Mexican Arrested for Ephedrine Smuggling in Paraguay

Mexican Arrested for Ephedrine Smuggling in Paraguay.

Mauricio Fernando Maya of Mexico (L) and laughing "go lucky" Letizia Bethania of Paraguay (top C) are escorted from a courthouse where they refused to make statements after being formally charged with attempting to smuggle 40 kg (8.18 pounds) of ephedrine concealed in sacks of starch to Mexico, in Asuncion March 4, 2010.

Asuncion, Paraguay - A Mexican citizen, a National Police officer and two women have been arrested for trying to smuggle ephedrine into Mexico, the Paraguayan Attorney General’s Office said on Thursday.

Mauricio Maya, a Mexican national, was arrested Wednesday night at a house in Asuncion after the seizure of between 30 and 40 kilos of the substance in the capital, the AG’s office said.

Ephedrine and pseudoephedrine are used to manufacture methamphetamine, an illegal stimulant.

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Merida Initiative Needs Evaluation?

‘Mexico faces an arduous, long fight’
Engel says Merida Initiative has to be reevaluated.

 

Washington DC - The Mexican government faces an “arduous and prolonged fight” against drug traffickers, and it would be hasty to declare their strategy “ a failure,” Eliot L. Engel, Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere of the U.S. House of Representatives, told the news agency Efe on Thursday.

“It is an arduous and prolonged fight… I would not call it a failure yet, it is something difficult, and these drug cartels are fighting to the death and will, unfortunately, use everything within their means,” Engel said.

The congressman added that the Merida Initiative, a three-year long anti-drug plan with an investment of $1.4 billion, has to be reevaluated “in a year or two, to assess if it is the right way to go.”

Engel, who is well aware of the discontent of the Mexican population in regards to the increasing drug-related violence, defended the efforts of the government of President Felipe Calderón because, in his opinion, “he has invested a substantial amount of capital” in fighting drug trafficking.

According to Engel, President Calderón “is doing his best to prove to the drug cartels that they cannot try to take control of the country. I believe that we cannot judge his success immediately. This is something that will take time, but I do believe that the United States should give Mexico all possible support.”

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House of Death Lingers

ICE burns informants across the country - House of Death lingers

San Diego County Political Buzz Examiner

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are quickly gaining attention within the war on drugs. This war is a deadly one fought day in and day out along the U.S. borders and well as cities that serve as distribution centers for the warring Mexican cartels.

Having confidential informants on the company payroll is a necessity to infiltrate the violent drug cartels and other organized crime syndicates. Some are double agents looking to elude authorities, others looking to work off a court conviction and others who may have got in over their heads and are looking for redemption.

Since ICE’s inception there have been eight agents investigated for improper informant handlings and more than 35 agents have been reported as being involved with questionable actions.

Documents and interviews have shown ICE handlers involvement with underreported debriefings, failure to document informant actions, drug use and improper sexual relations.

The El Paso ICE office sits in the heartland for drug cartels that carry the products across the Rio Grande River from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico where more than 14,000 murders have been committed since the renewed drug war in 2004.

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US Agents not Involved in Mexico Drug Fight

DPA

Mexico City - The Mexican government denied a report published Wednesday by The Washington Post which says that US police officers were to take part in the fight against drug traffickers within Mexico. The Post reported that the US planned to embed American intelligence agents into Mexican law enforcement units "to help pursue drug cartel leaders and their hit men" in Mexico's most violent city, Ciudad Juarez.

The reportoperating in the most violent city in Mexico, according to US and Mexican officials," The Washington Post reported Wednesday, with reference to Ciudad Juarez.

The northern Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez, in the state of Chihuahua, is regarded as the most violent in Mexico with more than 2,600 killings in 2009.

The Mexican Interior Ministry issued a statement denying the report.

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Reporting on the Frontline of Mexico's Drug War

Ciudad Juarez, Chih - Felipe Calderon, Mexico's president, has promised a new security plan for the city of Ciudad Juarez, which is at the centre of the government's battle against drug cartels.


Calderon has also named a new special prosecutor to focus on crimes against journalists. Nearly 90 per cent of murders of reporters go unsolved in Mexico, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Al Jazeera met Luz Soza, a crime reporter in Ciudad Juarez. Here's her story in her own words.

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Former City Employee Led Cartel

Houston Chronicle

Jaime Zamora was free on bond when he was arrested by the DEA.

Houston, TX - A former Houston Parks Department employee turned narco-trafficker admitted in federal court Tuesday that he led a drug cartel cell that moved millions of dollars worth of cocaine from Monterrey, Mexico, to Houston.

Authorities have long contended that after his brother was murdered in Mexico, Jaime Zamora took sole control of the business in Houston, exchanging bulk cash and drugs in his East End home, as well as in his parents' house across the street.

On Tuesday, he pleaded guilty to conspiring to possess with intent to distribute cocaine after he was snared in an undercover operation by a drug enforcement agent .

He also is accused in state court of masterminding the Houston killing of a man he mistakenly thought was a hated drug rival, “El Narizon,” Spanish for Big Nose. Instead, the victim of the killing was just a man out having dinner with his family, shot down as his children watched.

While Zamora is still waiting to go to trial on the murder charges, his alleged accomplice and middle man in the slaying was in state court Tuesday in the killing gone awry.

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Western Union Settles Suits

Western Union settles Ariz. suits, will pay to fight money laundering by Mexican cartels.

Washington Post

Western Union Financial Services and the state of Arizona announced a settlement Thursday in which the company will pay $94 million to resolve a series of lawsuits over whether the money-transfer network was doing enough to combat money laundering by Mexican drug cartels and human smugglers.

Under court-approved terms, Western Union will pay $21 million to reimburse the state's legal and law enforcement costs between 2003 and 2007, contribute $50 million to a novel law enforcement grant program directed by the attorneys general of the four states on the U.S.-Mexico border and commit $23 million to strengthen its own anti-money-laundering efforts under an independent monitoring program.

Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard (D) said the deal, under which Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas would each distribute at least $7 million in border security grants for technology and personnel, would increase coordination for state anti-trafficking efforts across the 2,000-mile frontier. By comparison, he said his office's annual budget for anti-laundering operations is $2 million.

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Officers Want Drug Profits Targeted

Officials say U.S. not doing good job of seizing cash headed south.

Houston Chronicle

About $320,000 in neatly stacked currency was seized during one vehicle stop in Houston in February 2008.

When federal agents kicked in the door of a upscale home near Seven Lakes High School in Katy in June 2008, they found cocaine, handguns and an unexpected bonanza; $1,379,510 in cash bundled up and waiting for a short trip back to the Mexican border.

More startling were the ledgers agents found indicating the Gulf Cartel already had used the Katy operation to move $200 million in drug proceeds south of the border.

More and more, Mexican and Colombian drug cartels are turning to a low-tech, but effective, tactic to collect drug profits. They simply box up the cash, stash it in a truck or car and drive it across one of the many border crossings.

Current and former law enforcement officials say the federal government should devote more agents and equipment to search for billions of dollars hidden in vehicles headed south, as well as infiltrating the bulk smuggling operations.

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Slaughter in Juárez is Our Reform Call

The New Mexican

Poor Mexico, goes a remark most often attributed to turn-of-the-20th-century dictator Porfirio Díaz — so far from God and so close to the United States ...

God knows there've been enough reasons for Mexicans to think that — but also for norteamericanos to call up a play on those words by the great Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes: "Poor Mexico and poor United States; so far from God and so near to each other."

Flying in the face of both quotes are decades of great relations between both countries — commercial, personal and institutional, if not-always-so-great ones on the diplomatic front. Tourism, student exchanges and over-the-border shopping have created vast numbers of friendships transcending the whole notion of national boundaries.

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Mexican Drug War

The Mexican Drug War is an armed conflict taking place between rival drug cartels and government forces in Mexico. Although Mexican drug cartels, or drug trafficking organizations, have existed for quite some time, they have become more powerful since the demise of Colombia's Cali and Medellín cartels in the 1990s.

Mexican drug cartels now dominate the wholesale illicit drug market in the United States. Arrests of key cartel leaders, particularly in the Tijuana and Gulf cartels, have led to increasing drug violence as cartels fight for control of the trafficking routes into the United States.

Mexico, a major drug producing and transit country, is the main foreign supplier of marijuana and a major supplier of methamphetamine to the United States. Although Mexico accounts for only a small share of worldwide heroin production, it supplies a large share of the heroin distributed in the United States.

Drug cartels in Mexico control approximately 70% of the foreign narcotics that flow into the United States. The State Department estimates that 90% of cocaine entering the United States transits Mexico—Colombia being the main cocaine producer—and that wholesale of illicit drug sale earnings estimates range from $13.6 billion to $48.4 billion annually.

Mexican drug traffickers increasingly smuggle money back into Mexico in cars and trucks, likely due to the effectiveness of U.S. efforts at monitoring electronic money transfers.

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Retreating from the War on Drugs

With violence escalating and the military approach to the drug war falling apart, voices call for a new strategy .

The killers arrived in four or five SUVs. They quickly blocked off the road to Salvárcar, a working-class neighborhood of Ciudad Juarez, where 60 students were attending a birthday party.

The intruders, armed with automatic weapons, opened fire on the revelers. Sixteen people died in the hail of bullets two weekends ago. Most of them were adolescents between the ages of 15 and 19, and many were athletes, members of a local baseball team. One of them, José Adrián Encina, had only recently been named the best student in his class.

It was the bloodiest weekend of the year to date in the notorious Mexican border city: Forty-three people died a violent death. According to the government, the massacre was related to feuds within the drug trade, but the families of the victims say that most were innocent students.

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14-Year-Old Girl found Smuggling Marijuana.

14-year-old girl found smuggling marijuana.

The Associated Press

Columbus, N.M. -- U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in Southern New Mexico seized more than 5 pounds of marijuana hidden in a backpack carried by a 14-year-old girl who walked across the border from Mexico.

The discovery was made last month in Columbus.

The girl, a United States citizen from Surprise, Ariz., was selected for a secondary exam. While searching the backpack, officers found five blocks of marijuana.

The girl was remanded to a border crimes task force.

Her identity is not being disclosed because she is a juvenile.

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Mexico Becoming Narco-state

Drug Cartels Tighten Grip, Mexico Becoming Narco-state.

Arizona Republic

Mexico City - For months, the leaders of Tancitaro had held firm against the drug lords battling for control of this central Mexican town.

Then one morning, after months of threats and violence from the traffickers, they finally surrendered.

Before dawn, gunmen kidnapped the elderly fathers of the town administrator and the secretary of the City Council. Within hours, both officials resigned along with the mayor, the entire seven-member City Council, two department heads, the police chief and all 60 police officers. Tancitaro had fallen to the enemy.

Across Mexico, the continuing ability of traffickers to topple governments like Tancitaro’s, intimidate police and keep drug shipments flowing is raising doubts about the Mexican government’s 3-year-old, U.S.-backed war on the drug cartels.

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1000 Executed so Far in 2010

It only took 34 days for Mexico to reach 1000 people executed due to the drug cartel violence. In 2005 it took more than eight months to reach 1000.

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Who Answers to the Juarez Violence?

The Mexican Senate requests Galván and García Luna to answer to the massacre in Juarez.

The senators also call the Attorney General of the Republic, Arturo Chavez to explain what is the strategy for fighting organized crime after the massacre that occurred in Ciudad Juárez over the weekend.

Mexico City - The Standing Committee of the Congress observed a minute of silence in memory of the teenagers who were killed Sunday in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, by a group of armed commandos during a reunion to celebrate a football victory.

In response to the recent massacre in Ciudad Juárez and the deaths in Torreon, the Senate requested the immediate appearance before the committees of the Secretary of Defense General Guillermo Galván Galván, Navy Adm. Francisco Mariano Saynez Mendoza, the head of the PGR Arturo Chavez and Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna, to explain the strategy in the fight against organized crime and to provide an assessment of their results.

The points of agreement that were approved but rejected by the political party PAN, were made by Senator Arturo Escobar, of the PVEM and the coordinator of the PT Ricardo Monreal.

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Life of the Mexican Federal Police

The daily life of the forces of the federal police in Mexico.

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Suspect Extradited to U.S.

Mexico ships suspect in slaying of U.S. Border Patrol agent from El Paso.

El Paso Times

El Paso -- Two years of waiting in agony for Mexico to turn over a murder suspect in the slaying of a U.S. Border Patrol agent from El Paso ended Thursday for the victim's family.

The man thought to be responsible for the death of Senior Border Patrol Agent Luis Aguilar Jr. near Yuma, Ariz., was extradited to the United States, where he faces murder and drug charges.

Officials said Jesús Navarro Montes arrived in Houston Thursday and would be transported to Southern California to face the charges.

Navarro is charged with running over and killing Aguilar, 32, during a drug-smuggling attempt. Navarro had been arrested, released and then rearrested by Mexican authorities.

The agent's father, Luis "Louie" Aguilar Sr., an El Paso County constable, said that the loss of a son is tragic but that with Navarro now in U.S. custody, the case can move forward into the federal court system.

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U.S. Troops at Mexican Border?

The U.S. military should be used to defend our border with Mexico.

Immigration Reform Examiner
Dave Gibson

In 2005, the Bush administration used U.S. combat troops to patrol the borders which define Iraq. In fact, at the time, he announced that there would be a complete lockdown on Iraq's borders during that nation's elections. Obama is now using our troops in that same capacity, as well as in providing border security for Afghanistan.

While protecting the borders of foreign lands has been a priority for both Presidents Bush and Obama, neither has ever shown a portion of that commitment to their own country.

Rather than sending a few hundred National Guardsmen to the nearly 2,000 mile-long border, functioning under orders to step aside when confronted with those who cross our border illegally (Even when they are armed drug smugglers.), the way Bush did, we should send 30,000 troops to the U.S./Mexican border immediately.

If that number of troops, along with their tanks, helicopters, and U.S. Air Force over-flights were utilized along the border, illegal entries would come to a sudden, screeching halt.

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The New Face of Border Violence

The Sand Diego Union Tribune

Tijuana Border - A violent chapter in the storied battle against international drug trafficking is now being written along the U.S.-Mexican border. In December 2006, upon taking office, Mexican President Felix Calderón launched an all-out assault on Mexico’s drug cartels.

Unlike past initiatives, designed as showpieces for the U.S. government, Calderón’s effort has been waged in earnest, including the dispatch of 45,000 troops and 5,000 federal police officers to 18 Mexican states.

In response, drug cartels went on a rampage, escalating attacks on law enforcement and competing traffickers. Since 2007, news reports put the death toll somewhere between 11,000 and 13,500.

The Los Angeles Times Web site shows the bloody tally like an old fashioned Wall Street ticker-tape, the numbers ascending ominously. But the Times graphic trails its own news tally, demonstrating that symbols of the carnage can’t keep pace with its reality.

On one recent day alone, police in the southern state of Guerrero found the mutilated bodies of nine people in the back of a pickup truck. Beheaded and hacked into pieces, the victims were stuffed into black plastic bags.

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Tijuana Chief Revisited

Tijuana, BC - A chief of police, especially the one in Tijuana, Baja California, must follow the policies of the agency. And in these policies it says that a commander has to implement active and passive measures every day to protect his life.

Passive measures are, among others; not going to bars, not walking alone on the streets, it means having a private life and it means very private, and constantly having to change his routine.

The active, however, include a good weapon to have on hand and with his bodyguards, ready to fire it 24 hours a day.

Lt. Col. Julián Leyzaola Pérez,, grandson of a general and son of another ranking soldier, is working toward a full compliance in a disciplined manner for each of these rules since he became Secretary of Public Security of Tijuana.

His day started on December 10, 2008 amidst a dispute of "blood and lead" between the Sinaloa cartel and the Arellano Felix clan to control drug trafficking in California, USA.

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