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Posts Tagged War in Mexico
Rep. Darrell Issa and ATF Agent Warn of ATF Cover-Up
Posted by Jack Sinclair in Law, News on 12/Jul/2011 12:31
Monday, 11 Jul 2011 04:16 PM
By Martin Gould
“Eric Holder’s position as attorney general is getting more tenuous as pressure grows on him to resign over the gunrunning scandal that saw weapons fall into the hands of Mexican drug lords.
The actions of his Department of Justice are the subject of an Congressional obstruction of justice investigation into the scheme, said Rep. Darrell Issa, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
And he said that much of the documentation provided by the DoJ has been useless. “If it wasn’t already available on the internet, it generally is an all-black page of redaction to where it is of no value.â€
Issa said that, if Holder did not know about the schemes, Operation Fast and Furious and Project Gunrunner, which saw thousands of automatic weapons end up in the hands of violent Mexican drug lords, he should have.
“It is almost impossible to believe that everyone, including CBS News and many newspapers and Fox, had reported on Fast and Furious, yet Eric Holder still didn’t know anything about it.â€
Young Mexican Thugs kill migrants
Posted by Jack Sinclair in News, Threat Watch on 25/Jun/2011 18:18
“Responsible for the slaughter of some 70 migrants, mostly from Central America, which appeared in a mass grave in the town of San Fernando, Tamaulipas was a 22 year old who was just arrested. This young man ordered the kidnapping of several buses carrying the migrants, detained and tortured them to find out if they had a relationship with a rival group and finally ordered they be killed.
Also arrested was one of the murderers of two of Governor Rodrigo Medina’s bodyguards, who is 18 years of age. SWAT team members of Nuevo Leon were picked up by police in the municipality of Zuazua, and given to assassins who tortured and killed them leaving a message to the governor.
Also last week, there was a very rough gunbattle on the border between Jalisco and Zacatecas. Gunmen who moved in several trucks with federal forces clashed for hours, ten died and several were arrested, including six girls between the ages of 16 and 21 who admitted being killers and sexual partners of members of the criminal group. They collected 12,000 pesos ($1,000) every two weeks.
Such was the case last week. Before this there have been stories of “El Ponchis†and child assassins of Morelos, or the young girls, almost children, with whom Jesús “El Negro†Radilla, head of the same group which “El Ponchis†was affiliated with, who served as sexual partners, assassins or were hired to leave mutilated bodies in the streets; or the thousands of young gang members in Los Aztecas or Artistas Asesinos, engaged in brutal warfare across the border area of Ciudad Juárez.
The stories are innumerable, but the truth is that every time, the assassins of these criminal groups are younger and crueler with their victims, and more money has less to do with their involvement in these criminal groups. Nothing is more worrisome in terms of social phenomenon which has been done directly, than involving thousands of children and adolescents in organized crime, not as in the past being camels (carriers) or consumers and distributors, but increasingly as killers for trace amounts of money.
Agent: I was ordered to let U.S. guns into Mexico
Posted by Jack Sinclair in Law, News, Threat Watch on 14/Jun/2011 20:25
(CBS News)
WASHINGTON – Federal agent John Dodson says what he was asked to do was beyond belief.
He was intentionally letting guns go to Mexico?
“Yes ma’am,” Dodson told CBS News. “The agency was.”
An Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms senior agent assigned to the Phoenix office in 2010, Dodson’s job is to stop gun trafficking across the border. Instead, he says he was ordered to sit by and watch it happen.
Investigators call the tactic letting guns “walk.” In this case, walking into the hands of criminals who would use them in Mexico and the United States.
Documents show the inevitable result: The guns that ATF let go began showing up at crime scenes in Mexico. And as ATF stood by watching thousands of weapons hit the streets… the Fast and Furious group supervisor noted the escalating Mexican violence.
One e-mail noted, “958 killed in March 2010 … most violent month since 2005.” The same e-mail notes: “Our subjects purchased 359 firearms during March alone,” including “numerous Barrett .50 caliber rifles.”
Dodson feels that ATF was partly to blame for the escalating violence in Mexico and on the border. “I even asked them if they could see the correlation between the two,” he said. “The more our guys buy, the more violence we’re having down there.”
Video here:
How is it the weapon industry’s fault? Do they blame the auto industry for all of the car accidents in Mexico?
U.S. Border Patrol to its agents: stop arresting illegal aliens to “keep illegal immigration numbers down”.
Posted by Jack Sinclair in Law, News, Threat Watch on 10/May/2011 18:53
“The U.S. Border Patrol has told its agents to stop arresting illegal aliens crossing the border from Mexico to keep the illegal immigration numbers down, Arizona Sheriff Larry Dever tells Newsmax.
He also charges that Attorney General Eric Holder is “holding hands with the ACLU†to protect illegal aliens from prosecution, says illegals are committing “heinous crimes†across America every day, and calls claims that the federal government should be solely responsible for controlling illegal immigration “balderdash.â€
Dever is sheriff of Cochise County, which shares an 83-mile border with Mexico, and he says his Border Patrol sector is responsible for half of all illegal aliens caught trying to enter the country and halt the narcotics entering the United States.”
How far have Mexican drug cartels moved into the US? Arizona Sheriff Larry Dever responds
Posted by Jack Sinclair in News, Threat Watch on 7/May/2011 18:16
Dever: Mexican drug cartels are freely operating many miles from the U.S.-Mexican border.
“You can go up to 70 miles north in Pinal County, which isn’t even a border county, and the Bureau of Land Management put up signs on public land warning people not to travel there because of the threat from drug cartels.
“If you travel into the recreational areas in my county, those same signs are up warning people they could encounter drug and human smuggling. I think we ought to point the signs south and tell the folks who are coming here that this is not a safe place for you to come.â€
He also explains how he has heard that the Border Patrol has told officers to stop arresting Mexican illegals to keep official illegal immigration figures down.
“That comes from agents on the ground, who have told me, told my deputies, told citizens in the area. They have in the past been instructed to scare people back or turn them back south versus arresting them.â€
Two of the seven kidnapped state police officers released in Monterrey.
Posted by Jack Sinclair in News, Threat Watch on 15/Mar/2011 22:16
“Two of the seven state police officers kidnapped last week near Monterrey, the capital of Mexico’s Nuevo Leon state, have been released, a State Investigations Agency, or AEI, spokesman said.
The officers, who were tortured and beaten, were found early Sunday in Contry, a neighborhood in the southern section of Monterrey.
The two officers were thrown out of a moving vehicle, eyewitnesses said.”
ICE Agent’s attack: Gun supplier was U.S. Marine
Posted by Jack Sinclair in Law, News, Threat Watch on 15/Mar/2011 22:04
“One of three men arrested and linked with one of the guns used in the murder of a U.S. federal agent in Mexico was part of the U.S. military and received training on weapons.
Ranferi Osorio, 27, spent eight years in the U.S. Marine Corps and served in Iraq and Afghanistan before retiring in 2009, said his ex-wife Valeria Rojas in a statement issued on Wednesday before the federal court case. He supported his family by buying and selling firearms, but had no license or authorization for such trade.
Ranferi Osorio, like his younger brother Otilio, 22, is accused of possessing firearms with altered serial numbers. They were under investigation which took an unexpected turn on Friday 25 February when ATF agents in Dallas were notified that one of the serial numbers of guns used in the murder of Zapata, was related to Otilio Osorio.
Although he had apparently erased the serial number of the gun, it could still be detected on the gun using modern laboratory techniques. The ATF decided to proceed and the three suspects were arrested on Feb. 28 in Lancaster, a suburb south of Dallas.
On 15 February, the ICE agent and his partner Victor Zapata Avila, were shot as they drove along a road in the Mexican state of San Luis Potosi. Zapata died in the attack and Avila was injured.”
http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/750863.html
They’re not Fast, but they are Furious
Posted by Jack Sinclair in Law, News, Threat Watch on 15/Mar/2011 22:02
NOW ARE THEY FURIOUS? The Attorney General of the Republic, still headed by Arturo Chavez Chavez, decided to conceal details of the investigation that began from the failed operation Fast and Furious, in which agents of the Office of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) deliberately allowed around two thousand high-caliber arms to enter Mexico in order, for the moment, to not generate more friction with the government of the United States.
Nevertheless, what the agency decided to avoid in its official press release is that the investigations taking place in the Justice sub-offices of Legal and International Affairs has, among its objectives, to establish not only which criminal organizations received the armament, but also if US citizens committed crimes that could be penalized and tried in Mexican courts.
They assure us that this is one of the objectives.
And, in face of the gravity of the issue, they say that there are instructions which, if a crime exists, will be carried out against whoever it may be so that the case doesn’t go unpunished and that, if it is proved that ATF agents actually permitted the illegal traffic, it will be sought to bring them before Mexican justice.”
Six Mexican police officers kidnapped in Nuevo Leon
Posted by Jack Sinclair in News, Threat Watch on 11/Mar/2011 23:29
“Six police officers were kidnapped Friday in this northern Mexican metropolis, Nuevo Leon state authorities said.
Witnesses said several SUV-loads of men armed with assault rifles intercepted two state police vehicles at an intersection in Monterrey and forced the officers to surrender, said sources with the Nuevo Leon Security Council.
Bullet holes were found in the abandoned police vehicles.
The mass abduction came a few hours after two gunmen were killed and two others arrested in a clash with state police in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon’s capital, and followed the army’s arrest here Thursday of six traffic cops on suspicion of ties to organized crime.”
U.S. Raids Mexican Gang
Posted by Gary in News, Threat Watch on 9/Mar/2011 20:24
From: WSJ
Federal agents have arrested a number of members of the Barrio Azteca drug gang in Mexico overnight, after having tied the group to the killing of a U.S. consulate worker and her husband, according to people familiar with the case.
Drug Crime in Mexico
Track the increasing violence in an interactive map.
Lesley Enriquez and her husband were gunned down in March 2010. Mexican investigators said months later that a captured drug-gang enforcer claimed to have ordered the slaying because Ms. Enriquez allegedly helped provide visas to a rival gang. At the time, federal authorities said the motive for the killing was unknown.
The attack on the Enriquez couple came at almost the same time as a third killing in which the husband of a Mexican employee of the U.S. consulate was gunned down. That raised concerns that U.S. government personnel were being targeted in drug-related violence. Those concerns were revived last month when an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agent was gunned down on a roadside in Mexico.
Ms. Enriquez was pregnant when she was killed. The couple’s infant daughter was in the car at the time of the shooting but was not injured. Police who responded to the crime scene found the child crying in the back seat.
Planning a Vacation in Mexico?
Posted by Gary in Threat Watch on 9/Mar/2011 17:18
Mexico’s drug war has claimed more than 31,000 lives since President Felipe Calderon took office.
Think the violence only reaches the drug runners?
Oct 22, 2010, Ciudad Juarez: Birthday Party Attacked Fourteen people, including a 13-year-old, are killed in a massacre at a Ciudad Juarez birthday party.
Agent: ATF partly to blame for Mexico Violence
Posted by Gary in Law, News, Threat Watch on 7/Mar/2011 15:20
Watch this chilling and revealing news story.
From:Â CBS News
Agent: ATF partly to blame for Mexico violence
March 3, 2011 4:01 PM
An agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms claims the agency has a policy that allows guns to get in the hands of the Mexican drug cartels. Sharyl Attkisson reports.
ATF in Damage Control Mode over Gunwalker
Posted by Gary in Law, News, Threat Watch on 7/Mar/2011 15:12
ATF Memo from The Sipsey Street Irregulars
Public Information Officers:
Please make every effort for the next two weeks to maximize coverage
of ATF operations/enforcement actions/arrests at the local and
regional level. Given the negative coverage by CBS Evening News last
week and upcoming events this week, the bureau should look for every
opportunity to push coverage of good stories. Fortunately, the CBS
story has not sparked any follow up coverage by mainstream media and
seems to have fizzled.It was shoddy reporting, as CBS failed to air on-the-record interviews
by former ATF officials and HQ statements for attribution that
expressed opposing views and explained the law and difficulties of
firearm trafficking investigations. The CBS producer for the story
made only a feigned effort at the 11th hour to reach ATF HQ for comment.This week (To 3/1/2011), Attorney General Holder testifies on the Hill
and likely will get questions about the allegations in the story. Also
(The 3/3/2011), Mexico President Calderon will visit the White House
and likely will testify on the Hill. He will probably draw attention
to the lack of political support for demand letter 3 and Project
Gunrunner.ATF needs to proactively push positive stories this week, in an effort
to preempt some negative reporting, or at minimum, lessen the coverage
of such stories in the news cycle by replacing them with good stories
about ATF. The more time we spend highlighting the great work of the
agents through press releases and various media outreaches in the
coming days and weeks, the better off we will be.Thanks for your cooperation in this matter. If you have any
significant operations that should get national media coverage, please
reach out to the Public Affairs Division for support, coordination and
clearance.Thank you,
Scot L. Thomasson
Chief, ATF Public Affairs Division
Washington, DC
Obama, Mexican president reach trucking agreement
Posted by Gary in Law, News, Opinion, Threat Watch on 3/Mar/2011 15:36
This is fraught with so many possible unintended consistences that it boggles the mind as to how people sworn to protect this nation could think there is a possible upside. But then again maybe the “upside” they are looking at only applies to scenarios we (liberty loving free men) would not consider positive. I’m not trying to be obtuse I’m trying to temper my consternation. Maybe that is a lost cause.
Excerpts from The Courier Press and AP contain obvious double-speak/right-think phrases implying that it is the Mexican government that is concerned about guns from our country causing the violence in Mexico and how a more open border might make that worse. Hmm, maybe we should rethink the whole second amendment thing while we are at it?
President Barack Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Thursday will announce a plan to open up U.S. highways to Mexican trucks, removing a longstanding roadblock to improved relations between the North American allies.
…The meeting comes three weeks after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata was shot to death in northern Mexico with a gun smuggled in from the U.S.
more
American Immigration Agent Killed by Gunmen in Mexico
Posted by Jack Sinclair in News, Threat Watch on 16/Feb/2011 00:02
MEXICO CITY — Gunmen on a highway in northern Mexico killed an agent with United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Tuesday and wounded another, in an attack that signaled the escalating risk for American officials fighting Mexican crime gangs that move drugs and migrants into the United States.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/world/americas/16mexico.html