Border Issues: Mexico

Military Veterans & Soldiers…we thank you!

borderissuesmex — Sat, 26 May 2012 17:59:31 +0000

More Violence in Mexico…

borderissuesmex — Fri, 25 May 2012 20:31:54 +0000

Locals look at the screening of names of 10,000 victims of violence in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, on the facade of Annunciation House, a shelter for immigrants and indigent people in the US city of El Paso on April 23, 2012. Annunciation House organized a mournful tribute called Voice of the Voiceless in which more than 10,000 names were screened on the facade of the building

A woman covers her daughter with a towel as they walk past a crime scene in the municipality of San Nicolas de los Garza, neighboring Monterrey, on September 14, 2011. Six men were gunned down by unknown assailants in separate incidents in this municipality, local media reported.

Medical workers stand next to the bodies of 10 men and one woman, discovered in a pile near a well in Valle de Chalco, Mexico

Children lie on the ground among silhouettes representing people allegedly killed by soldiers during Mexico’s drug war, during a protest organized by the National Regeneration Movement, MORENA, at the Zocalo central square in Mexico City, on March 4, 2012. Mexico’s Defense Secretary Guillermo Galvan recently conceded that the military has committed errors in the fight against organized crime and drug traffickers, such as torture, homicide and drug-trafficking but said those responsible have been punished.

A truck burns on the road in Guadalajara, Mexico, on March 9, 2012. Drug criminals set 25 city buses and other vehicles on fire in 16 different places, spreading fear throughout Mexico’s second-largest city after an army operation, according to officials.

An abandoned neighborhood in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, on March 30, 2012. Violence in Ciudad Juarez has changed the lives of its residents, where many have fled. Among those who remain, anxious mothers look for missing daughters, families cross the border daily to sleep in neighboring Texas, and men live alone among abandoned houses.

Pictures of victims of violence are hung on the facades and walls of houses in the neighborhood of Cerro Gordo in Ecatepec, outside Mexico City, on March 7, 2012. The Murrieta Foundation opened an exhibition called “Giving face to the victims in Ecatepec” with 15 giant photographs placed on houses as part a campaign against violence (rape of women, kidnappings, murders and robberies) in Ecatepec.

More Violence in Mexico…

borderissuesmex — Sun, 20 May 2012 00:06:49 +0000

CAUTION

There may be graphic photographs that accompany some articles in the body of this report. It is not our intention to sensationalize. We include these photos in order to give to you, the American public, a clearer understanding of the seriousness of the situation in Mexico and Central America.

**Asterisk denotes death involving a police officer or a member of the military serving in that capacity. Some items may be from notirex.com, lapoliciaca.com or historiasdelnarco.com. There are too many killings to list all of them.

MEXICO CITY

The Canadian RCMP fear that the murder of Thomas Grigsby, a Canadian drug trafficker from Vancouver, BC in Mexico may trigger a gang war between several gangs. Two other Canadian traffickers were found dead in Puerto Vallarta last year. In January, a Montreal policeman was beaten in Playa el Carmen for trying to take a photo of a Hells Angel from Quebec, Canada.

CULIACAN, SINALOA

The month of April closed with 143 executed, making a year’s total of 511 here only.

SAN LUIS POTOSI

Seven executed in a 24 hour period. Of note is that several of these don’t seem to be related to organized crime but rather personal quarrels and robbery.

ARTEAGA, COAHUILA

Narco graves just located have revealed the naked and burned bodies of 3 women, aged between 20 and 30 years. No other information was released.

ZAPOPAN, JALISCO*

A 23 year old municipal police officer was kidnapped from his home. The body of Daniel Máximo Flores was found 2 days later.

NUEVO LEÓN

About 4 am Tuesday, gunmen attacked the headquarters of the municipal police in Linares with heavy weapons, but without injuring anyone. In Palomas, municipal police responded to a report of a robbery at a business. While speaking with employees there, they came under fire from gunmen. One officer was grazed, and another was struck in the chest and is in serious condition at a local hospital.

CULIACAN, SINALOA

The body of a man, bound hand and foot, was dumped under a bridge and then burned. His age was estimated to be under 25.

BOCA DEL RIO, VERACRUZ

Two journalist’s bodies were found by authorities Thursday May 3rd, dismembered and within 4 bags. Both had been tortured before being butchered.

________________

Violence in Mexico…

borderissuesmex — Sun, 20 May 2012 00:03:31 +0000

CAUTION

There may be graphic photographs that accompany some articles in the body of this report. It is not our intention to sensationalize. We include these photos in order to give to you, the American public, a clearer understanding of the seriousness of the situation in Mexico and Central America.

ECATEPEC, STATE OF MEXICO

The PRI candidate for city council Miguel Ángel Barrera López, former city clerk until a week ago, was gunned down while driving Friday. His driver was wounded.

CIUDAD JUAREZ, CHIHUAHUA

The Mayor announced Friday that in the past 3 years, 219 municipal police officers have been slain, 120 in just the past 18 months.

The U.S. Embassy in San Salvador wishes to remind U.S. citizens traveling to or residing in El Salvador that El Salvador is rated CRITICAL for crime. A critical threat rating exists when there is a continuous serious threat for crime. The Embassy has noticed a recent trend in credit card cloning and similar fraud. Credit card fraud can be difficult to recover from and can adversely affect your credit score and financial health. Using a credit card is safer than using an ATM card or Debit Card to pay. With the latter, the money is transferred out of the account at the very moment of the transaction, and it is usually not recoverable or contestable.

Cartel Gains/Losses…2012

borderissuesmex — Fri, 18 May 2012 15:10:51 +0000

Brutal Murders Near U.S.-Mexican Border Raise Suspicions About Drug Cartels

borderissuesmex — Thu, 17 May 2012 00:19:17 +0000

Photographer:

Julio Cesar Aguilar – AFP

On Sunday, May 13, Mexican police found 49 mutilated bodies, believed by some to be migrants, on a road that connects the industrial city of Monterrey with the United States border.

The corpses had their hands, heads, and feet chopped off, making them difficult to identify. An investigator who spoke to Milenio newspaper on Monday speculated the victims could be undocumented immigrants from Central America on their way to the United States.

“Because of the large quantity of corpses, our first hypothesis is that it could be the bodies of illegal immigrants traveling on a bus; there could have been a problem between a drug cartel and a coyote over fees,” an unnamed source told Milenio. For security reasons, he did not provide his name.

Drug cartels have increasingly used the public display of corpses as warning to other cartels or criminal organizations. This month alone, dozens of dead bodies were found in Nuevo Laredo and Guadalajara, but the 49 found this weekend were more than in both other cities combined.

Police came across a black “Z” spray painted near a road sign where the bodies were found Sunday. The symbol has led authorities to believe Los Zetas were behind the massacre. The drug gang, which is also reportedly involved in human-trafficking, was linked to the killing of 72 Central and South American migrants in 2010. The bodies were found near the town of San Fernando, in Tamaulipas state.

According to an Ecuadorean migrant who survived the San Fernando massacre — pretending to be dead after he was shot in the neck — migrants were killed because they could not pay ‘liberation’ fees, and refused to work for the cartel. The bodies were hidden in a ranch and were found by police after an armed confrontation with human-traffickers at the site.

In the latest incident, murderers made no effort to hide the victims’ bodies. Instead, they dumped the bodies in plain view near a road that connects Monterrey to the border city of Reynosa.

“They (the cartels) want us all to feel like possible victims,” political analyst Lorenzo Meyer said on the radio show, MVS Noticias.

To Meyer, this incident is part of a broader effort by cartels to show control over territories in Mexico and demonstrate their force. With presidential elections coming up on July 1, Meyer believes cartels also are trying to show force in order to intimidate Mexico’s next presidential administration.

“What they want is for society not to get in their way; they want it to not support campaigns aimed at eradicating organized crime,” Meyer said.

According to another theory about the recent massacre, the victims could have been members of the Gulf Cartel or the Sinaloa Federation, organizations fighting Los Zetas over control of drug routes in northeast Mexico. In Guadalajara and the state of Jalisco, allies of the Sinaloa Federation are fighting the Zetas for control of drug plazas and trafficking routes.

Last week, police found the decapitated bodies of 18 people in two vans parked on the outskirts of Guadalajara.

Narco Tank’ and Armored Vehicles Added to Cartel Arsenal

borderissuesmex — Wed, 16 May 2012 04:56:30 +0000

Drug cartels in Mexico apparently have a new weapon in their wave of terror – makeshift armored trucks.

Dozens of bodies, some mutilated, dumped on Mexico highway

borderissuesmex — Mon, 14 May 2012 22:19:22 +0000

May 13: Federal agents take photographs of a sprayed ‘Z,’ the symbol of Zetas drug cartel, on a pillar at a crime scene in the municipality of Cadereyta. (Reuters)

MONTERREY, Mexico – Forty-nine decapitated and mutilated bodies were found Sunday dumped on a highway connecting the northern Mexican metropolis of Monterrey to the U.S. border in what appears to be the latest blow in an escalating war of intimidation among drug gangs.

Mexico’s organized crime groups often abandon multiple bodies in public places as warnings to their rivals, and authorities said at least a few of the recent victims had tattoos of the Santa Muerte cult popular among drug traffickers. But Nuevo Leon state Attorney General Adrian de la Garza said he did not rule out the possibility that the victims were U.S.-bound migrants.

The bodies of the 43 men and six women were found in the town of San Juan on the non-toll highway to the border city of Reynosa at about 4 a.m. (5 a.m. EDT), forcing police and troops to close off the highway. Nuevo Leon state security spokesman Jorge Domene said at a news conference that a banner left at the site bore a message with the Zetas drug cartel taking responsibility for the massacre.

Domene said the fact the bodies were found with the heads, hands and feet cut off will make identification difficult. The bodies were being taken to Monterrey for DNA tests.

De la Garza said the victims could have been killed as long as two days ago at another location, then transported to San Juan, a town in Cadereyta municipality, about 105 miles west-southwest of McAllen, Texas, or 75 miles southwest of the Roma, Texas, border crossing.

Mexican drug cartels have been waging an increasingly bloody war to control smuggling routes, the local drug market and extortion rackets, including shakedowns of migrants seeking to reach the United States.

A drug gang allied with the Sinaloa cartel left 35 bodies at a freeway overpass in the city of Veracruz in September, and police found 32 other bodies, apparently killed by the same gang, a few days after that. The goal apparently was to take over territory that had been dominated by the Zetas. Twenty-six bodies were found in November in Guadalajara, another territory being disputed by the Zetas and the Sinaloa group.

So far this month, 23 bodies were found dumped or hanging in the city of Nuevo Laredo and 18 were found along a highway south of Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city.

In April, police found the mutilated bodies of 14 men in a minivan abandoned in downtown Nuevo Laredo, along with a message from an undisclosed drug gang. Also in April, the tortured and bound bodies of seven men were dumped in the Pacific port city of Lazaro Cardenas along with messages signed by allies of the Sinaloa drug gang.

Officials last year found 193 bodies in mass graves in the Tamaulipas state town of San Fernando. They were believed to have been migrants killed by the Zetas drug cartel. Another 72 migrants, many of them from Central America, were found slain in San Fernando in 2010.

DHS To Grant Illegal Aliens “Unlawful Presence Waivers”

borderissuesmex — Mon, 14 May 2012 04:21:22 +0000

In its quest to implement stealth amnesty, the Obama Administration is working behind the scenes to halt the deportation of certain illegal immigrants by granting them “unlawful presence waivers.”

The new measure would apply to illegal aliens who are relatives of American citizens. Here is how it would work, according to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announcement posted in today’s Federal Register, the daily journal of the U.S. government; the agency will grant “unlawful presence waivers” to illegal aliens who can prove they have a relative that’s a U.S. citizen.

Currently such aliens must return to their native country and request a waiver of inadmissibility in an existing overseas immigrant visa process. In other words, they must enter the U.S. legally as thousands of foreigners do on a yearly basis. Besides the obvious security issues, changing this would be like rewarding bad behavior in a child. It doesn’t make sense.

But the system often causes U.S. citizens to be separated for extended periods from their immediate relatives,” according to the DHS. The proposed changes, first announced in January, will significantly reduce the length of time U.S. citizens are separated from their loved ones while required to remain outside the United States during the current visa processing system.

The administration also claims that relaxing the rule will also “create efficiencies for both the U.S. government and most applicants.” How exactly is not listed in the Federal Register announcement, which gives the public 60 days to comment. That’s only a formality since the DHS has indicated that the change is pretty much a done deal.

This appears to be part of the Obama Administration’s bigger plan to blow off Congress by using its executive powers to grant illegal immigrants backdoor amnesty. The plan has been in the works for years and in 2010 Texas’s largest newspaper published an exposé about a then-secret DHS initiative that systematically cancelled pending deportations. The remarkable program stunned the legal profession and baffled immigration attorneys who said the government bounced their clients’ deportation even when expulsion was virtually guaranteed.

In late 2011 a mainstream newspaper obtained internal Homeland Security documents outlining “sweeping changes” in immigration enforcement that halt the deportation of illegal aliens with no criminal records. This also includes a nationwide “training program” to assure that enforcement agents and prosecuting attorneys don’t remove illegal immigrants who haven’t been convicted of crimes.

Judicial Watch has been a front runner in investigating the Obama Administration’s stealth amnesty program by pursuing DHS records concerning “deferred action” or “parole” to suspend removal proceedings against a particular group of individuals. Last spring JW sued DHS to obtain information because the agency ignored a federal public records request that dates back to July 2010.

Number of Americans killed in Mexico continues to rise

borderissuesmex — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:22:27 +0000

Deadly violence strikes areas once considered peaceful for U.S. retirees

The rise in drug-related violence in formerly peaceful areas is of growing concern to Americans living in Mexico. Lorraine Kulig, originally from Walden on Lake Houston, said retirees feel like they are “caught in the crossfire.”

CHAPALA, MEXICO – Mexico’s violence came crashing into the retirement dream of Houston’s Lorraine Kulig and hundreds of other Americans last fall when gangsters shot it out and set off a bomb in this usually bucolic town on the shore of the nation’s largest lake.

“We all know this is a gang problem. We have no connection with drugs,” said Kulig, 55, who retired to the quaint small city of Chapala three years ago with her husband Michael and now helps run the Lone Star Club, a monthly gathering of Texans living in the area. “But we can be caught in the crossfire.”

And not just crossfire.

In the neighboring town of Ajijic, where foreigners have been settling for decades, 69-year-old American Chris Kahr was unloading groceries from his car when a thief jumped him from behind, fired a single bullet into his chest and fled. The November murder was the third last year to strike an American from the communities along Lake Chapala in Jalisco state.

Last year, a record 120 Americans were killed in Mexico, compared with just 35 in 2007. Most happened in areas bordering the U.S. But for the first time, a significant number of murders occurred in previously peaceful areas like Jalisco state, where 14 Americans were killed, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis of U.S. State Department data.

‘Heads in the sand’

The Chapala shootout and Kahr’s death punctuated months of insecurity – burglaries, assaults, gangland shootouts and executions – in the area since last summer.

American and other foreign residents with financial and emotional commitments to their adopted homes, tend to downplay such events. But more than a few have felt rattled.

“We weren’t seeing anything here so we all, foreigners and Mexicans alike, kind of put our heads in the sand,” said writer Judy King, 67, who has lived in Ajijic for 21 years and works part time dispensing real estate and advice to foreigners looking to retire. “And now it’s here.”

As Mexico’s heightened criminal violence grinds into its sixth year, Americans traveling or living in the country increasingly find themselves at risk: caught in crossfire, assaulted in their homes or on the street, targeted by criminals for a range of reasons.

While still miniscule compared to the more than 50,000 Mexicans claimed by the violence, the annual tally of Americans slain has risen steadily since 2007.

Half of last year’s American homicides happened in Mexican border cities and towns – a third in Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez alone. Many involved lifelong border residents born in the United States. But the killings increasingly have occurred deep inside Mexico. The State Department issued a travel warning in February that advises U.S. citizens to avoid 14 of Mexico’s 32 states and to use extreme caution when visiting four others.

The risks remain small given that 19.9 million Americans visited Mexico last year, and as many as 1 million U.S. citizens live there, according to U.S. government estimates.

Mexican gangsters aren’t “going after Americans specifically in any way, either tourists or people involved in that business,” said Hugo Rodriguez, head of the State Department’s citizens services section for the Americas.

Highway shootings

Many U.S. citizens killed by cartel members involved cases of mistaken identity or being in the wrong place at the wrong time, he said.

Five teenagers were among the Americans killed or seriously wounded after being accidentally caught in cartel shootouts in hotly contested areas in Michoacan, Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana last year, Rodriguez said.

Others fell victim to highway robbers or illegal roadblocks in volatile states like Veracruz and Tamaulipas. A U.S. citizen and her Texas-born daughter on their way to visit relatives for Christmas were killed when gangsters sprayed a passenger bus near the Gulf port city of Tampico. And a 59-year-old Texas-based missionary was fatally shot while traveling with her husband on a highway about 70 miles south of the U.S. border.

‘My town has changed’

Though not necessarily tied to the drug war, recession-related increases in crimes such as ATM robberies, home invasions and kidnappings affect Americans as well as Mexicans, said Rodriguez. Peaceful ex-pat communities like colonial San Miguel de Allende and Lake Chapala each lost longtime residents to homicide.

Kahr’s killing came days after the break-in and brutal assault of an American woman in her Ajijic house. The incidents spurred hundreds of American, Canadians and other residents to form a community watch group and pressure officials both for arrests and for better security.

“I hate that my town has changed,” said Realtor Linda Fossi, who moved to Ajijic 14 years ago from California. “You can’t hide behind a curtain and pretend everything is fine. Things are not fine. I am devastated by it.”

Other victims

In addition to Kahr, last year’s American victims from the Lake Chapala area included 65-year- old retiree Allan Turnipseed, apparently shot in the head by two U.S.-born teenaged brothers that he had befriended and invited into his home. Another longtime resident, David Reitz, was killed days before Thanksgiving in Puerto Vallarta by two men from Chapala, one of whom police say had a “sentimental relationship” with the slain American.

Kulig, who moved from the community of Walden on Lake Houston, and many other foreign residents refuse to be daunted, reveling in the new lives they’ve chosen.

David Truly, 56, who did his doctoral research on the foreign retirees 15 years ago, added, “The types of people who come here are very adventurous. They are used to adapting.”