Mexican Crime Near Border Afflicts U.S. Southwest

When oh when is our government going to get tired of what these people from another

country are putting this country through and do something "constructive" about it?

Crime surge near border afflicts U.S. Southwest

By Richard A. Serrano, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

5:17 PM PDT, August 18, 2007

PHOENIX -- Violent crime along the U.S.-Mexico border, which has long plagued the

scrubby, often desolate stretch, is increasingly spilling northward into the cities

of the American Southwest.

In Phoenix, deputies are working the unsolved case of 13 border crossers who were

kidnapped and executed in the desert. In Dallas, nearly two dozen high school

students have died in the last two years from overdoses of a $2-a-hit Mexican fad

drug called "cheese heroin."

The crime surge, most acute in Texas and Arizona, is fueled by a gritty drug war in

Mexico that includes hostages being held in stash houses, daylight gun battles

claiming innocent lives and teenage hit men for the Mexican cartels. Shipments of

narcotics and vans carrying undocumented workers on U.S. highways are being hijacked

by rival cartels fighting over the lucrative smuggling routes. Arson fires are being

set in national forests to divert police.In Laredo, Texas, a teenager who had been

driving around the United States in a $70,000 luxury sedan confessed to becoming a

Mexican cartel hit man when he just 13. In Nogales, Ariz., an 82-year-old was caught

with 79 kilograms of cocaine in his Chevrolet Impala. The youth was sentenced to 40

years in prison for one murder and is awaiting trial on another; the old man drew ten

years.

In Southern California, border patrol agents routinely encounter smugglers driving

migrant-laden cars who try to escape by driving the wrong way on busy freeways. And

stash houses packed with dozens of illegal immigrants have been discovered in Los

Angeles.

But a huge U.S. law enforcement buildup along the border starting a decade ago has

helped stabilize border-related crime rates in on the California side; a recent wave

of kidnappings in Tijuana has been largely contained south of the border.

The sprawling U.S.-Mexico border has been criss-crossed for years by the poor seeking

work in the United States and drug dealers in the hunt for American dollars. For

decades neither the U.S. nor Mexico has managed to halt the immigrants and narcotics

pushing north. But with the Mexican government's newly pledged war on the cartels,

and an explosion of violence among rival networks, a new crime dynamic is emerging:

The violence that has hit Mexican border towns is spreading deeper into the U.S.

U.S. officials are promising more Border Patrol and federal firearms officers, more

fences and more surveillance towers along the desert stretches where the two nations

meet.

But law enforcement officials are wary of how this new burst in violence will play

out, especially as the enemy is better armed and more sophisticated than ever. Among

their concerns are budget cutbacks in some agencies -- including a hiring freeze in

the Drug Enforcement Administration -- and community opposition to the surveillance

towers.

Johnny Sutton, U.S. attorney in west Texas, said he would need at least 20,000 new

Border Patrol agents in El Paso alone to hold back the tide. But that is the total of

number of agents that Washington hopes to have everywhere on the border by the end of

2009.

In six years, Sutton's office has tried 33,000 defendants, about 90% of them on drug

and immigration violations. "We're body-slamming them the best we can," he said.

In Phoenix, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio holds 10,000 inmates in his jail and

overflow tents; 2,000 of them he said are "criminal aliens" from the border. It is

his deputies who are investigating the deaths of 13 people executed in the desert.

Jennifer Allen, director of the non-profit Border Action Network in Tucson that

supports immigrants' rights, said Washington and Mexico City need fresh approaches.

"The smugglers are no longer mom-and-pop organizations. Now it's an industry," she

said. "So the violence increases. That's incredibly predictable."

Raul Benitez, an international relations professor in Mexico City who also taught at

American University in Washington, blames both countries for the crime wave. As long

as Americans crave drugs and the cartels want money, "security in both directions is

jeopardized," Benitez said.

Nestor Rodriguez, a University of Houston sociologist, said people on both sides of

the Rio Grande view themselves as one community. "People say the river doesn't divide

us, it unites us," he said. "When you're at Ground Zero at the border, you see

yourselves as one community -- for good or bad."

Rodriguez knows. His first cousin, Juan Garza, born on this side but trained by

criminals in Mexico, then ran his own murder-and-drug enterprise out of Brownsville,

Texas. He was executed in 2001 by the United States.

"Of course there is a spillover of violence into this country," Rodriguez said. "It's

pouring across our border, and anybody can get caught up in it."

The small town of Sierra Vista, Ariz., learned firsthand of the rising violence in

2004, when police chased a pickup carrying 24 illegals on the border town's main

drag, Buffalo Soldier Trail. Speeds reached up to 100 miles an hour. The truck went

airborne, hit a half dozen cars, and killed a recently married elderly couple waiting

at a stoplight.

"It was just the worst kind of tragedy," said Ed Rheinheimer, the Cochise County

attorney. "The coyotes [smugglers] are just more willing to either shoot at the

police, fight with the police, or to try to flee."

Even more brazen have been several kidnappings of from 50 to 100 immigrants by rival

cartels, who hide them in stash houses in and around Phoenix until family members pay

a ransom. One captive's face was burned with a cigarette, another nearly smothered in

a plastic bag. A woman was raped. Fingers have been sliced off and sent back to

families with demands for money.

The border crime issue became so urgent in Arizona that top officials met in Tucson

in June with their counterparts from Sonora, Mexico. Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano

agreed to help train Sonoran police to track wire payments to smugglers. Sonoran Gov.

Eduardo Boors agreed to improve police communications with U.S. authorities.

Tucson officials also in the first nine months of this year surpassed their record

from last year of 4,559 human smuggling arrests.

In tiny Douglas, Ariz., the Mexican consulate has identified the bodies of five

Mexican nationals who died under suspicious circumstances while crossing into the

U.S. so far this year, and he is awaiting identification of five more he presumes

were Mexicans as well. There were only seven such deaths in all of last year.

Statewide the picture is equally bleak. Murders of illegal crossers is up 21% over

last year.

Another visible effect of the cross-border crime wave is the flood of drugs into the

country.

Anthony J. Coulson, assistant special agent in charge of the DEA in Arizona, said

records indicate that cocaine and heroin seizures may end up twice as high as last

year. Marijuana seizures are increasing 25%; nine months into the current fiscal

year, he said, they had already seized more pot than all of last year, "and 2006 was

a record year."

In the Tucson sector alone there has been a 71% increase in marijuana seizures over

the last year, with the U.S. Border Patrol reporting 648,000 pounds grabbed since

October.

In tony Scottsdale, a Phoenix suburb, said Sheriff Arpaio, a cartel operative was

openly selling heroin to high school kids. "He was getting 150 calls a day on his

cell phone," the sheriff said.

The DEA believes 80% of the methamphetamine in the United States is now coming from

labs in Mexico, which were set up after police raids shut down many of the labs in

the U.S.

In Dallas, police are dealing with the deaths of 21 high school students in the last

two years from "cheese heroin," a mixture of Mexican heroin and over-the-counter cold

medicine. The hits sell for $2 to $5. Several arrests of dealers have been made; now

officials are bracing for the coming school season.

"It's a small packet," said Lt. Tom Moorman of the Dallas Police Department. "They

can carry it in a pack of gum. Very, very small."

Antonio Oscar "Tony" Garza Jr., the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, has issued repeated

diplomatic notes complaining to the Mexican government. Last year he sent an advisory

to American tourists that "drug cartels, aided by corrupt officials [in Mexico],

reign unchecked in many towns along our common border."

A House subcommittee on Homeland Security has investigated the "triple threat" of

drug smuggling, illegal border crossings and rising violence and found that "very

little" passes the border without the cartels' knowledge.

The cartels send smugglers into the United States fully armored with equipment --

much of it imported to Mexico from the U.S. -- including high-powered binoculars and

encrypted radios, bazookas, military style grenades, assault rifles and silencers,

sniper scopes and bulletproof vests, the panel found. Some wear fake police uniforms

to confuse police as well as Mexican bandits who might ambush them.

The panel's report cited numerous recent crimes. In McAllen, Texas, "two smuggled

women from Central America were found on the side of a road badly beaten and without

clothing. Their captors [had] intimidated the victims by shooting weapons into the

walls and ceiling as they were raped." In Laredo, Webb County sheriff's deputies came

upon 56 illegal immigrants locked in a refrigerator trailer. Eleven were women; two

children. After six hours, "many were near death by the time they were rescued."

It was in Laredo last summer where police encountered Rosalio Reta, then 17, a

Houston native who fell under the spell of the Gulf Cartel across the river. Known as

"Bart," the youth was 13 when he started visiting Mexico.

"They walk across the bridge," said Laredo Detective Robert Garcia, who investigated

a murder that involved Reta. "They see all the night clubs with no age limit. They

see the guys their age spending money, throwing money around, paying for everything.

They like the lure, the women, the fancy cars. They start moving weapons and guns and

pretty soon they start asking for money for hits."

Garcia said Reta told him how he helped break a cartel leader out of a Mexican

prison. From there he moved up to hit man, and returned to Texas behind the wheel of

a $70,000 Mercedes Benz, Garcia said.

Then last year a Laredo man named Noe Flores was murdered in front of his home, shot

by mistake because the cartel thought they were getting his half brother in a dispute

over a woman.

In a hand-written statement to police, Reta admitting driving the car with two

accomplices. One of them, identified by Reta as Gabriel Cardona, jumped out and "shot

two rounds at first," he wrote. "That was when he fell to the floor and then shot em

13 more rounds and that was when Jesus Gonzales [the other alleged accomplice]

started shooting from the rear windows.

"Then we left the sene of the crime and we left the car like 3 blocks away. The work

was done for the Gulf Cartel of Mexico."

At trial last month, a witness said Reta and the accomplices were paid a total of

$15,000 for the hit. But the case ended abruptly when Reta pleaded guilty in return

for a 40-year sentence; he had faced 99 years.

Webb County Judge Joe Lopez told the youth: "It's a young life. Come to terms with

your God and your faith, or whatever it may be."

Cardona also pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 80 years. Gonzales was arrested but

made bail, and disappeared back into Mexico.

Reta awaits trial in a second case, involving the ambush slaying in December 2005 of

Moises Garcia, shot in his car in a Laredo restaurant parking lot as his pregnant

wife and family watched helplessly.

Times staff writer Richard Marosi in San Diego contributed to this report.

richard.serrano@latimes.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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On Aug 18, 10:56 pm, AnAmericanCitizen <NoAmne...@earthlink.net>

wrote:

> When oh when is our government going to get tired of what these people from another

> country are putting this country through and do something "constructive" about it?

We are getting the worst Mexico has to offer. The southwest is

becoming one big rotten filthy sewer thanks to these mongrels.

Hospitals going bankrupt and closing down, public services are broke

and decaying, on every front they are parasitically draining the life

out of this country. Our government as a whole is criminal in not

dealing with this. I would gladly give up lettuce and drywall my own

house in exchange for every one of those law breaker to disappear.

> Raul Benitez, an international relations professor in Mexico City who also taught at

> American University in Washington, blames both countries for the crime wave. As long

> as Americans crave drugs and the cartels want money, "security in both directions is

> jeopardized," Benitez said.

---------------

Where there is demand, their will be

supply. Chicago was a wild place during

prohibition. Chicagoans went to sleep

every night to the sound of tommy gun

fire in the streets.

"The Real Diddy Pop" <whodey1@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:1187492650.733597.225750@i38g2000prf.googlegroups.com...

> On Aug 18, 10:56 pm, AnAmericanCitizen <NoAmne...@earthlink.net>

> wrote:

>> When oh when is our government going to get tired of what these people

>> from another

>> country are putting this country through and do something "constructive"

>> about it?

>

>

> We are getting the worst Mexico has to offer. The southwest is

> becoming one big rotten filthy sewer thanks to these mongrels.

> Hospitals going bankrupt and closing down, public services are broke

> and decaying, on every front they are parasitically draining the life

> out of this country. Our government as a whole is criminal in not

> dealing with this. I would gladly give up lettuce and drywall my own

> house in exchange for every one of those law breaker to disappear.

>

Ditto.