false compartment in the seats. The currency was traveling from El Paso, TX, and destined for Oklahoma City, OK. Seizures: Marijuana – 200 lbs; Cocaine – 1 kg; Criminal Arrests - 1 Reported by: THP Date/Time: 11/22/2011; 1413 hrs Location: IH-40, MM: 96/E, near Conway, Carson Co.. Following a routine traffic stop, a THP Trooper seized 200 lbs marijuana, 1 kg of cocaine, and arrested one subject (riding in a 2007 Dodge pickup, bearing AZ registration). A consent to search was requested, but no clear answer was given. A k-9 was called to the scene and positive alert given. During the search, trooper located nine bundles of marijuana and one kg of cocaine under the camper shell of the pickup. The drugs were traveling from Arizona destined for Louisville, MS. Seizures: Marijuana – 53 lbs; Weapon – Glock 9mm; Criminal Arrests - 2 Reported by: THP Date/Time: 11/22/2011; 1211 hrs Location: IH-40, MM: , near Wheeler, Shamrock Co.


Following a routine traffic stop, numerous indicators of criminal activity were present along with strong odor of raw marijuana. THP Trooper seized 53 lbs of marijuana, one US Arms 32 cal Glock 9mm and arrested two subjects (riding in a 2011 Dodge Nitro, bearing CA registration). A probable cause search revealed the marijuana inside the luggage. The marijuana was traveling from California, and destined for Alabama.

OPEN SOURCE INPUTS

Mail Online, November 28, 2011 Bodies Of 26 Strangled Men Stuffed Into Vans And Left By Mexican Highway As War Between Drug Cartels Escalates Bound and gagged corpses were found dumped in Mexico's second-largest city, in what experts said could mark a new stage in the full-scale war between the country's two main drug cartels. The 26 male bodies were stuffed in two vans and a pick-up truck and abandoned on an expressway near the Milennium Arches in Guadalajara yesterday, one of the most recognisable landmarks in the picturesque city that hosted last month's Pan-American Games. Most of the men died of asphyxia, according to officials in Jalisco state, although initial reports indicated some had been shot.

Gruesome discovery: Bodies of 26 men were found bound and gagged in the back of trucks today in Guadalajara, Mexico

The victims, aged between 25 and 35, had the words 'Milenio Zetas' or 'Milenium' written on their chests in oil, said state interior secretary Fernando Guzman Perez. A law enforcement official, who was not authorised to speak on the record, said the writing was apparently meant as the killers' calling card, identifying the assassins as being from the cartel, the Zetas and a smaller, allied gang, the Milenio Cartel The official said a banner found in one of the vehicles -


whose contents Mr Guzman Perez refused to reveal - was in fact signed by the Zetas. Mexican cartels frequently leave threatening messages with the bodies of their victims as a way of intimidating rivals and claiming responsibility for their actions.

Warnings: The feet of one victim (left) and the hands of another can be seen through the windows of a van abandoned by a Mexican highway

All out war: The 26 corpses were believed to be retaliation by the drug gang the Zetas against rival faction Sinaloa

The killings, believed to have been carried out in the early hours of yesterday morning, bore a similarity to the dumping of 35 bodies on an expressway in the Gulf coast city of Veracruz on September 20. The victims in the mass slaying were purportedly Zetas and the killers were allegedly linked to their rivals, the Sinaloa cartel. The two drug gangs have emerged as Mexico's most powerful and have each been trying to expand into each others' territories.


Raul Benitez, a professor at Mexico's National Autonomous University who studies security issues, said the Guadalajara mass killing may have been retaliation for the Veracruz slayings. Mr Benitez said: 'I think the Zetas are responding by giving back in kind ... it is a game of one-upmanship.'

Grisly: Forensic workers cover the car window after several vehicles were left packed with dead bodies by the side of the road early yesterday morning

The Guadalajara International Book Fair, which opens tomorrow, is expected to draw as many as 600,000 visitors from around the world and describes itself as the world's most important Spanish-language book fair. The bodies were found about a mile from the Expo Guadalajara, where the event is being held. Guadalajara sits on the main highway running through western Mexico from the state of Michoacan toward the Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa. In recent months, security officials and analysts have grown concerned that the city could become a target for the Zetas, who have rapidly expanded since breaking with old allies in the Gulf cartel last year. The Zetas have been expanding west, from their base on the Gulf coast, and Sinaloa has apparently been sending proxy forces eastward into the territory of the Zetas, in what now appears to have become a nationwide battle. Mr Benitez said: 'As long as there is definition on the division of territories, between Sinaloa and the Zetas, we are going to continue seeing this.'

High alert: Soldiers arrive on the scene after 26 dead bodies were dumped less than a mile from where an international book festival is being held this weekend


Guadalajara's mayor Jorge Aristoteles Sandoval said that 'these acts of barbarism show how the war between cartels, and crime, is getting more brutal'. Crime in the city of 1.5 million people was historically dominated by the powerful Sinaloa cartel, but the group's tight grip was shattered by the death of its regional commander, Ignacio 'Nacho' Coronel, in a shootout with federal police in July 2010. Guadalajara's murder rate soared as factions of the cartel known as the New Generation and the Resistance battled to control Coronel's territory and assets. Street battles have left hundreds dead in the city and surrounding areas.

On their doorstep: Residents of Guadalajara stand on a ridge above the the highway looking down on the crime scene. Violence in the city of 1.5million has escalated this month

Killing slowed down during the Pan American Games last month, which brought a massive influx of police and soldiers. Law-enforcement officials and analysts said they were nonetheless concerned that a Zetas onslaught could be imminent. On Wednesday, 17 bodies were found burned in two pickup trucks in a strikingly similar attack in the home state of the Sinaloa cartel. Twelve of the bodies were in the back of one truck, some of them handcuffed and wearing bulletproof vests. KRGV.com, November 28, 2011 Holidays Bring Increase In Drug Traffic STARR COUNTY - The holiday rush has a different meaning in Starr County. In that county, it's about drug smuggling. With miles of empty roads and rural areas, the county is a prime area for smugglers who think they can operate under the radar. "The last few months have been unusual. The drug task force headed by my office has taken down close to 34,000 pounds," says Starr County District Attorney Heriberto Silva. Silva tells CHANNEL 5 NEWS the winter is the end of the growing season, which means the cartels are trying to move their product. "It's a commodity that will deteriorate. They're trying to move it before it gets stale," he explains. Silva is trying to get more money to keep his team of investigators working longer and harder to find the drugs and their owners. In one day, officers with the task force seized 9,000 pounds in different busts all before noon. Silva tells CHANNEL 5 NEWS the increase is because of fighting between the cartels. Silva says if he can't get people to stop using drugs, he is determined to make it tougher for criminals to use Starr County as their smuggling highway.


Latin American Herald Tribune, November 28, 2011 Mexican Presidential Hopeful Unveils Platform MEXICO CITY – Enrique Peña Nieto, the presumptive presidential candidate of Mexico‘s Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, has unveiled his platform and economic plan. ―Mexico, la gran esperanza‖ (Mexico, The Great Hope) outlines Peña Nieto‘s plans for structural reforms in the political, economic, energy, education and social areas. ―I am convinced that without clarity about the goals and path we have to take, less will be accomplished in taking the country to a better future,‖ the 45-year-old Peña Nieto said. Mexico has ―enormous potential‖ and the living conditions of its people can be improved, Peña Nieto, who will register as the PRI‘s presidential candidate for the 2012 elections on Sunday, said. The candidate‘s platform examines the challenges in different areas that Mexico faces and how they can be overcome in the short and medium terms to jump-start the economy and create jobs. In the energy area, for example, the government must ensure that hydrocarbons remain the property of the state and it must ―facilitate strategic alliances with the private sector to improve the productivity‖ of oil giant Pemex, Peña Nieto, an attorney who served as governor of Mexico state, said. Peña Nieto also discussed the wave of drug-related violence in Mexico that has created a society that ―lives in fear of moving around‖ the country freely. The focus must be placed on the lack of policy initiatives in the areas of prosecution and administration of justice, Peña Nieto said. ―The challenge is to take on what has not been done,‖ the presidential candidate said. Peña Nieto announced his bid for the PRI‘s presidential nomination on Sept. 20, a few days after ending his term as governor of Mexico state, which surrounds the Federal District and forms part of the Mexico City metropolitan area. The former governor was given a clear path to the nomination earlier this week when Sen. Manlio Fabio Beltrones, the only other candidate vying to head the ticket in the 2012 elections, withdrew from the race. Beltrones, who was trailing Peña Nieto in the polls, said he pulled out as a ―contribution to the PRI victory in 2012‖ and ―not as a sacrifice.‖ Polls show the PRI, which governed Mexico from 1929 to 2000, regaining the presidency in next year‘s election. Mexico will hold its presidential election on July 1, 2012, electing a successor to President Felipe Calderon of the National Action Party, or PAN. The leading candidates are Peña Nieto, who will be the standard-bearer of the Compromiso por Mexico coalition formed by the PRI, the Mexican Green Party, or PVEM, and the New Alliance Party, or PANAL; and former Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who heads the ticket of the alliance formed by the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, the Workers Party, or PT, and the Movimiento Ciudadano. The PAN, which is going it alone in the election, has not decided on a candidate yet. Josefina Vazquez Mota, Santiago Creel and Ernesto Cordero are vying for the PAN‘s nomination. Some 80 million Mexicans will be eligible to vote for a new president, 628 legislators and thousands of other officials in next year‘s general elections. USA Today, November 28, 2011 Mounted Patrols Beefed Up At The Border If there's someone squatting in the bush near the Rio Grande, the 5-year-old gelding will prick up his ears, give a snort and stop in his tracks, despite gentle rib kicks from his rider. If people make a run for the river, he'll crash through brush and branches after them. Or he could be quiet as a breath and walk right up to a circle of unsuspecting smugglers. Clyde, a lean, copper-colored mustang, is one of the latest weapons in the struggle to tighten the U.S. border with Mexico. The U.S. Border Patrol has used horses since its inception in 1924, but new funds from headquarters and a federal program that captures, breaks and donates wild mustangs is bringing more mounted patrols than ever to the border. "He's doing great," says Border Patrol agent Chris Garza, Clyde's rider. "They do things ATVs and trucks just can't." The horses come at a crucial time for the southeastern area of the border, the Rio Grande Valley Sector, a 316-mile stretch from Brownsville to Falcon Heights. For the fiscal year ending in September, agents

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here seized more than 930,000 pounds of marijuana, a new sector record, and arrested more than 53,000 people attempting to enter the U.S. illegally — more than the other two border sectors in Texas. The high numbers are credited to increased enforcement, as well as crackdowns on drug cartels by Mexican authorities on the other side of the Rio Grande, says Supervisory Agent Daniel Milian, a spokesman. As the government raids the stashes of nearby syndicates such as the Zetas and Gulf Cartel, more drugs come north to the USA. "This is a real old-school patrol," Milian says of the mounted patrols. "It's a great resource to have." In 1924, agents signing up for the newly commissioned Border Patrol were required to bring their own horses, according to the agency. Washington furnished a badge, revolver, oats and hay for the horses, and a $1,680 annual salary. Uniforms came later. The mounted patrols cased the southern border looking mostly for whiskey bootleggers and illegal Chinese immigrants. As motorized vehicles were introduced in 1935, horses were phased out. Horses have since been used sporadically by some sectors, but lack of funds and support have kept their use spotty, says Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Mary Olivares, horse patrol coordinator for the Rio Grande Valley Sector. New money from Washington last year helped revive mounted patrols, she says. Agents are tapping into a program by the Bureau of Land Management that captures feral mustangs on federal lands and sends them to prisons to be broken, she says. Inmates at Hutchinson Correctional Facility in Kansas broke and trained the 11 mustangs acquired by the Rio Grande Valley Sector, Olivares says. The inmates also castrate the horses, making them safer to handle, she says. Once at Border Patrol stables, the horses are made accustomed to loud noises, such as gunshots, and people. They patrol in pairs, casing the wooded bluffs along the Rio Grande and muscling through thick brush that ATVs and pickup trucks can't penetrate. Since arriving in July, the horses here have assisted in arresting 355 suspects and seizing more than 1,900 pounds of marijuana, she says. The horses are the latest salvo in a back-and-forth chess match between drug cartels and smugglers on one side of the border and U.S. law enforcement on the other, says Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, an assistant professor of government at the University of Texas-Brownsville. The horses arrived on the border just as internal fighting within the Gulf Cartel had led to increased violence, she says. "It's important that America shows its strength when there's some kind of problem to the south," Correa-Cabrera says. "The horses are symbolic. It says, 'We are here.' " On a recent patrol, Clyde and his partner, Cash, a 3-year-old gelding, trot down a sandy road along the Rio Grande. Their riders, Garza and Agent Hipolito Coy, peer down at the sand looking for fresh footprints or bent brush in a process known as "signal cutting." They also keep a close eye on their horses, who would alert them to nearby danger. Smugglers routinely push rafts full of cellophane-wrapped drugs across the river, often at night, and load them into nearby cars, Garza says. Twice, Clyde has chased smugglers through the bush and into the river. Once, they chased a car that overturned on the narrow roads. Overall, his horse has been involved in the seizure of more than 700 pounds of marijuana, he says. In August, Clyde also walked up to a group of eight illegal immigrants near Brownsville. The group didn't hear the horse coming and quietly gave up, Garza says. "They're looking for (Border Patrol) trucks with green and white stripes," he says. "They're not looking for horses." Garza knows it won't be long before the cartels catch on and adjust tactics. "They're smart," he says. "They'll figure it out." Latin American Herald Tribune, November 28 2011 Governor Of Violent Mexican State Sends His Kids Abroad MEXICO CITY – The governor of the western Mexican state of Sinaloa, where 24 people were found slain this week, said he sent his children out of the country after learning of a possible plot to kidnap one of them. ―It is necessary to take (preventive) measures,‖ Mario Lopez Valdez told Radio Formula, adding that the act of governing has become ―difficult and dangerous.‖ Intelligence intercepts revealed discussions about abducting one of the governor‘s children with

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an eye toward swapping the captive for one or more crime bosses jailed in Sinaloa, he said. ―We will take all the measures necessary so that we are not impeded in fulfilling the responsibility we have, which is to enforce the law,‖ the governor said. Several other senior Sinaloa officials involved in the fight against organized crime have also sent their families abroad. Asked about the 24 bodies found Wednesday in Culiacan – the state capital – and other locations in Sinaloa, Lopez Valdez suggested a possible connection to recent gangland killings in Guadalajara, Mexico‘s second city, and the Gulf coast state of Veracruz. ―They are groups that are in confrontation, fighting for the territories ... and it can be that an attack is committed in some part of the country and later the score is settled in another state,‖ he said. Sinaloa is the bastion of the drug cartel led by the fugitive Joaquin ―el Chapo‖ Guzman, said by Forbes magazine to be worth at least $1 billion. Despite its dominant position, Chapo‘s mob faces challenges in Sinaloa from other groups, such as the gang formed by the Beltran Leyva brothers. Conflict among the cartels and between the criminals and the security forces has claimed some 50,000 lives in Mexico over the past five years, according to figures compiled by capital daily La Jornada. Drug-related violence has skyrocketed since December 2006, when newly inaugurated President Felipe Calderon militarized the struggle against the cartels. Latin American Herald Tribune, November 28, 2011 Mexican State Recruiting 8,000 Police Officers MONTERREY, Mexico – Officials in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo Leon are trying to recruit about 8,000 police officers from different states in an effort to fill the vacancies created by fear, purges of the ranks and arrests, state Security Council spokesman Jorge Domene said. ―Today, we have, adding together the municipal and state agencies, 6,000 officers and the number we are aiming for is 14,000, meaning that we have a shortage of 8,000, so we have to work to get them as soon as possible,‖ Domene said. Officials have established a recruiting process for hiring officers from outside the state, targeting Veracruz, San Luis Potosi, Mexico state and Oaxaca, among others, Domene said. The drug-related violence in Nuevo Leon, which borders the United States, has left 14 cities without police departments, the state Security Council spokesman said. Officers quit in those cities over the past eight months due to ―threats and because of fear,‖ Domene said. Officials have purged a number of agencies over the past four months, ―taking over entire departments and arresting many officers for having links to organized crime,‖ Domene said. The state police, Federal Police and army are currently patrolling the cities that were left without police departments, the state Security Council spokesman said. On Dec. 15, 400 members of the new state police force will graduate, staffing a law enforcement agency that will have the training and weapons necessary to deal with drug traffickers, a task that only the army has been able to carry out until now, Domene said. The pay of the new state police force‘s members will be 50 percent higher than officers were previously getting, rising from an average of 6,000 pesos ($430) a month to 12,000 pesos ($830) monthly. More than 1,500 people have died in the wave of drug-related violence in Nuevo Leon in the past year.


Hispanically Speaking News, November 28, 2011 Drug War Claims 14 More Lives In Mexican Gulf Coast State The drug-war death toll in the Mexican Gulf coast state of Veracruz has risen by 14 over the past 48 hours, authorities said. Six bodies, all bearing signs of torture, were found dumped in the Santa Fe district near the port of Veracruz, spokespersons for the state‘s Attorney General‘s Office said in a statement Friday. The bodies were in an advanced state of decay, leading forensics personnel to conclude they had been dead for between six and eight weeks. Meanwhile, the Defense Secretariat said in a pair of statements Friday that eight suspected drug traffickers were killed in two separate clashes with army soldiers in the towns of Panuco and Ixhuacan de los Reyes. The clashes occurred Thursday when military personnel came under attack from the purported cartel hit men, the secretariat said. The security forces seized eight automatic rifles, 800 rounds of ammunition of different calibers, 37 ammunition clips for different weapons and the two vehicles carrying the assailants, it added. Violence in the state has surged in the past two-and-a-half months, leaving nearly 200 dead and prompting President Felipe Calderon‘s administration to deploy federal forces under ―Operation Safe Veracruz.‖ The operation also seeks to clean up local police departments and strengthen intelligence efforts to bolster security across the state. The wave of violence in Veracruz state, a strategic corridor coveted by drug- and people-trafficking gangs, has been marked by several massacres. The bodies of 35 people were dumped Sept. 20 on a busy road in the Veracruz-Boca del Rio metropolitan area in an apparent challenge to the violent Los Zetas drug cartel; on Oct. 6, another 32 corpses were found at drug-gang ―safe houses‖ in the metro area. The mass dumping of bodies in September was the first such incident in Veracruz city, indicating that the violence in the northern part of the state along the borders with Tamaulipas, San Luis Potosi and Hidalgo states had spilled over into its largest metropolis, officials said. Calderon militarized the struggle against Mexico‘s heavily armed, well-funded drug mobs shortly after taking office in December 2006, deploying tens of thousands of troops to drug-war flashpoints. The strategy has led to headline-grabbing captures of cartel kingpins, but drug-related violence has skyrocketed and claimed nearly 50,000 lives nationwide over the five-year period. Buenos Aires Herald, November 28, 2011 Special Forces Man Named Guatemala Defence Minister Guatemala's president-elect, Otto Perez, underlined his determination to get tough on violent crime by picking a senior officer of the feared special forces to be defence minister. Making his final cabinet appointment since winning a Nov. 6 election, retired general Perez appointed Ulises Anzueto, a colonel of the elite Kaibiles troops, to the post. Perez, a conservative who swept to victory promising to crush street gangs and encroaching Mexican drug cartels, faces an awkward challenge because of the army's reputation for brutality during Guatemala's devastating 36-year civil war. Anzueto, 52, will work closely with Interior Minister Mauricio Lopez, also a Kaibil, in the fight against crime. "We are going to have two brigades of military police and two brigades of special forces ... and their top mission is going to be confronting drug traffickers," Anzueto told reporters. Security experts say cartels and gangs control some 40 percent of Guatemala, a coffee- and sugar-producing nation. Public anger over crime prompted voters to put aside misgivings about the army and elect Perez, the first military man to rule the country since democracy was restored in 1986. A U.N.-backed commission said the military was responsible for the vast majority of abuses in the 1960-1996 civil war that led to the deaths or disappearance of nearly 250,000 people. Though largely respected in Guatemala, some Kaibiles have been lured away by brutal drug gangs with deep pockets like the Zetas cartel. The training regime for the Kaibiles, which Perez himself served in, is reputed to be particularly fearsome.


AFP, November 27, 2011 Bodies And Dreams Broken On Mexico's 'Death Train' TAPACHULA, Mexico — Lying in a refuge for migrants in southern Mexico, a Honduran man recovers from losing his right foot under the wheels of the "Train of Death," along with his dreams of the United States. "It's really painful when I remember what happened. A federal police officer pushed me and I fell under the train. The wheel cut my foot off. That's it. Now I don't want to go to the United States for that damned American dream," Jose Paz told AFP. Paz is one of the tens of thousands of illegal migrants who each year board the Train of Death, also known as The Beast -- a slow freight ride at irregular hours that is part of a long, risky journey to a possible escape from poverty. The train starts in Arriaga, in the state of Chiapas, southern Mexico, and travels north to the states of Oaxaca and Veracruz with its cargo of corn, cement and undocumented passengers on the roof. The 31-year-old man, who has light skin and a thin beard, bitterly remembers the moment he fell off the moving train, pushed by "that police officer," in Veracruz state, almost at the end of his train journey, although still several thousand miles from the US border. Paz, originally from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, arrived in Mexico in July and did odd jobs, like washing cars, as he prepared for his trip north. After his accident, he sought asylum in the "Jesus the Good Pastor" refuge in Tapachula, Chiapas. Paz has spent the last two months there, along with other undocumented migrants, all of whom were injured or mutilated during the train journey. During the trip of 12-15 hours, sometimes longer, migrants are constantly at risk: from falling asleep and falling off to being raided by security forces or criminals who capture migrants for ransoms or to "resell" as slaves, often to drug gangs. Salvadoran Luis Gerardo Santos, 28, had a shorter journey, but just as dramatic: he lost a leg trying to climb onto a carriage in Chiapas. "I wasn't holding on very well and I slipped. The wheel crushed part of my leg," said Santos, who still plans to try to reach the United States to catch up with his girlfriend. "I have a daughter in the United States and I want to be near her again," he said, explaining how he was deported in 2005, after living in the United States for two years. "I lost what I lost for wanting to go to the United States, but I'm not afraid. I'll try again," he said, sobbing. Other mutilated migrants hide inside the refuge, declining to speak. "They keep their pain for themselves," said Carla Caravantes, a worker at the refuge, which currently houses around 20 people. Nearby lies a detention center managed by Mexican migration officials, known as the 21st Century Station, which has strict security similar to that of a prison. Men and women of various nationalities are picked up throughout Chiapas and brought there before being expelled back home again. "I don't want to be here. I'd prefer them to send me home, as long as they get me out of here," said Colombian Rene Paramo, detained a week ago in Ciudad Hidalgo, on the Mexico-Guatemala border.


Hispanically Speaking News, November 27, 2011 16 Drug Mules Arrested At Arizona Mexico Border This Week Border Patrol agents assigned to the Tucson Sector, a component of U.S. Customs and Border Protection‘s Joint Field Command-Arizona, seized 1,087 pounds of marijuana worth an estimated $543,500 and arrested 16 drug smugglers while patrolling in the West Desert Wednesday. Ajo Station agents operating a mobile surveillance system observed a group of suspected narcotics smugglers west of the Lukeville Port of Entry. Agents responded to the area and apprehended eight subjects and seized 530 pounds of marijuana, worth an estimated $265,000. The narcotics and subjects were transported to the Ajo Station for further processing. The subjects are now facing federal charges. In a separate incident, Ajo Station‘s All-Terrain Vehicle unit responded to possible smuggling activity observed by agents operating the mobile surveillance system in the West Desert. Upon arrival, eight suspected drug mules were taken into custody along with 557 pounds of marijuana. The narcotics, valued at $278,500, and the subjects were transported to the Ajo Station for processing. The subjects are being held for federal prosecution. Detection technology, such as the mobile surveillance system, improves situational awareness for Border Patrol agents, allowing them to safely and quickly detect and respond to criminal activity. Agents remain dedicated to detecting smuggling attempts and preventing illegal drugs from entering our country. The Gazette, November 27, 2011 U.S. Cocaine Dealers Using Canadian Truckers To Smuggle: Police

For several months, FBI agents in Southern California watched as large duffel bags and boxes changed hands in parking lots, homes and at a busy truck stop — part of an investigation into the lucrative trafficking

of cocaine from Mexico to Canada. Pictured, file photo of cocaine. FBI agents in Southern California investigating the lucrative trafficking of cocaine from Mexico to Canada say large transport trucks have become the preferred mode of shipping the drug across borders. This past week, federal agents swooped in on several homes in the Los Angeles area and arrested three men — Luis Carrillo Torres, George Diaz and Luis Enrique Lopez — who are suspected of being involved in the growing enterprise and of having links to two Quebec truckers allegedly found with near-record amounts of cocaine earlier this year. According to an FBI affidavit released after the arrests, the men and their associates had been under surveillance for months. Agents watched as large duffle bags and boxes changed hands in parking lots, homes and at a busy truck stop. ―Typically, tractor-trailer trucks are used to move the cocaine from Southern California, where it is brought in from Mexico, into Canada,‖ wrote


Special Agent Jennifer Rudy. On April 9, police watched as two men moved bags from a Mini Cooper into the trunk of a Mazda at a Starbucks parking lot. The Mazda was followed to Torres‘ residence and then to another home. Police served a search warrant at the home and found $600,000 in the trunk of the Mazda. They also found BlackBerrys with hundreds of messages with someone in Canada named ―Buddy,‖ who was ordering cocaine, the affidavit said. On Aug. 8, police followed Diaz‘s Ford F-150 pickup to a McDonald‘s parking lot. The driver parked next to a Ford Crown Victoria with two men inside. A large duffle bag was transferred from the pickup to the trunk of the Crown Victoria. The two men in the Crown Victoria then drove to a hotel. A few hours later, a tractor trailer with Quebec licence plates pulled into the hotel parking lot. The duffle bag was moved from the trunk of the Crown Victoria and put inside the cab of the tractor trailer, the affidavit said. Two days later, the tractor trailer was stopped by police near Las Vegas. Nevada State Patrol discovered 205 kilograms of cocaine worth an estimated $16.4 million. It was the second-largest seizure of its kind in that state, police said. The truck driver, Gaston D‘Anjou, of Quebec, was arrested and charged with possession and trafficking offences. He has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyer, Jean-Pierre Rancourt, said Friday he is seeking to quash the charges on the grounds that police conducted an illegal search. At the end of August, the Ford F-150 pickup was followed to a cul-de-sac near a truck stop. A burgundy transport truck with a Quebec licence plate pulled up behind the pickup. It was too dark to see what happened next. But a few weeks later, the pickup left Diaz‘s residence and returned to the truck stop. This time, boxes were transferred from the pickup to the burgundy transport truck, the affidavit said. On Sept. 27, New York State Police stopped the transport truck and found 116 kilograms of cocaine, worth an estimated $4.5 million. The driver, Alain Thuot, of Quebec, was arrested and now reportedly faces federal charges of possession with the intent to distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine. On Nov. 19, a man emerged from Lopez‘s garage carrying two black bags and put them in a Chevy Tahoe. A police officer stopped the Tahoe and found more than $600,000 in cash wrapped in plastic inside a speaker box. The driver claimed he was unaware that the money was in the vehicle, the affidavit said. During the searches of the homes of Torres, Diaz and Lopez last week, police seized 28 cars — including a Lotus Exige, Porsche Carrera and Range Rover — approximately $300,000 in cash, a few dozen kilograms of cocaine and weapons, said FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller. None of the charges against the California men or the Canadian men have been proven in court. Messages left with the Canadian Trucking Alliance were not returned Friday. Marc Cadieux, CEO of the Quebec Trucking Association, said incidents of drivers being involved in drug smuggling have been isolated. What is more common, he said, are criminals surreptitiously placing drugs onto trucks without the driver‘s knowledge. ―Criminals use our transport mode to achieve their ends,‖ he said. ―It doesn‘t mean the carrier or the driver are aware.‖ A 2010 RCMP criminal intelligence report said cocaine is the most common illicit good intercepted in commercial trucks entering Canada. The report, obtained by Vancouver freelance journalist Stanley Tromp under access to information, warned that more commercial truck drivers — who make an average of $858 a week — could be getting sucked in by organized crime‘s big payoffs. A driver, for instance, might be paid $28,000 to transport $12 million worth of cocaine from California to Montreal, the report said. Drivers who fail to deliver their cargo or lose their cargo are often subject to extortion, even beatings, kidnappings and murder, the report said. The Canada Border Services Agency reports that there have been 41 seizures of cocaine this year from commercial and personal vehicles, with an estimated value of almost $25 million.


LA Times, November 27, 2011 Mexico Seeks To Fill Drug War Gap With Focus On Dirty Money The evolving anti-laundering campaign could change the tone of the Mexican government's battle by striking at the heart of the cartels' financial empire, analysts say. Reporting from Mexico City— Tainted drug money runs like whispered rumors all over Mexico's economy — in gleaming high-rises in beach resorts such as Cancun, in bustling casinos in Monterrey, in skyscrapers and restaurants in Mexico City that sit empty for months. It seeps into the construction sector, the night-life industry, even political campaigns. Piles of greenbacks, enough to fill dump trucks, are transformed into gold watches, showrooms full of Hummers, aviation schools, yachts, thoroughbred horses and warehouses full of imported fabric. Officials here say the tide of laundered money could reach as high as $50 billion, a staggering sum equal to about 3% of Mexico's legitimate economy, or more than all its oil exports or spending on prime social programs. Mexican leaders often trumpet their deadly crackdown against drug traffickers as an all-out battle involving tens of thousands of troops and police, high-profile arrests and record-setting narcotics seizures. The 5-year-old offensive, however, has done little to attack a chief source of the cartels' might: their money. Even President Felipe Calderon, who sent the army into the streets to chase traffickers after taking office in 2006, an offensive that has seen 43,000 people die since, concedes that Mexico has fallen short in attacking the financial strength of organized crime. "Without question, we have been at fault," Calderon said during a meeting last month with drug-war victims. "The truth is that the existing structures for detecting money-laundering were simply overwhelmed by reality." Experts say the unchecked flow of dirty money feeds a widening range of criminal activity as cartels branch into other enterprises, such as producing and trading in pirated merchandise. "All this generates more crime," said Ramon Garcia Gibson, a former compliance officer at Citibank and an expert in money-laundering. "At the end of the day, this isn't good for anyone." Officials on both sides of the border have begun taking tentative steps to stem the flow of dirty money. For Instance, last year Calderon proposed anti-laundering legislation, after earlier announcing restrictions on cash transactions in Mexico that used U.S. dollars. The evolving anti-laundering campaign could change the tone of the government's military-led crime crusade by striking at the heart of the cartels' financial empire, analysts say. But the effort will have to overcome a longtime lack of political will and poor coordination among Mexican law enforcement agencies that have only aggravated the complexity of the task at hand now. "If you don't take away their property, winning this war is impossible," said Sen. Ricardo Garcia Cervantes of the Senate security committee and Calderon's conservative National Action Party. "You are not going to win this war with bullets." The good news for Mexican and Colombian traffickers is that drug sales in the United States generate enormous income, nearly all of it in readily spendable cash. The bad news is that this creates a towering logistical challenge: getting the proceeds back home to pay bills, buy supplies — from guns to chemicals to trucks — and build up the cartels' empires without detection. Laundering allows traffickers to disguise the illicit earnings as legitimate through any number of transactions, such as cash transfers, big-ticket purchases, currency exchanges and deposits. Much of that money still makes its way back into Mexico the old-fashioned way: in duffels stuffed into the trunks of cars. But Mexican drug traffickers are among the world's most savvy entrepreneurs, and launderers have proved nimble in evading authorities' efforts to catch them, adopting a host of new techniques to move the ill-gotten wealth. For example, Mexican traffickers are taking advantage of blind spots in monitoring the nearly $400 billion of legal commerce between the two countries. The so-called trade-based laundering allows crime groups to disguise millions of dollars in tainted funds as ordinary merchandise — say, onions or precious metals, as they are trucked across the border. In one case, the merchandise of choice was tons of polypropylene pellets used for making plastic. Exports of the product from the United States to Mexico appeared legitimate, but law

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enforcement officials say that by declaring a slightly inflated value, traders were able to hide an average of more than $1 million a month, until suspicious banks shut down the operation. The inventive ploys even include gift cards, such as the kind you get your nephew for graduation. A drug-trafficking foot soldier simply loads up a prepaid card with dollars and walks across the border without having to declare sums over the usual $10,000 reporting requirement, thus carrying a car trunk's worth of cargo in his wallet. Tainted cash is almost everywhere. In western Mexico, a minor-league soccer club known as the Raccoons was part of a sprawling cross-border empire — including car dealerships, an avocado export firm, hotels and restaurants — that U.S. officials said was used by suspect Wenceslao Alvarez to launder money for the Gulf cartel. Alvarez was arrested by Mexican authorities in 2008 in a rare blow against laundering and remains in prison while fighting the charges. NJ.com, November 27, 2011 Drug Violence In Mexico Takes Horrific Toll The stories from the Mexico drug wars have been horrific: More than 45,000 people have been killed since 2006, and the reign of terror has included kidnappings, beheadings, murders of civilians and officials, and the dumping of bodies in broad daylight. "The extraordinarily cruel nature of Mexico‘s drug violence is often beyond description, and its frequently spectacular nature is explicitly intended to shock rival crime groups, authorities and the public. The human and emotional toll of the violence is hard to quantify, and will linger long after it has passed." Those words are from "A Shared Responsibility: U.S.-Mexico Policy Options for Confronting Organized Crime," a report by Eric L. Olson, Andrew Selee and David Shirk for the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. Star-Ledger editorial writer Linda Ocasio spoke with Olson, a senior associate with the Mexico Institute, about Mexico‘s drug violence. Q. It seems as if all of Mexico is engulfed in violence related to drugs. Is that accurate? A. Not all of Mexico is violent. Up until the middle of the last decade, violence and homicide levels in Mexico overall were headed down. Mexico City, which many people would consider a mega-city filled with violence, has a relatively low homicide rate, lower than many cities in the United States. New Orleans has a higher homicide rate than Mexico City. The irony is that parts of Mexico are extremely violent. Ciudad Juarez had more murders than Afghanistan in 2010. The violence tends to move and change, as the conflict moves and changes. It‘s not static, but depends on changes in the relationships between the cartels, and the actions of federal and local authorities. Q. Who are these cartels? A. The Zetas are considered the most violent, but the largest cartel is the Sinaloa cartel, comprised of three to five subgroups that work together. Sinaloa has the biggest and broadest presence throughout Mexico. It is overall the largest, wealthiest and most powerful. (U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement announced on Oct. 31 the breakup of a marijuana smuggling ring in Arizona tied to Sinaloa.) The Zetas had their origins in Mexico‘s Special Forces and their code name was Zetas. They became the enforcer wing of the Gulf cartel, but at the beginning of 2010, there was a breakdown in the relationship between the Zetas and Gulf. The Zetas became bigger and more powerful, and began competing with the Gulf cartel. But the participants continue to change. In 2010, the violence was intense in places like Nuevo Laredo, and then moved south to Monterrey and Veracruz. This is organized crime, not military forces with centralized coordination. Fights break out over territory, around a port city or around an entry point to the U.S. Q. What is the most common misunderstanding about these cartels? A. We have an idea of one central figure, like a godfather, handing down edicts. In Mexico, there‘s no one general giving out commands. There are people who are part of local organized

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crime, and they subcontract. There are lots of captains and lieutenants involved in other activities, but cooperating with one another. Some are smuggling marijuana, cocaine from the Andes, methamphetamines. Others are involved in extortion or kidnapping. It‘s a diversified and decentralized group. Elements from one cartel are enemies with elements of another cartel and they break off and join with former enemies. There‘s no ideology or religion or political agenda holding them together. It‘s money and money-making. Q. The violence has been stunning. Those bodies dumped under the highway … A. That was 35 people in Veracruz. Others have been dismembered, beheaded, left hanging from bridges. Bodies have been dissolved in vats of acid. The tactic is to terrorize people, to silence people or make them follow directions. Children are being killed, disappeared. The thought of losing a daughter or son who is in the wrong place at wrong time is terrifying. Q. What are some of the challenges of fighting the cartels? A. Going after the head of the group often results in the fragmenting of the group. As the groups splinter and become more violent, smaller groups compete with one another. It stirs the pot, and as a result, the situation can become more violent, not less. Murder rates could go down, but the groups can be still as strong, just not as violent. Q. What is the U.S. role in Mexico’s drug war? A. In the Merida Initiative, both the United States and Mexico agreed that organized crime is a shared problem. In the end, the U.S. consumption of drugs is part of the problem, and the easy trafficking of firearms from the U.S. is a contributing factor. About $60 billion is generated by the U.S. consumption of drugs. That‘s money coming from us and laundered through the banking system, transmitted electronically or carried over the border in cash. There‘s no quick fix; we understand that. But it‘s important for people to understand that the U.S. bears responsibility here. Q. What does the Merida Initiative provide? A. The Merida Initiative has been a mechanism by which the United States could provide equipment and training to Mexican law enforcement and the military to support their efforts to confront organized crime. Early on, the focus was on transfers of equipment such as planes and helicopters for deployment of counter-narcotics forces. More recently, the emphasis has shifted towards more training for police and prosecutors. Going forward, the focus will be on support for state and local police forces that face organized crime and drug violence more frequently than federal authorities. Q. A popular perception is that Mexican law enforcement is incompetent at best, corrupt at worst. A. Law enforcement agencies have historically existed to protect the regime and did not prioritize crime-fighting, investigations and prosecuting people. This has begun to change slowly over the past decade, but there continues to be a lack of training and professionalization, a lack of capacity to prosecute crimes. They have a criminal justice system that depends on confession and relies on pretrial detention. The federal criminal justice system was not based on a presumption of innocence until recently, and trials are written, not oral, and they are not public. Corruption is part of it; it‘s not a transparent system, but the system itself is partly at fault. Not all Mexicans are corrupt, involved in the drug trade, and not every part of the country is marked by violence. Q. What are the short- and long-term solutions? A. The short-term efforts focus on improving intelligence collaboration not only to arrest key figures among the cartel leadership but to dismantle their networks. Also, the U.S. needs to do more to disrupt the money and weapons flowing south that support criminal organizations. Long-term strategies involve investments in reducing consumption of illegal narcotics in the United States, building stronger judicial, police and prosecutorial capacities in Mexico, and investing in the social and economic infrastructure in communities that are under stress from the


violence. We also have to reduce the flow of arms from the U.S. into Mexico by improving cooperation among U.S. agencies, such as ICE and ATF. The U.S. can also help Mexico build capacity to submit requests for tracing weapons to U.S. federal agencies.

Washington Post, November 27, 2011 Mexico Arrests 3 Members Of Zetas Drug Cartel In Slaying Of Governor’s Bodyguards MONTERREY, Mexico — Mexican authorities say they have arrested three members of the Zetas drug cartel who later confessed to the June slaying of bodyguards for the governor of the northern state of Nuevo Leon. A federal prosecutor‘s aide says the men were captured during a traffic stop Saturday. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity due to safety concerns. The aide says the men confessed to killing two of Gov. Rodrigo Medina‘s guards in June; a guard for a town mayor last year, and three police officers in May. The suspects were identified as 24-year-old Arturo Garcia Celaya, 25-year-old Jose Daniel Hernandez Guzman, and 34-year-old Nicolas Yepes Alvarez. The aide says Garcia and Hernandez were fugitives following a prison escape last December. Kansas City Star, November 27, 2011 Corruption In Mexico Casinos Takes A Toll In The US, Too Hard times have been a constant for most members of the Chippewa Indian tribe known as the Lac Vieux Desert Band. Nestled in a wooded corner of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, the tribe owns a modest casino, a hotel and a golf course. But the complex is far off the beaten path for tourists or gamblers, and many of the tribe's 600 or so members find steady work as unlikely as winning a jackpot. So when a Mexico casino czar named Juan Jose Rojas-Cardona sent an offer to invest in Mexico's booming gambling industry, it seemed like a godsend. But rather than a big payout, the disadvantaged Lac Vieux tribe got swindled. Its multimillion-dollar "investment" disappeared, adding the tribe to a list of victims that includes a mammoth hedge fund in London, an Australian manufacturer of gaming machines, an Arizona investor and two Mexican textile tycoons. Rojas-Cardona, however, has gone on to build one of the biggest gambling empires in


Mexico. Relying on a silky sales pitch and apparent close connections to Mexico's top politicians, perhaps including presidents, Rojas-Cardona now holds 60 permits to operate casinos in Mexico - even though gambling remains technically illegal in that country. A horrendous act of violence on Aug. 25 first exposed the dark underside of Mexico's casino industry when gangsters firebombed the Casino Royale in Monterrey, Mexico's industrial northern hub, killing 52 people. Those arrested later confessed that they were pressuring the casino owners for payoffs on behalf of Los Zetas, one of Mexico's two biggest crime groups. But a McClatchy Newspapers probe in the months since has found evidence that the corruption in Mexico's gambling industry goes much deeper than a shakedown by drug gangs. Indeed, the entire industry appears to be deliberately opaque, designed by political barons as a way for them to hand out licenses as favors, tap casino coffers for cash, and let casino operators flout the law. The Mexican system is so corrupt and unregulated that U.S. casino companies refuse to enter the Mexican market. That, however, has not kept Americans from being victims of the corruption. It's unclear what, if anything, the U.S. government has done to warn investors of the risks or to help prosecute alleged scammers such as Rojas-Cardona, whose criminal record in the United States includes the dismissal of a drug charge in New Mexico. Rojas-Cardona's life in Mexico includes a near assassination in 2007 that was laid to drug barons or rival casino operators. Ironically, gambling in Mexico has thrived under the National Action Party, or PAN, which swept into power in 2000 promising an end to the corruption and cronyism that had flourished in Mexico during the long reign of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. The PAN's candidate in 2000, Vicente Fox, was the country's first non-PRI president in more than 70 years, and his successor, current President Felipe Calderon, a fellow PAN member, won the post in 2006 in one of the most closely contested races in Mexico's history. In a dizzying inconsistency, Fox's government in 2004 issued regulations that essentially ignored Mexico's 1947 law that bans gambling. Even though that law remains in effect, Mexico's Supreme Court allowed the new regulations to go forward. In the ensuing years, first Fox's administration, and then Calderon's, issued licenses allowing 867 gaming venues, permitting some bingo, sports betting and slot machine parlors to expand into poker, roulette and craps without explicit legalization. Calderon's office declined to comment on whether the president knew Rojas-Cardona. Hundreds of full-fledged casinos now dot Mexican cities, and scores, if not hundreds, more operate off the books or under court protection from friendly judges who provide legal relief. Politicians balk at enacting new laws legalizing the current situation for fear that under-the-table payments may dry up and that global gaming companies could move in and dominate. Mexican political barons draw on the casinos as if they were "petty cash boxes," said Lizbeth Garcia Coronado, a member of Mexico's Chamber of Deputies and the coordinator of the chamber's working group on gambling. "But it's not 'petty.' The casinos generate a lot of money." Mexican regulators couldn't seem to bend the rules fast enough once they were in place. For example, Mexico's assistant general director of gaming and lotteries, Roberto Correa Mendez, issued permits for 41 new casinos on the day he quit in 2009. Like other regulators, Correa had a creative bent. He helped one gaming firm skirt the federal ban on betting: Gamblers could play Blackjack, Texas Hold 'Em and other types of poker, but winners could collect only after passing a "trivia" test. "You visit any of these establishments, and most have games with dealers, card games, baccarat, and this is prohibited," said Garcia Coronado, who's a member of the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party. "There is no doubt that there is a lot of corruption in the games and raffles bureau," which is part of Mexico's Interior Ministry whose leader is appointed by the president. The corruption and favoritism rampant in the Mexican gaming industry served as an incubator for the rise of Juan Jose Rojas-Cardona, 44, a man who spent much of his adolescence and early adulthood in Iowa, where his parents had immigrated from Hidalgo, a state in central Mexico. From early on, Rojas-Cardona displayed a knack for winning friends. At the University of Iowa, Rojas-Cardona was elected president of the student


senate. After studying economics for five years, Rojas-Cardona left in mid-1990 without getting a degree, the university says. A small cloud followed him. The Iowa state auditor demanded that Rojas-Cardona and other senators return nearly $2,000 in "extravagant" spending on hotels, alcohol, rental of two Cadillacs and double-billing for meals. Rojas-Cardona, known to one and all as Pepe, ignored the demand. Worse troubles awaited him. In 1992, prosecutors in Iowa won a second-degree conviction against him for bouncing a $3,000 check to a Chinese graduate student who'd developed a telemarketing business plan for him. Rojas-Cardona was charged with a far more serious crime two years later when Border Patrol agents staffing a checkpoint at Orogrande, a remote New Mexico outpost less than an hour from the southern border, saw a white Buick with no license plates approach, then turn south shy of the checkpoint. It was 12:50 a.m., Feb. 11, 1994. Court records retrieved by McClatchy from a federal records facility in Denver tell what happened next: Agents gave chase and when they stopped the car, they found a "very nervous" Rojas-Cardona. A Border Patrol dog grew excited, and when agents searched the vehicle, they found 17 pounds of marijuana. Rojas-Cardona signed a plea agreement on the felony trafficking charge in June of that year, but by September he'd skipped bail and vanished. In late 1998, federal prosecutors asked a judge to quash the arrest warrant and lift the indictment, a practice that sometimes indicates a defendant has become a federal informant. McClatchy could not determine if that was the case with Rojas-Cardona. Within a year or two, Rojas-Cardona had set up shop in Monterrey, where he created his first slot machine club, Bella Vista, in the San Nicholas de la Garza district, whose top official, a PAN politician, would later become mayor of Monterrey. Backed by a Louisiana investor, the club was soon swimming in profits, each slot earning as much as $300 a day. Rojas-Cardona's criminal past was of no apparent concern to Mexican regulators, who gave enthusiastic endorsements to him and his brother Arturo and their Las Vegas-based partnership, Emex Holdings LLC, one of a web of companies they set up. Within a few years, Rojas-Cardona and his brother would hold a winning lottery ticket: federal permits to operate 60 casinos and gaming venues. Just how Rojas-Cardona won the permits is far from clear. But he boasted of friendships with the highest-level politicians and even the primate of Mexico's Roman Catholic Church. When courting investors, Rojas-Cardona would pull out a Bible signed by Catholic Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera. Indeed, Rivera was a friend. When Rojas-Cardona cut the ribbon in 2008 on his posh Monterrey restaurant, 40 West, the prelate brought a white rose as a gift and posed for photos. He came despite a whiff of organized crime connections that had begun to swirl around Rojas-Cardona. Those ties were made apparent by events the morning of Nov. 9, 2007, when assailants in Monterrey cut off Rojas-Cardona's Dodge Charger and let loose with a volley of gunfire. Rojas-Cardona's driver, Ernesto de Jesus Martinez, died strapped into his seat. Rojas-Cardona hunkered down in a foot well and survived unhurt, even though 60 shells casings were found at the scene. He told investors that either casino competitors or drug lords sent the gunmen. Even before the assassination attempt, Rojas-Cardona had cast a wide net for foreign investors, sending a Louisiana intermediary to query U.S. Indian tribes if they wanted in on action south of the border. His trump card: legal Mexican casino permits. The Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa was a perfect target. While some U.S. tribes had prospered since Indian gaming became legal in the United States, the Lac Vieux were not among them. The woods surrounding their native lands are rich in spruce, maple and birch but scarce of gamblers, and profits were small at the tribe's casino, which lies more than three hours north of Green Bay, Wis. Five other tribes operated competing casinos in the region. Most years, there was not enough casino revenue to offer members of the tribe Christmas payouts. So when Rojas-Cardona's U.S. agent came calling in early 2006, the tribe's leaders liked what they heard and saw a chance to take a ride on a gambling juggernaut. "Gaming in Mexico was just starting," recalled James Williams Jr., the tribe's chairman at the time. "We had big plans. It was going to put our future in a comfort zone." Rojas-Cardona


worked hard to impress the tribe and its lawyers, who made multiple trips to Mexico. Rojas-Cardona squired them around in his British Aerospace 125-700A corporate jet to iron out details of their planned $6.5 million investment. The riches he promised awed some council members. "The numbers they were throwing out, I thought, 'How can we not invest with these guys?' I was excited," recalled Tyrone McGeshick, a former council member. Moreover, the Rojas-Cardona brothers insinuated that they had backing from the highest politicians in Mexico. "Here's the flight jacket that the president wears when he flies on our jet," one of the brothers told the visitors during an October 2006 trip, according to Richard J. Verri, an attorney from a Chandler, Ariz., law firm that is now representing the Lac Vieux Desert Band in a lawsuit against the Rojas-Cardona brothers. Claims of bulletproof political connections were stock in trade for Rojas-Cardona. William A. Graven, an Arizona investor, said in an interview in Phoenix that Rojas-Cardona claimed to need foreign funds because he was using his own profits to fill the campaign coffers of powerful politicians in national elections in 2006. "He said, 'We're sending all these planeloads of money down to Mexico City,' " Graven said. "It was all quite hush-hush." After Graven arranged a deal with Rojas-Cardona, the Lac Vieux Desert Band asked to piggyback, wanting more exposure beyond the $6.5 million they spent to equip a small casino in the Monterrey district of Guadalupe. Graven threw in $1 million and the tribe added $2 million more, funds they now claim Rojas-Cardona simply pocketed, bringing the tribe's total loss to $8.5 million. Rojas-Cardona also was deploying emissaries to troll for huge sums of money elsewhere. Europe's third-largest hedge fund, Bluecrest Capital Management Ltd., loaned Emex some $75 million, only to see the money vanish. Bluecrest won a judgment in Mexico in July this year against the Mexican partnership, but Bluecrest spokesman Ed Orlebar declined to offer details or say whether the fund had recovered any money. While some foreign investors claimed they were getting stiffed, Rojas-Cardona larded politicians, giving a small helicopter in 2007 to the mayor of San Nicolas, site of his first gaming club, Bella Vista. To angry investors, Rojas Cardona pointed to his high-level political connections and told them to forget about their money. "He gave the impression that he was Teflon," said Verri, the Arizona attorney. Several U.S. lawsuits now entangle Emex and the Rojas-Cardona brothers. The U.S. branch of an Australian gaming machine manufacturer, Aristocrat Technologies, claims in a lawsuit that Rojas-Cardona, a Louisiana investor and Emex owe it $2.8 million. Two Lebanese-Mexican brothers who made a fortune in specialty fabrics say in a lawsuit filed in Texas that Rojas-Cardona and Emex owe them at least $7.2 million after breaking an agreement to share in profits from the Palmas Ajusco casino built on their property in Mexico City. They sued in Texas because they said the agreement had been struck and signed in Texas, benefiting from the good faith of the U.S. legal system. Not all foreigners have had bad experiences with the Rojas-Cardonas. Some earlier Louisiana investors, including John Georges, a Greek-American marine services and arcade tycoon, apparently did well. Georges, who lost a bid for Louisiana governor in 2007, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. A U.S. corporate icon, Playboy Enterprises, found Rojas-Cardona to be a worthy partner. Last December, scantily clad Playboy Bunnies inaugurated the Playboy Club Cancun, a $7.5 million casino complex operated under license from Emex. A spokeswoman for Playboy Enterprises, Theresa Hennessey, said she knew of no complaints against Emex. Yet red flags went up at the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey, according to U.S. diplomatic cables made public by WikiLeaks. U.S. diplomats told the State Department in July 2009 of possible links between Rojas-Cardona and the Beltran-Leyva drug cartel. They also said he'd paid $5 million in illegal campaign donations to local politicians. "The traffickers, the casino operators, and corrupt politicians form a self-protective triangle, which makes it difficult for honest law enforcement officers to get at organized crime," said a July 2, 2009, cable signed by Bruce Williamson, the U.S. consul general in Monterrey at the time. The same cable noted that hours after a hit man gunned down and killed a rival of Rojas-Cardona in the casino business, Rogelio "El Diablo" Garza Cantu, police arrested the


alleged triggerman emerging from a meeting with Pepe Rojas-Cardona. Today, the Rojas-Cardonas operate 22 casinos under the Palmas brand and an untold number of others, making them among Mexico's biggest operators alongside Play City, a subsidiary of Mexico's vast Televisa communications conglomerate; Grupo Caliente, which is controlled by a former mayor of Tijuana, Jorge Hank Rhon; and Codere, a Spanish group that runs the Mexico City racetrack and scores of bingo halls. Angry investors like the Michigan Indian tribe say they are frightened to come to Mexico to file a criminal complaint. The Rojas-Cardona brothers are "powerful, dangerous men, connected to the highest levels of the Mexican political establishment," Verri, their attorney, wrote in an email. Williams, the former tribal leader, still ponders what went wrong, and why both the Mexican and U.S. governments refuse to take action against Rojas-Cardona. U.S. federal law treats stealing from Indians harshly, requiring that non-Indians guilty of the theft repay twice the value of what was taken. "What do we do? Do we just say, well, it's over? I can't accept that, especially when you've taken from 600 tribal members," Williams said. Hispanically Speaking News, November 27, 2011 EXTREME TRAFFICKING: Truck Seized Near Border with $13 Million in Marijuana This week a tractor-trailer truck was seized in California after immigration officials found 1,146 package of marijuana valued at $13 million inside. The truck entered the U.S. on Tuesday and was allowed to enter even though U.S. authorities knew via X-ray inspection that it was carrying marijuana. The truck was followed to a vehicle towing and storage business in Otay Mesa, where the marijuana was getting ready to be relocated. Seven people were arrested and charged with drug trafficking.Six of the seven defendants are from Tijuana, Mexico and claim to have been paid between $500 to $1000 to bring the marijuana in and unload it into another truck.

Photo Credits: Truck Seized in Otay Mesa with $13 Million in Marijuana

Star-Telegram, November 26, 2011 New Coast Guard Cutter Bears Name Of Benbrook Man Who Saved Others BENBROOK -- The U.S. Coast Guard is scheduled to introduce its newest fast-response cutter to the waters of the Gulf of Mexico this week. It will bear the name of a young man who left Benbrook in the late 1970s to become a "coastie," a name that has never been forgotten by the men who knew him and what he did during one of the Coast Guard's worst hours. Seaman Apprentice William R. Flores -- Billy to all who knew him -- never made it to his 19th birthday. He

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/nov/26/truck-contained-13-million-of-pot-7-arrested/


died trying to save the lives of crewmen aboard his rapidly sinking ship in the winter of 1980. He had joined when he was 17 and had been in the Coast Guard barely a year. "He was really gung-ho," said Alan Nations, a retired master chief petty officer who served with Flores at the Coast Guard station in Galveston. "He was eager and already very self-disciplined. You don't see a whole lot of 17-year-olds with as much discipline as he had. And he was sharp, too." Two decades after Flores' actions, somehow overlooked in the aftermath of the Coast Guard's worst peacetime disaster, he was posthumously awarded the Coast Guard Medal, the highest decoration that service can bestow. The Coast Guard chose to name its latest fast-response cutter after Flores. The ship is being launched from the Bollinger Shipyards in southern Louisiana and will undergo several months of testing before it is commissioned and joins the fleet. "This class of cutter is known as the Sentinel class," said Angela Hirsch, a spokeswoman for the Coast Guard in Washington. "Each of the fast-response cutters will be named for an individual in Coast Guard history who went above and beyond the call of duty and represents the very best of our service." Flores' parents, Robert and Julia Flores, still live in the same house in Benbrook. They can hardly comprehend that their son will continue to be remembered by a new group of Coast Guard personnel. "It is a great, great honor from our government," his 83-year-old mother said. The Floreses will not attend the launching, although they said they were not invited either. Because the Coast Guard is rolling out new cutters every few months, the service plans to have a ceremony only for the commissioning, Hirsch said. That is tentatively scheduled for late 2012. The cutter will then join the fleet in Miami, she said. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for all of us," Flores' older brother, Tom, said. It wasn't until about six months ago that the Flores family even knew that William Flores would be honored with a ship. It was Flores' nephew, a young boy he never met, who found it doing research on his uncle on the Internet. "He came to me and said, 'Tell me about Uncle Billy,'" his mother said. "I get too emotional. I couldn't tell him. I said, 'You should read about it yourself.'" Born in Carlsbad, N.M., in 1961, Flores was the sixth of seven children born to small-town New Mexico natives. His father worked in the potash mines there until he had an opportunity to move his family to the Fort Worth area in 1967 and work at what was then General Dynamics. As a young man eager to start a life of adventure, Flores pestered his parents during his senior year at Western Hills High School to let him drop out so he could join the Marine Corps. They told him they wouldn't give him permission, though, and he needed it since he was only 17. He didn't give up. He just changed goals. He presented them with an offer to let him join the Coast Guard. They relented and gave their permission. When Robert Flores, 84, had refused to let his son join the Marines, he knew he wasn't on solid parenting ground. He had done the same thing in 1944 during World War II. "I joined the Navy the day I turned 17," he said. "I was the youngest man on my ship. I didn't even shave yet. He had always been interested in my service, and I think that made him want to do the same thing." Flores' first assignment was in Galveston, where he took to his job with relish. "He liked to save lives," his father said. "That's why he lost his life." Flores worked on the 180-foot Coast Guard vessel Blackthorn, which had been undergoing extensive repairs and updates in Tampa, Fla. On the night of Jan. 28, 1980, the Blackthorn departed from Tampa Bay in the dark and collided with a 605-foot oil tanker named Capricorn. The Capricorn's anchor slashed the Blackthorn's hull open, and the Blackthorn started rolling portside and sinking. An orderly evacuation wasn't possible. Men started jumping in the water. Flores, however, stayed aboard, made his way to the starboard life jacket locker and began throwing life jackets to crewmen in the water. Even as more crewmen abandoned ship, Flores "remained behind to strap the life jacket locker door open with his own belt, thereby contributing to the survival of struggling shipmates who retrieved life jackets as they floated to the surface," according to his citation. "Even after most of the crew members abandoned ship, Seaman Apprentice Flores, with complete disregard for his own safety, remained on the inverted hull to assist trapped shipmates and provide aid and comfort to injured and disoriented shipmates," the citation


continued. Then the Blackthorn went down. Twenty-three men died that night, but 27 of them survived. The night of the collision, Flores' mother, aunt and youngest brother had been in a car wreck in far West Texas, returning from a funeral in Carlsbad. Robert Flores was on his way to the Colorado City hospital, undoubtedly when the Coast Guard was trying to reach him. At some point that night, one of Flores' daughters called the hospital and told him the Coast Guard was trying to reach him with bad news. "It took an eternity to get back here," his father said. "I didn't know what was going on." All the Coast Guard could tell the Floreses was that their son was missing. Day after day, they knew nothing of their son, except that it became clear he likely had not survived. "That was the longest time," his mother said. "Waiting and waiting and waiting. It was terrible." Finally, six days after the collision, Billy Flores' naked body washed ashore on the coast of Florida. The Floreses had a funeral at St. Patrick Cathedral downtown because it was much larger than their church, San Mateo Catholic just off Vickery Boulevard. They buried him near their home, in Benbrook Cemetery. Amid all the investigations into what happened and who was at fault that night, the actions of Flores were overlooked. In fact, no commendations were awarded to any men on that ship. "I think it was the magnitude of the whole thing," said Nations, who at the time was president of the Chief Petty Officers Association. "That was the Coast Guard's biggest peacetime tragedy. It was shocking. At Base Galveston, for six months people walked around and didn't even speak. The Coast Guard is a very small organization and very tightknit." But the men who survived that night kept talking about Flores, even if Coast Guard commanders weren't doing anything about it. Nations promised the Flores family that he wouldn't let it go and persuaded a close friend, former Master Chief of the Coast Guard Vince Patton, to help initiate another investigation. "I knew that Billy Flores had done something heroic," Nations said. "When I retired in 1994, I made the Flores family a promise that I would see this through concerning their son." Nations was present at Benbrook Cemetery in 2000 when the Coast Guard Medal was presented to Flores' parents, as were Patton and the former chief who recruited Flores in 1978. But over the last few years, he had not spoken to them and was unaware a cutter would be named for Flores until a reporter contacted him. "That's the best news I've gotten in a long time," he said. "You can bet I'll be there for the commissioning. I feel my promise to them has really been fulfilled." Note: The third ship in the Sentinel class of fast Coast Guard cutters, the William Flores is 154 feet long, generates speeds of close to 30 knots, and comes with one 25 mm chain gun and four .50-caliber machine guns. It will have a crew of 24 and serve a large role in drug interdiction, the government says. Brownsville Herald, November 26, 2011 No ID Yet, But Role Described The U.S. Attorney‘s Office continues to go through the alphabet, now introducing ―Person G‖ in the FBI investigations that have spun off from the racketeering case against former 404th state District Judge Abel C. Limas. Limas has pleaded guilty and been convicted of receiving bribes in exchange for favorable court rulings. He awaits sentencing. The inquiry into Limas snared alleged associates and spurred various investigations, bringing other suspects into the picture. ―Person G‖ surfaces from a branch inquiry. The individual has not been identified in federal public records — not even an indication if the suspect is a law enforcement officer, in the legal field, or something else altogether. But ―Person G‖ obviously rated a letter of the alphabet. Already, Persons A through F, named either in the charge against Limas or derivative indictments, have been identified in the indictments themselves or in complaints brought by the U.S. Attorney‘s Office, Southern District of Texas. Person A is Austin-based attorney Marc G. Rosenthal. Person B is Limas‘ middleman Jose Manuel Longoria. Person C is Jim Solis, an attorney and a former representative to the state Legislature. Person D is attorney Ray R. Marchan. Person E is attorney Jose Martin ―Joe‖ Valle. And Person F is Jaime Munivez, a

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/sections/valley-and-state/


former investigator with the Cameron County district attorney‘s office. Rosenthal, Marchan and Munivez have pleaded not guilty to the charges. Other defendants — ones who did not get a letter of the alphabet — are bondsman Francisco Cisneros, Karina Peña, and her husband, Armando Peña. They have pleaded guilty. The public record ties Longoria — who this past Monday pleaded guilty to his role in Limas‘ bribery scheme and other crimes — to Munivez and to Person G. Another person, who also didn‘t rate a letter of the alphabet, was brought into the picture as an unindicted co-conspirator in the plea agreement and summary of facts that Longoria signed; it was filed in the federal court record Monday. That‘s when Longoria, 52, of San Benito pleaded guilty to four of five charges that had been leveled against him. He pleaded to one count of conspiracy to extort, two counts of extortion, and one count of aiding Limas in his bribery scheme. As part of the plea agreement, the U.S. Attorney‘s Office agreed to recommend dismissal of a charge alleging conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute more than five kilos of cocaine, the federal court record indicates. According to the plea agreement, the FBI investigation found that Longoria assisted individuals in criminal drug activity and in providing fraudulent documents and information. He also assisted in obtaining bribe money for Limas. Person G Longoria‘s plea agreement contains a summary of facts that he signed off on. It states that Longoria assisted a drug trafficker and his drug organization with their urgent attempt to recover a Georgia truck that was said to contain $800,000 in cash — drug proceeds — hidden inside. The truck had been reported missing in the Houston area. ―Longoria enlisted the help of Munivez and ‗Person G‘ to locate the truck,‖ the summary states. ―Longoria believed it had been impounded already and the owner, who reported it stolen, was afraid to claim it,‖ the record states. ―Longoria informed Person G that they would make between $40,000 to $50,000 and possibly even $80,000 to $90,000 for recovering it. Person G informed Longoria to ‗be careful because maybe they‘ll pick you up when . . . the truck is picked up and … they‘re (law enforcement) seeing, watching and they arrest you.‘ Longoria mentioned to Person G that ‗the owners of the money, are people who … know me. … We‘re not going to mention any names, right?‘ Person G replied, ‗Yeah, all right.‘‖ The court record indicates that Longoria told Person G that they would pay him $50,000 and that Person G had agreed. ―During this time, Person G contacted law enforcement authorities in Houston and the surrounding area as well as Georgia, in attempts to obtain information. At one point, Person G suggested to Longoria they wait, ‗be patient and not push it‘ for fear of arising suspicion by authorities that something might be hidden within the truck,‖ the federal court record notes. The truck couldn‘t be located so Longoria told the drug trafficker that Person G could provide a paper documenting the search to support the trafficker so that he would not have any problems with the intended and ultimate recipients of the drug money. The truck was finally recovered March 19, 2008, by the Rosenberg Police Department and Longoria alerted Person G saying that the trafficker would pay for Person G‘s ticket to fly to Houston and go with him (trafficker). ―On the same date in a later call, Person G called Longoria saying he would call Houston first to ask what would be needed for the release of the truck,‖ the record says. FBI agents alerted the Rosenberg Police Department about the truck and $289,290 in cash was seized. Fraudulent documents FBI agents determined Longoria was obtaining fraudulent documents and providing them to others for a fee. ―An undercover operation was initiated to determine the source of the documents. The investigation revealed the source to be Munivez,‖ the summary sheet of the facts that Longoria attested to states. Munivez served as an investigator with the Cameron County district attorney‘s office from Jan. 1, 2005, through May 9 of this year. He was charged with five crimes, including conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute more than 5 kilos of cocaine, conspiracy to extort and three counts of aiding extortion. According to Longoria‘s fact


summary, Longoria, with Munivez‘s assistance and position with the district attorney‘s office, extorted money from others and arranged for payments to Munivez. Federal officers used a confidential source that would ask Longoria to provide fraudulent documents so that the source could deceive his bosses in Mexico and steal money from a drug sale and disguise the loss as a seizure by law enforcement. Munivez allegedly produced the document for Longoria Nov. 20, 2007, indicating that $200,000 in drug proceeds was seized that day by an investigator with the district attorney‘s office. Longoria was paid about $10,000 for the document, a portion of which he allegedly paid to Munivez. According to Longoria‘s fact summary, Munivez admitted to creating the fake asset forfeiture document for Longoria in 2007 and that he had created two other similar documents for Longoria. Bicycle as payment Intercepted telephone calls in early 2008 showed that Longoria assisted in having Munivez provide information to a man named Pepe Villarreal on a pending murder charge. Villarreal was charged twice with murder, with both indictments ultimately dismissed. In return for the information, a bicycle allegedly was awarded to Munivez, who reportedly had traveled into Mexico to meet Villarreal. ―Longoria used this occasion to demonstrate to Villarreal that Longoria had someone working on the ‗inside‘ in the DA‘s Office,‖ Longoria‘s fact summary states. ―Intercepted calls revealed Longoria and Munivez met with Villarreal in Matamoros, Mexico.‖ The court record indicates that this could have been connected to a $400,000 bond that Villarreal had to post and that questions arose in 2008 about Villarreal‘s nonappearance in court. ―On Jan. 9, 2008, Longoria called Munivez. Longoria instructed Munivez to ‗erase it‘ because they were going to give him some good bonds. … Munivez stated he wanted to talk about it because something was not right with him,‖ the court record shows. The record indicates that on Jan. 23, 2008, Longoria asked if Limas was in his office and urged Munivez to ―get the order‖ that would be in Longoria‘s name because as he said, ―it‘s already paid for.‖ The record notes that Munivez said he would go in a little while and when Longoria again spoke to Munivez, Munivez said he had picked up the bicycle already. Longoria‘s fact summary notes that in a conversation, Munivez asked Longoria if Person G already knew that Villarreal had been indicted. The record says, ―Longoria added that this would be a ‗little job to get gas money,‘‖ referring to another occasion to make some money. EXTORTION OF FAUSTINO FRANCO The record reflects that in another incident involving Longoria and Munivez, intercepted calls indicated that an unindicted co-conspirator and Longoria schemed to have Faustino Franco along with someone referred to as ―Chiquin‖ pay $1,000 to have a certain ―paper (charge/indictment)‖ disappear in a drug case against Franco. The U.S. Attorney‘s Office said that Longoria, Munivez and the other person conspired to extort money from Franco whom they falsely told had an arrest warrant outstanding. ―Longoria extorted the money while Munivez created the fraudulent warrant document to show to the individual. In return for the money, Longoria promised the warrant would ‗disappear,‘‖ the U.S. Attorney‘s Office said. Munivez allegedly created the document at the DA‘s Office and provided it to Longoria. Franco and Chiquin were allegedly extorted out of $1,000 of which Longoria and the unindicted co-conspirator would each ultimately keep $400 and Munivez would get paid $200, the summary fact sheet states. PEÑA CASE Longoria‘s plea agreement and fact summary notes that in numerous criminal cases, including a case against Armando Peña, Limas used Longoria to negotiate deals and to arrange for the payments of the bribes. Limas and his associates referred to the bribe payments and kickbacks as loans, though they were never to be repaid, or as pumpkins, signs, candy, sheets, tacos or golf balls. Longoria and the Peñas admitted to having paid Longoria money to bribe Limas in


return for Limas‘ judicial order allowing Armando Peña, who was on probation for aggravated robbery, to report by mail from Arkansas to his probation officer in Brownsville Armando Peña admitted to wiring $1,800 to a relative of Longoria‘s in order to bribe Limas. Longoria also admitted to this. Of that, Limas got $1,500 and Longoria $300. Longoria, Limas and the Peñas, along with other defendants, await sentencing. No one who has pleaded guilty has been sentenced. Armando Peña is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 30. Munivez‘s case is scheduled for jury selection Dec. 3. Longoria‘s sentencing is set for Feb. 27. He faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine up to $250,000 for each count. The Peña case spurred the three-year investigation by the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and the Brownsville Police Department, which continues. Economist, November 26, 2011 Shifting Sands: The Drug War’s Fifth Year Throws Up New Trends, For Better And Worse FIVE years ago next week, Felipe Calderón took office as Mexico‘s president and launched a crackdown against organised crime. Since then there has been a horrible predictability about the country‘s drug war: each year the number of deaths has risen, most of them concentrated in a handful of cities. But this year both those tendencies look as if they have started to change. The annual death toll seems to have plateaued at around 12,000. Hotspots have cooled, only for violence to invade places previously considered safe. Ciudad Juárez, in Chihuahua state and on the border with Texas, is the most striking example of this. For several years it has been the most dangerous place in Mexico and, by most counts, the world. A city of 1.3m, it saw more than 3,000 murders last year. Yet this year the number of mafia-related killings in Chihuahua has fallen by about a third, according to a tally by Reforma, a newspaper, as have kidnappings and car thefts. (The government has not released murder statistics in almost a year.) So far this year, Chihuahua state accounts for only around 15% of such murders in Mexico, down from a peak of 32%. The turnaround is the fruit of better co-operation between the municipal, state and federal branches of government, according to Héctor Murguía, Juárez‘s mayor. Such co-operation is not easy in Mexico, where policing is still divided between more than 2,000 separate forces, despite efforts by the federal government to pass a law to consolidate them. Mr Murguía is particularly proud of his new chief of police, Julian Leyzaola, hired from Tijuana, where he presided over a dramatic dip in the murder rate. Mr Leyzaola, a retired army officer, has detractors: on November 17th Baja California‘s human-rights commission accused him of torturing detainees in Tijuana, an accusation he rejects. Others are sceptical about the relevance of the government in reducing the violence in places such as Juárez and Tijuana. In both cities the powerful Sinaloa ―cartel‖ has been pushing to displace incumbent gangs. The dip in violence suggests that it has at last beaten or reached an accommodation with its rivals, believes David Shirk, head of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego. The Tijuana mob has been all but wiped out. The head of La Línea, a rival of Sinaloa in Juárez, was arrested in July. Some of these busts may be thanks to rival cartels‘ tip-offs. ―The government is an instrument that contributes—but whose hand is on the instrument?‖ asks Mr Shirk. Whatever the cause, both cities now appear increasingly to be the Sinaloa mob‘s turf: the army said that $15.3m in cash it seized in Tijuana this week belonged to them. Though Sinaloa‘s expansion may have slowed the violence in Juárez and Tijuana, elsewhere it has stirred it up (see map). Nuevo León, Mexico‘s richest state after the capital, was once one of its safest. But Sinaloa‘s attempts to dislodge the Zetas, their strongest rivals, from the state capital, Monterrey, have caused almost as many murders as in Chihuahua. Similarly, Sinaloa dispatched a group of ―Zeta killers‖ to cause havoc in previously-quiet Veracruz over the summer. The Zetas have retaliated, sending gunmen to Sinaloa‘s Pacific strongholds. Acapulco has already suffered; next may be Guadalajara, Mexico‘s second-largest city. It was protected by large numbers of federal police before and during the Pan American games. But the games finished on


November 20th. Predicting the traffickers‘ next moves has become harder because many cartels have split into smaller groups. Based on a survey of messages left online and at the scenes of executions, Eduardo Guerrero, a Mexican academic, estimates that in 2007 there were 11 organised-crime groups active in Mexico, whereas in 2010 there were 114. Mr Murguía says that there could be ten different mobs operating in Juárez alone. Separating the big gangs from opportunistic youths is not always easy. Some teenagers are turning to amateurish extortion rackets because there are few other opportunities (see article). ―The cry heard in Mexico is employment, employment, employment,‖ Mr Murguía says. Juárez must now hold on to its gains with fewer police. Only 2,500 federal cops patrol, down from 5,000 in January. ―We don‘t know which side the municipal police will play for,‖ says Hugo Almada, of the University of Juárez. Some believe that the local force has links with the Juárez cartel. But the federal cops are not wholly clean either: several dozen have been arrested over the past year for crimes including kidnapping, extortion and murder. The year has shown that the world‘s most dangerous city need not stay that way. Yet violence in places such as Nuevo León ―suggests that what has happened in Juárez can happen anywhere in Mexico,‖ Mr Shirk says. Too soon to celebrate.

AFP, November 26, 2011 In Mexico Drug War, Zetas Lay Claim To Sinaloa Turf GUADALAJARA, Mexico — The increasingly powerful Zetas are likely behind the killings of 50 people in strongholds of the rival Sinaloa cartel in western Mexico, analysts say, as a years-long drug war churns on. The message left by the Zetas near some of the 26 corpses found Thursday in Guadalajara, Mexico's second largest city, make the targets quite clear: the Sinaloa gang and its fugitive boss, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. The messages also apparently slam

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an alleged alliance between Guzman and the leaders of Sinaloa state, where 24 bodies were found Wednesday, and Jalisco state, of which Guadalajara is the capital. The killings come two months after a similar massacre in September, when 35 bodies were tipped out of trucks under a busy overpass in the eastern port of Veracruz -- an act attributed to the Zeta Killers, a group linked to Sinaloa. "Behind the attacks in Guadalajara and Sinaloa, there would appear to be a need for revenge, fueled by the attacks in Veracruz," Dante Haro, an investigator at the University of Guadalajara, told AFP. Haro emphasized the importance of the killings in Guadalajara, a city of more than four million people and relatively unscathed by the drug violence that has claimed some 45,000 lives since a government crackdown began in 2006. "Jalisco state had violence rates that were lower than those in other parts of Mexico, but crime is on the rise there," Haro said. He noted that authorities in Jalisco had captured several high-level traffickers and a Sinaloa boss was gunned down there in a security operation last year. Those incidents stripped Guadalajara of its prior status as a neutral zone in the drug war, "where the bosses could keep their families safe," Haro said. Raul Benitez Manuat, an expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico's North American Research Center, said a Zetas incursion on Sinaloa turf could open a new front in a war that has ravaged cities like Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, on the US border. Monterrey, an industrial center in the north, has seen increased violence in recent months. Until now, the Zetas -- set up by former army officers turned hitmen in the 1990s -- have operated mostly on the Gulf of Mexico coast in the east of the country. For Manuat, "such a blatant operation could be a harbinger for increased violence, now on the Pacific coast." In early October, the chief of intelligence for the US Drug Enforcement Administration, Rodney Benson, said the Sinaloa cartel had struck up an alliance against the Zetas with the Gulf cartel in the east and the La Familia cartel active in the western state of Michoacan. The Guadalajara killings could be the first counter-attack by the Zetas, considered to be the most violent of Mexico's drug gangs and blamed for spreading extortion, kidnappings and murders. They are believed to have been behind a casino bombing in Monterrey in August that left 52 people dead, as well as the execution of 72 illegal immigrants in August 2010. Some 45,000 deaths have been blamed on rising drug violence since late 2006, when President Felipe Calderon launched a massive crackdown on the drug cartels involving tens of thousands of troops. Tucson Sentinel. Com, November 26, 2011 Drug War Spills Over Into Honduras: Murder Rate Is On The Rise, And Police Are Part Of The Problem TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — To be fair, this country is a tough place for a lawman. Starting police pay is about $250 a month, and job duties include battling criminals armed with automatic weapons and limitless drug cash. Deep departmental corruption and disorder chock the wheels of justice even when the bad guys get caught. But at a time when Honduras urgently needs a functional law enforcement presence capable of lowering the country‘s staggering homicide rate — the highest in the world in 2010, according to a new U.N. report — its police force has hit a low point. It‘s not a question of bribe-taking or petty corruption, which are accepted as supplemental income for police in this part of the world. But in recent months, as transnational drug trafficking organizations push deeper into the country to secure new cocaine routes through Central America, Honduran police seem to be making matters worse. In a case that has become emblematic of the security crisis in Honduras, the 22-year-old son of the president of the national university was murdered last month along with a friend after a late-night traffic stop by police here in the capital. Forensic evidence gathered by the university‘s own investigators pointed to four young officers, who were later taken into custody. But within days, the suspects were released. A national outcry followed and the officers were ordered rearrested, but they had already fled, forcing the police to offer reward money for their recapture


just days after releasing them. Several of the country‘s top police commanders were fired as the scandal widened. ―The problem isn‘t that the (police) are overwhelmed by crime. The problem is that they‘re working with the criminals,‖ said Julieta Castellanos, the university president whose son, Rafael Alejandro, was allegedly shot at close range in the family car while returning home from a birthday party. A friend, Carlos David Pineda, was riding in the passenger seat, and Castellanos said he was driven to the outskirts of the city and executed an hour and a half later. Honduras recorded 82.1 killings per 100,000 residents in 2010, making it the most violent country in the world, followed by El Salvador, with 66 killings per 100,000. In the 2011 United Nations‘ Global Study on Homicide released last month, Central America stands out as the deadliest region on the planet. Police officials and security experts blame the soaring murder rate on the drug trade, as Mexican cartels look to evade tougher enforcement further north by using Central America as a primary artery for moving cocaine. But thousands of ordinary Hondurans have been killed in recent years who appear to have nothing to do with the narcotics smuggling. Castellanos said she did not know why her son was killed, but said that kidnappings and extortion schemes targeting motorists had become common in the middle-class neighborhood where the young men were driving that night. She said she believed higher-ranking police officials were involved, and that investigators in the case were the targets of an intimidation campaign. ―They have been threatened. Their cars have been followed,‖ said Castellanos, a sociologist who formerly directed the country‘s leading data-gathering center for violence and homicide, her own son now a statistic. Police officials acknowledged the case has further diminished already-poor public perceptions of their officers at a particularly sensitive time. ―Mistakes were made, and now we‘re taking steps to correct them,‖ said police commander Antonio Somoza in an interview here, vowing to re-capture the officers suspected in the killing. While it is widely accepted here among victims of crime and their families that Honduras‘ legal system is stacked against the poor, the murder of Castellanos‘ son has stunned many who say it shows not even the country‘s elite are not spared from the cycle of murder and immunity. In another recent case, a popular community leader in the tough Ciudad Planeta neighborhood outside the northern city of La Lima was taken into police custody in late August, never to be seen again. ―The worst thing is not knowing whether if he‘s alive or dead,‖ said Marta Cruz, whose brother, Jose Reinaldo Cruz, had been threatened for complaining of police abuses against residents in his neighborhood. ―We don‘t know if he‘s cold, or hungry, or sick,‖ she said. Cruz‘s neighborhood is a stronghold of the feared 18th Street gang, and police accused her brother of working for the criminals because he lived within their territory. ―If he were a gang leader, why did he die poor?‖ his sister asked, saying the family was four months behind on mortgage payments and at risk of losing their home. The United States has spent at least $50 million on security aid to Honduras in recent years, with programs to train police investigators, prosecutors, prison guards and others. But many here say that corruption and institutional dysfunction has only grown worse since the 2009 coup that toppled leftist president Jose Manuel Zelaya, as that the forces of organized crime burrow deeper into the government and security forces. ―If people see crime in their communities but they don‘t report it because they don‘t trust the police, then where are we?‖ said a US official working here, who could not be identified due to security protocols. ―The public trust has been broken repeatedly.‖ Honduran security forces have made important gains, U.S. diplomats note, including the largest seizure of assets in the country‘s history in an Oct. 24 multi-agency raid that confiscated in $24 million in cash and property from criminal suspects. But that operation was soon obscured by a fresh embarrassment, when Honduran officials revealed Oct. 31 that 300 assault rifles, 300,000 rounds of ammunition and other weapons had been stolen from the armory of an elite police unit in 2009, only to be kept quiet until now.

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Insight Crime, November 25, 2011 Guatemala And The Black Market For US Weapons The trafficking of weapons over the U.S.-Mexico border is well-documented -- lesser known but also significant is the sale of U.S. weapons to Guatemalan government contractors, which are then siphoned off to criminal groups. The Mexican government has focused much of its efforts to stop arms trafficking on the smuggling of weapons over the U.S. border. This strategy ignores other sources of weapons, and other entry points. Central America, for example, represents a major source of weapons. U.S. authorities have said that the vast majority of high-caliber, non-conventional weapons seized in Mexico come not from the U.S., but from Central American military arsenals. Guatemala is a major source country for Mexico's guns, with both weapons left over from the Cold War and ones trafficked into the country from the U.S. Many of these weapons are imported to Guatemala by government contractors, who then sell them on to private security firms. The three-stage process was described by Rafael Antonio, a retired Guatemalan military officer, in an interview with Noticias Televisa. Import: Many trafficked weapons are imported from the U.S. via government contractors. These contractors import small quantities of weapons from U.S. warehouses, and then sell them on to the government and to private security firms. Buying prices range from $700 to $1,000, and selling prices from $2,200 and $2,500. There is no control on the amount of weapons that contractors import, so, for example, if the government makes an order of 5,000 weapons, the company can legally purchase a greater amount, say 10,000, and do what they please with the surplus. Diverting weapons to the black market: Once inside the country, weapons are lightly regulated, meaning they can be sold without leaving a paper trail. Due to corruption of some public officials, many weapons are not registered to the General Directive for the Control of Weapons and Munitions (DIGECAM), according to the testimony. A middleman facilitates these business transactions through a number of front companies for armored clothing and lease/purchase of armored vehicles, and handles the paperwork for imports. Besides the lack of a legal framework for the import of weapons, the middleman also bribes state officials to turn a blind eye to transactions with third parties, sometimes criminal groups. Cross-border smuggling: Finally, the weapons are taken into Mexico; either smuggled through border crossings by the vendors, or by the buyers after being handed over close to the border. Sometimes they are transported by sea or through unofficial entry points along the border. This process is just one of the several methods used to traffic weapons in Guatemala. As with other countries in the region, institutional weakness is widespread and corruption is rampant, so it is not uncommon for criminal groups to obtain firearms from weapons caches with help from corrupt military officers. Border control Despite the amount of arms smuggled over Mexico's southern border, most of the investment in border control to counter organized crime has gone to the U.S. border, with an investment of about $287.5 million in 2009 as part of U.S.'s Merida Initative, while the southern border received only $3 million of U.S. aid that year. A recent study by the CESOP (Centro de Estudios Sociales y de Opinion Publica), a government commission tasked with diagnosing the state of the customs service in Mexico, found that customs operations are porous, run as a closed system and managed by various individual interests, and lack a proper institutional design. The report states that illicit smuggling is prevalent because of incompetence, corruption, and lack of technological infrastructure. It goes on to say that in 2006 and 2007 only 2 percent of illegal weapons (900) were confiscated at customs, while the rest (38,404) were confiscated inside the country in raids by the military. Corruption was singled out as the main problem affecting border management and the customs service. The commission claimed there had been a significant rise in the perception of corruption in the customs service, mentioning

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http://www.informador.com.mx/mexico/2011/284933/6/lanza-eu-plan-de-seguridad-en-la-frontera-sur-mexicana.htm

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bribes and threats against customs agents by drug trafficking organizations as the most prevalent issues. Mexico could invest more in border control, but only by reforming its mafia-like customs service will it see any tangible results. This could eventually lead to a more competent border management that can reduce illicit trafficking on the south border, as well as the north. National Post, November 25, 2011 Fifty Dead Bodies Discovered In Two Days In Western Mexico Drug Vendetta

Alejandro Acosta / Reuters

Soldiers arrive at a crime scene where a truck with several dead bodies inside had been parked in Guadalajara November 24,

2011

GUADALAJARA, Mexico — Fifty dead bodies have been discovered over the past two days in

western Mexico, victims of a fierce war waged between the government and the nation‘s

powerful drug cartels. The bodies of 26 young men were dumped in three vehicles near a busy

intersection in Guadalajara. It bore the signs of a drug vendetta and a chilling message of more

to come in Mexico‘s second city, set to host an international book fair this weekend.

The gruesome find came the day after 24 bodies were discovered in the city of Culiacan, in

northwestern Sinaloa state. A message found with the latest bodies said the peace enjoyed by

the states of Jalisco and Sinaloa, allegedly as a result of agreements between local authorities

and the Sinaloa cartel, was over.


―There were 26 corpses altogether, all male and aged from 25 to 35 years,‖ Fernando Guzman, a top official in Jalisco state, of which Guadalajara is capital, told a news conference Thursday. Most of the men had been asphyxiated, some were naked and some marked with the words Milenio and Zetas — the names of drug gangs — in oil, Mr. Guzman said. The Zetas — set up by ex-army officers turned hitmen in the 1990s — are blamed for extortion, kidnappings and


murders in ever-increasing areas of Mexico. The Milenio gang is known to operate in the region and media reports recently suggested it had joined forces with the Zetas. ―The Zetas are present in the north of Jalisco and they could have aligned with the Milenio gang … to fight for the plaza (drug trafficking area) of Guadalajara,‖ said Dante Haro, an investigator at the University of Guadalajara. Jalisco state, known as a stronghold of the Sinaloa cartel of fugitive billionaire druglord Joaquin ―El Chapo‖ Guzman, has seen drug violence increase in recent months, including shootouts and roadblocks early in the year. Governor Emilio Gonzalez said on his Twitter account he was ―outraged‖ by the discovery of the bodies and called for a probe. The spectacular act of dumping bodies on a busy highway echoed another in September in which 35 bodies were tipped out of trucks under a busy overpass in the eastern port of Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico. ―It looks like a copy of what happened in Veracruz,‖ said Jose Reveles, author of several books on drug trafficking. But he said it was necessary to wait for the results of an inquiry. Authorities blamed the Veracruz killings on the New Generation drug gang, which has suspected ties to the Sinaloa gang and also calls itself the Zeta Killers. The vehicles found Thursday was close to the city‘s convention center, which will host the Guadalajara International Book Fair, the most important event of its kind in the Spanish-speaking world, starting this weekend.

Fox News, November 25, 2011 Poll Said 60 Pct Of Mexicans Believe Gov't Losing War On Cartels Mexico City – Six in 10 Mexicans say the government is losing the war on violent drug cartels, while just 20 percent believe the opposite to be true, according to a new survey by polling firm Mitofsky and the non-governmental organization Mexico United against Crime. The 9th National Survey on the Perception of Citizen Insecurity found that three in 10 people think the situation will worsen in 2012, 40 percent thinks it will remain the same and only one in 10 is confident the government can win the drug war. The poll was conducted from Oct. 21-24 in 1,000 households nationwide. A total of 86 percent of the respondents proposed increasing the number of soldiers deployed to areas of the country hardest hit by cartel turf battles and clashes between the drug mobs and security forces, such as northern Mexico. Four in 10 think U.S. agents should be allowed to operate in Mexican territory to combat the cartels and an equal number of those surveyed said they would be in favor of legalizing drugs. President Felipe Calderon militarized the struggle against the nation's well-funded, heavily armed drug gangs shortly after taking office in December 2006, deploying tens of thousands of federal police and army soldiers to drug-war flashpoints. The strategy has led to headline-grabbing captures of cartel kingpins, but drug-related violence has skyrocketed and claimed nearly 50,000 lives nationwide over the five-year period. According to a leading international human rights group, the deployment of the military also has led to "widespread human rights violations." "Instead of reducing violence, Mexico's 'war on drugs' has resulted in a dramatic increase in killings, torture, and other appalling abuses by security forces, which only make the climate of lawlessness and fear worse in many parts of the country," New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a recent report. Alertnet, November 25, 2011 Mexico: Displacement Due To Criminal And Communal Violence There are currently several situations of internal displacement in Mexico. Possibly the largest has been caused since 2007 by the violence of drug cartels and the government's military response. This has caused displacement in the states of Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, Nuevo LeÃ³n, Durango, Guerrero, Sinaloa and MichoacÃ¡n. This displacement has been little documented, and more comprehensive studies of its scale and impact are needed. Three cases of mass displacement reportedly caused the displacement of some 3,000 people; otherwise the violence

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has caused gradual displacement which has been reported only rarely. However, a research centre which documented displacement in Ciudad JuÃ¡rez found that up to 220,000 people had left their place of residence in the area over three years as a result of the violence, of which about half reportedly remained in the country as IDPs. A private consultancy report cited by several media sources has suggested that the violence has internally displaced 1.6 million people in the last five years; however the report is not publicly available and the basis of the figure is unknown. People fleeing drug-cartel violence have often not found security in their place of displacement. Another main challenge has been the physical and legal protection of their housing, land and property. Some IDPs have lost their identity documents as a result of their sudden displacement, and have subsequently been unable to access social services. While no proper assessments of IDPs' access to basic necessities have been conducted, it has been generally assumed that they support themselves or rely on extended family networks. The longest-running situation of displacement was caused by the Zapatista uprising in 1994 in the state of Chiapas. Indigenous communities that support the Zapatista movement have continued to be displaced and have also caused the displacement of people not aligned with the Zapatista movement, and recent estimates have suggested that between 9,000 and 24,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) remain in protracted displacement. In Chiapas and in the neighbouring states of Oaxaca and Guerrero displacement has also been caused by religious tensions within indigenous communities. Meanwhile, in Oaxaca, indigenous triqui communities have also been displaced by attacks by paramilitary groups. IDPs in all these states have limited access to livelihoods, and there have been no initiatives to restitute their land. The government has recognised and taken some steps to address the protracted displacement following the Zapatista uprising. The other smaller situations in Chiapas and its neighbouring states of Oaxaca and Guerrero have received much less attention. In this context, an internal displacement bill proposed in 2011 by the government of Chiapas, and a decision by the Mexican senate to provide more funds to support indigenous IDPs, have been notable developments. Austin American Statesman, November 24, 2011 Austin Police Highway Team Looking For Smugglers

Rodolfo Gonzalez/AMERICAN-STATESMAN

Austin police use drug dogs, like Ringo, in training this month, only to sniff around vehicles and trailers, not people, says Sgt. Jason Mutchler, who leads the drug interdiction unit

It started when an Austin police officer on Interstate 35 noticed a tan Suburban with Mexican plates driving south near U.S. 290 at between 55 and 65 mph "well below the traffic flow," the officer wrote in an arrest affidavit. He eventually pulled the vehicle over in Buda, and after some questioning and keen observations — and help from his drug-detecting dog — he searched the truck and found a hidden compartment under the front seat, according to court documents. Inside the compartment was about $250,000, the documents said. The find was the biggest by a member of the Austin Police Department's highway drug interdiction team, which was created just over a year ago. Officials hope the six officer-unit — each with a drug dog in tow — can


slow the drug trade by seizing marijuana, heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine heading north and cash and guns heading south. Police Chief Art Acevedo said he created the unit to continue the philosophy that he brought to the department when he was hired in 2007 — that officers should go after the biggest drug cases they can find. "I think we were doing a good job on street-level narcotics enforcement," Acevedo said. "I told my organized crime division we need to start focusing on the bigger fish." Highway drug interdiction has been a major part of U.S. drug enforcement for decades, and I-35 has been a major trafficking avenue. Officers in jurisdictions near Austin — including Round Rock police and the Williamson County sheriff's office — have regularly made large scores of drugs and cash from traffic stops on I-35 over the years. Austin police, though, have made relatively few major catches, according to officers and past reviews of court documents. "It wasn't a priority," said Sgt. Jason Mutchler, a former highway patrol officer who oversees the drug interdiction unit. Greg Thrash, resident agent in charge of the Austin office of the Drug Enforcement Agency, said major highway catches often lead to bigger cases against drug trafficking organizations. "The intelligence gained off one of these interdiction seizures can be a treasure trove," he said. Federal agents can often link a major highway seizure with an existing investigation — often one under way in a different part of the country. They also use information provided by the couriers they arrest to build cases against drug organizations that they had not known about. More than 200,000 vehicles a day use I-35 in Central Austin, so identifying drug traffickers is not easy. Mutchler compared it to "trying to find a needle in a haystack magnified 10 times." Mutchler declined to talk specifically about the signs interdiction officers look for, but he said they are trained to avoid racial profiling, or stopping people based on race or ethnicity. He said officers stop someone only after they observe a traffic violation and that they deploy dogs — which can be done without a search warrant — to sniff around vehicles and trailers but never people. It's during the stop when the real work of a successful interdiction officer begins, he said. "A big part of it is just learning how to talk to people and learning how to recognize verbal cues or picking up on body language," Mutchler said. According to court documents that outline major interdiction cases, officers regularly separate occupants to ask them about their fellow passengers and the reason for their trip, listening for contradictions. They take note of signs of nervousness and even look for emblems and signals that they say are associated with drug trafficking. One officer wrote that a single key in the vehicle ignition, unaccompanied by other keys, could be a sign of smuggling. A Round Rock police sergeant who stopped a female driver in April for following another vehicle too closely noted in an arrest affidavit that the woman was wearing a necklace depicting Santa Muerte — "a symbol," he wrote, "used by money and drug traffickers for protection." After the woman granted the officer permission to search her vehicle, he found $251,590 in the airbag compartment, according to the affidavit. Mutchler said that taken separately, things like being nervous or wearing a Santa Muerte necklace could mean nothing. "It's like a jigsaw puzzle," he said. "You put the pieces together." After the cash found in the Suburban, the next biggest haul off the highway for Austin drug interdiction officers was a June stop that yielded more than $70,000 from a woman wearing a homemade bodysuit to hold wads of cash.


Insight Crime, November 24, 2011 Drug Gangs Could Make Old Land Conflict Boil Over in South Mexico

A long-running land conflict in southern Mexico is causing new problems, and the situation is made more

dangerous by the prospect of intervention from drug trafficking groups and illegal logging interests.

The Chimalapas rainforest, located on the border between the southern Mexican states of Oaxaca and Chiapas, is the largest tract of tropical rainforest in Mexico. Its 2,300 square miles are home to a wealth of natural resources, as well as a large percentage of the country‘s biodiversity. However, it is also home to a decades-old land conflict, one that could get worse as criminal activity increases in the region. Because the boundary separating the two states lies in remote forest, the precise location of the border is poorly defined. As such, when the Chiapas government decided to create four new municipalities in the Chimalapas region earlier this month, it angered Oaxacan farmers in the area who have long claimed that the territory is theirs. In response to the announcement, the Oaxacans have imposed roadblocks around the communities, effectively cutting them off from larger towns nearby and stopping them selling their agricultural goods. The federal government has since sent troops to the area to keep the peace, but residents claim that their movement remains limited. Complicating this conflict is the fact that the Chimalapas region sees a significant amount of organized criminal activity such as drug trafficking and illegal logging. In a recent interview with Mexico‘s Milenio, Chiapas state Interior Minister Noe Castañon Leon told the publication that the presence of criminal groups could complicate the conflict. ―[Chimalapas] is a complex area, a difficult area,‖ Castañon said. ―It is one of the most beautiful in Chiapas, there's the whole pine reserve, and we obviously we have rare wood across the region, rich in vegetation and well ... there is a strong incentive for those who seek to illegally harvest the timber.‖ Timber disputes have also been fueled by organized criminal groups in Cheran, Michoacan state, where locals barricaded their town against government forces in protest against the authorities' failure to stop illegal wood-cutters backed by the dominant Familia Michoacana drug gang. Drug trafficking groups are also active in the Chimalapas region, and local officials claim that poppy and marijuana cultivation is widespread. This does not bode well for the future of the Chimapalas conflict. While it‘s not clear whether they maintain links to criminal activity in the region, the dominant criminal group in Chiapas is the Zetas, who are known as most violent of Mexico‘s cartels. They also enjoy a reputation for infiltrating the military, meaning that the troop presence may not be entirely

http://www.insightcrime.org/country-profiles/mexico/item/87-mexico-country-profile

http://insightcrime.org/criminal-activities/drug-trafficking/item/504-drug-trafficking

http://impreso.milenio.com/node/9066144

http://insightcrime.org/insight-latest-news/item/899-vigilantes-take-over-mexico-town

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effective. The cartel was initially composed almost exclusively of former Special Forces soldiers, and actively attempts to recruit members of the military with promises of better pay. To make matters worse, evidence suggests that the increased troop presence could serve as a irritant for the land conflict, as it could provoke the ire of drug trafficking organizations in the region. As InSight Crime has reported, troop surges have a mixed record in Mexico. In places where the military was deployed to fight drug cartels, homicide rates actually spiked. After the military began patrolling Ciudad Juarez in 2007, for instance, homicide rates in the state of Chihuahua rose from 14.4 murders per 100,000 people to 75.2 in 2008 and 108.5 in 2009. Nogales International, November 23, 2011 Tunnel Discoveries Offer Lessons For Landlords Leslie Lawson, chief of the Border Patrol's Nogales Station, has some advice for local landlords who rent property along the border with Mexico. Background checks on prospective renters are a good idea, she said, and once a place is rented, keep an eye out for things like vehicles coming and going at odd hours, or tenants who go incommunicado for long periods of time. What's more, she said, "in the event of a tunnel ... the dirt has to go somewhere. So, be on the lookout for any large amounts of dirt that may not appear to belong to the residence." Lawson offered the advice on Tuesday as she stood in front of an apartment on the 300 block of West International Street where, the evening before, Border Patrol agents uncovered the opening to a cross-border tunnel jammed with 26 bundles of marijuana. It was the second tunnel discovered at a West International Street rental property in less than a week: On Nov. 15, authorities uncovered the opening to a tunnel beneath the wooden patio of a rental home approximately 300 feet west of Monday's find. The latest tunnel discovery came in response to information provided to the Border Patrol by the Nogales Police Department. NPD Assistant Chief Roy Bermudez said the lead came as a result of a traffic stop, but declined to provide additional details, citing an ongoing investigation. Acting on the information from NPD, Border Patrol agents obtained a search warrant for the first-floor apartment. Entering the front bedroom on Monday evening, the agents saw that the floor beneath a mattress had been disturbed, so they "pulled open the carpet and they found the tunnel," Lawson said. The passageway, which extends 219 feet on the U.S. side of the fence and at least another 100 feet on the Mexican side, emitted a strong smell of marijuana. When the agents went in for a closer look, they found "bundle after bundle after bundle" of the drug, Lawson said. In all, the dope load hauled out of the tunnel on the U.S. side weighed close to 450 pounds and was valued at approximately $215,000. Meanwhile, after a call from the Border Patrol, police in Mexico conducted a door-to-door search of a nearby neighborhood of Nogales, Sonora until, while searching one home, they found the southern entrance to the tunnel. They also arrested one person believed to be involved in the operation and pulled another 100 pounds of marijuana from the passageway. There were no arrests on the U.S. side, but the investigation is ongoing, Lawson said. ‘Point-to-point' Border Patrol Agent Kevin Hecht, who went into the tunnel, said it was outfitted with water pumps, lighting and ventilation fans. "The air quality in it is pretty good," he said. In some areas, it had been chiseled through solid rock. In others, where the soil is looser, the tunnelers built wooden shoring. At its deepest point, the tunnel runs about 22 feet below street level. But since the U.S. apartment building where it exits is uphill from Mexico, the total south-to-north elevation gain is 40-to-45 feet, Hecht said. Unlike the tunnel found down the street on Nov. 15, this one does not connect to any drainage pipes. Lawson called it a "point-to-point" tunnel. However, like last week's tunnel, this one skirts the footer of the new $11.8-million border fence that was completed this past summer. "The investigation did show that it went below the actual footer of the fence, so we believe at least a portion of it was (dug) after the fence was erected," Lawson said.

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Musty air On Tuesday, the Border Patrol allowed members of the media into the West International Street apartment to see the tunnel entrance. The cramped apartment was musty and dank - unusual conditions for an Arizona home, and a good indicator that this one was connected to a subterranean passageway. Lawson said that unusual humidity or seepage stains are additional clues that landlords can use to detect illicit activity from renters. "If they see mold growing up walls where they don't have a leak," she said, it might suggest that a tenant is doing some indoor excavating. Lawson declined to discuss the owners of the apartment building, citing the ongoing investigation. "However," she said, offering up another piece of advice for property owners, "a landlord, as long as they cooperate with us and work with authorities, we will take that into consideration as the investigation continues."

From right: Leslie Lawson, chief of the Border Patrol’s Nogales Station; Border Patrol Agent Kevin Hecht;

and Nogales Assistant Police Chief Roy Bermudez speak to reporters Tuesday outside the West International

Street apartment building where the tunnel was discovered.

KHOU, November 23, 2011 Prosecutors: 4 Men Accused Of Killing Informant Were Trying To Pull Off 'Drug Rip' HOUSTON—It was supposed to be what‘s known in law enforcement circles as a "drug rip." Ambush a truck hauling marijuana from the Valley, and then steal the drugs—along with the truck—at gunpoint. Police say Eric De Luna is the man who planned it all and recruited three others to help him pull it off. De Luna was visibly distressed as he was led into a Harris County courtroom Wednesday morning. A skull tattooed on his left arm as he stood before the judge, De Luna claimed he‘d been beaten up by investigators. His face was clearly bruised. "Eric De Luna was struck twice at the scene by law enforcement cars trying to stop the shooting," said prosecutor Terese Buess. It all played out like a scene from a Hollywood script. The 18-wheeler, driven by a confidential informant working with undercover officers, was passing through northwest Harris County Monday afternoon when it was ambushed by three SUVs. The cab was sprayed with bullets, killing the driver. Prosecutors say Fernando Tavera admitted to pulling the trigger. An undercover sheriff‘s deputy was also shot in the leg during the confusion, possibly by friendly fire. "There was a lot of law enforcement on the scene because of the nature of the investigation that was being conducted," said Buess. Three of the four


suspects are believed to be here illegally from Mexico, and the DEA is investigating possible ties to a Mexican drug cartel. "We know we have cartel remnants here from Mexico," said Jarvier Pena, special agent in charge of the DEA‘s Houston division. "We have violent groups, and we need to remember that violence and drugs go hand in hand. These people will do anything to sell their dope." At the very least, Pena said, they‘re dealing with a Houston-based drug trafficking organization that‘s not afraid to use violence. More arrests are likely to follow. All four suspects – De Luna, Tavera, Ricardo Ramirez and Rolando Resendiz—have been

charged with capital murder and were being held in the Harris County jail Wednesday without

bond.

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