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In an indictment handed down Nov. 20 ....accused 15 individuals of being involved in the trafficking of cocaine and other narcotics in the Chicago area. .... aimed at dismantling the drug trafficking network of La Familia Michoacana (LFM), a mid-sized and relatively new drug cartel based in Michoacan state in southwestern Mexico. The U.S. investigation of LFM has revealed many details about the operation of the group in the United States and answered some important questions about the nature of Mexican drug trafficking and distribution north of the border. .....leaders are known to distribute documents to the group’s members that...

(Note: This is posted here for archival purposes.) # Note: The following text is a quote: YOU ARE HERE: Home > Reports > Consular Affairs Bulletins > Report Warden Message: Ciudad Juarez (Mexico) Drug Cartel Violence Threat CONSULAR AFFAIRS BULLETINS Americas - Mexico 28 Oct 2009 U.S. Consulate General Ciudad Juarez issued the following Warden Message on October 28: This Warden Message is being issued to inform American citizens traveling to or residing in the Mexican state of Chihuahua that the US Consulate General in Ciudad Juarez received information on October 28, 2009 that drug cartels operating in the city...

Hundreds of people have been arrested in Texas and around the country what officials say is the largest single strike at a Mexican drug cartel in the U.S WASHINGTON (October 22, 2009)—U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder calls the arrests of more than 300 people in a series of drug raids in Texas and across the country the largest single strike at a Mexican drug cartel operating here. Holder said at a news conference Thursday that the arrests over the past two days were aimed at the U.S. operations of the La Familia cartel. Click here to find out more! Holder...

EL PASO, Texas — An alleged Mexican gang leader named to the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list may have surgically altered his face and changed his finger prints to hide his identity, federal investigators said Wednesday. Eduardo "Tablas" Ravelo was added earlier this week to the wanted list that includes the likes of Osama Bin Laden and Boston crime lord James "Whitey" Bulger. "From what I've heard, it's my understanding he may have had ... plastic surgery and manipulated his finger prints," said Samantha Mikeska, the FBI's lead investigator in a 5-year-old probe of Ravelo's Barrio Azteca gang. If Ravelo...

Note: The following text is a quote: Home » Briefing Room » Justice News Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden Speaks at Project Gunrunner Press Conference HOUSTON ~ Thursday, October 1, 2009 Good morning. I am happy to be here today with ATF Acting Director Melson and our partners in state and local law enforcement to highlight the real successes of Project Gunrunner and announce our plans to build upon those accomplishments. This administration and this Justice Department have made protecting the integrity of our Southwest Border a top priority. That means stemming the tide of illegal drugs and illegal...

Suspected drug hitmen burst into a Mexican radio station and shot dead a journalist in front of his colleagues in the latest brazen attack on the media, authorities and a Mexican newspaper said on Thursday. Gunmen shot Norberto Miranda, 44, several times in the rural town of Nuevo Casas Grandes in Chihuahua state near the U.S. border on Wednesday night. "His body was found full of bullets in the radio's offices," said a spokesman for the Chihuahua attorney general's office. The newspaper El Diario said Miranda, who was well-known locally, had recently reported on growing drug violence in the remote...

As a high-ranking U.S. anti-drug official, Richard Padilla Cramer held front-line posts in the war on Mexico's murderous cartels. He led an office of two dozen agents in Arizona and was the attache for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Guadalajara. While in Mexico... Cramer also served as a secret ally of drug lords.... allegedly advised traffickers on law enforcement tactics and pulled secret files to help them identify turncoats. He charged $2,000 for a Drug Enforcement Administration document that was sent to a suspect in Miami.... But the investigation revealed that he worked for "a very high-level drug lord," the...

Ciudad Juarez, Mexico (AHN) - Gunmen attacked a rehabilitation clinic for drug addicts in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico Tuesday killing 10 people, including therapists. Authorities do not know the motive of the 10:15 p.m. attack on the Life Annex treatment center that killed two therapists and eight patients as well as wounding two more, according to Enrique Torres, a spokesman of the government security forces. Witnesses said the attackers were eight armed men, who fled after the massacre. The attack was the second directed against a drug rehabilitation clinic in two weeks. The previous attack saw 18 people executed at the...

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico, Sept 16 (Reuters) - Suspected drug hitmen have killed 10 patients in a Mexican rehabilitation clinic, the second such attack this month in the city of Ciudad Juarez on the U.S. border, authorities said on Wednesday. Drug gangs have targeted rehab clinics in the manufacturing city across from El Paso, Texas, accusing them of protecting dealers from rival gangs. State attorney spokesman Vladimir Tuexi said the victims, nine men and one woman, were killed late on Tuesday as they finished praying before going to bed.

Rosalio Reta: "I liked the lifestyle... killing people" Prisoner 1447523's name is Rosalio Reta. He was born and raised in Texas. By the age of 13 he was an assassin for one of Mexico's drug cartels. Convicted of two murders (he says he killed many more), he will probably spend the rest of his life behind bars. Hanging around with his friends in Mexico (in the border areas many people frequently cross over on business and pleasure), one told him his brother worked for a cartel. "I thought it was cool. Got involved. That's how everything started. There's no way...

MEXICO CITY – The U.S. has released $214 million of an aid package to help Mexico fight drug trafficking, including funds for five helicopters for the military to be delivered by year's end, a top State Department official said Tuesday. The helicopters will be the first to be sent to Mexico under the Merida Initiative, a three-year, $1.4 billion program to train and equip law enforcement to deal with the ruthless cartels, said David Johnson, U.S. assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement. He said $214 million of the package has been spent or committed. The funds have gone...

Clinics in Violent Mexican City to Turn Away Gunshot Victims   CIUDAD JUAREZ – Private clinics in Ciudad Juarez, the scene of a bloody turf war between rival drug cartels, are refusing to treat victims of gunshot wounds due to the risk to their staff and other patients. Representatives of the clinics told authorities during a meeting that they could no longer receive this type of patients because cartel hit men have occasionally gone to hospitals to finish off a member of a rival drug mob who survived an attack. Luis Carlos Esquivel, coordinator of Mexico’s State Health Services,...

Reporting from Mexico City - A Mexican lawyer who has represented some of the country's best-known drug suspects was stabbed to death outside his home, authorities said Saturday. Americo Delgado was ambushed Friday evening by at least three men in the city of Toluca, an hour or so outside Mexico City, police said. He was stabbed in the neck, officials said. They did not identify a possible motive. Over the years, Delgado, said to be 81, has represented a number of prominent drug figures, including Tijuana crime boss Benjamin Arellano Felix and Jesus Amezcua, one of the so-called "methamphetamine kings."...

The Drug Enforcement Administration Friday announced that it found 14,500 marijuana plants growing in a Colorado national park, authorities say are linked to Mexican drug cartels...... they have seen an increase in outdoor marijuana operations run by Mexican drug cartels. In the most recent Colorado case, the marijuana was found in "the remote, rugged terrain" of Pike National Forest, which is about 60 miles southwest of Denver. "The persons who were involved in this criminal activity had no regard for the damage caused to the forest and environment by the waste they left behind," said Jeffrey D. Sweetin, special agent...

Note: The following text is a quote: Travel Alert U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE Bureau of Consular Affairs This information is current as of today, Mon Aug 24 2009 01:02:34 GMT-0700 (PDT). Mexico August 20, 2009 The Department of State has issued this Travel Alert to update security information for U.S. citizens traveling to and living in Mexico. It supersedes the Travel Alert for Mexico dated February 20, 2009, and expires on February 20, 2010. While millions of U.S. citizens safely visit Mexico each year (including tens of thousands who cross the land border every day for study, tourism or business),...

Note: The following text is a quote: Ten Alleged Mexican Drug Cartel Leaders Among 43 Defendants Indicted in Brooklyn and Chicago as Part of Coordinated Strike Against Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations WASHINGTON – Forty-three defendants in the United States and Mexico, including 10 alleged Mexican drug cartel leaders, have been charged in 12 indictments unsealed yesterday and today in U.S. federal courts in Brooklyn and Chicago, the Department of Justice, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced. The alleged leaders and other high-ranking members of several of Mexico’s most powerful drug cartels are charged...

MEXICO CITY (AP) - Mexico enacted a controversial law on Thursday decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs while encouraging government-financed treatment for drug dependency free of charge. The law sets out maximum "personal use" amounts for drugs, also including LSD and methamphetamine. People detained with those quantities will no longer face criminal prosecution; the law goes into effect on Friday.

But 'gardeners' escape; pot-grow cooking fire blamed for S. Calif. wildfire From KTVZ.COM news sources Days after tribal police and federal agents seized 1,630 marijuana plants worth an estimated $5 million from a remote area of the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, authorities in California said Sunday a more than 85,000-acre wildfire in Santa Barbara County had been traced to a cooking fire at an illegal marijuana grow. Friday's Warm Springs raid marked the fourth time in just over two years that police have busted a major pot grow on the reservation, tied to Mexican drug gangs. The total seized -...

Date: August 15, 2009 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE FIRE INVESTIGATORS DETERMINE CAUSE OF LA BREA FIRE GOLETA, CA... A week-long investigation by U.S. Forest Service Special Agents, Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Narcotics Unit and Fire Investigators has revealed the cause of the La Brea Fire. Investigators revealed that the La Brea Fire was started by a cooking fire in a marijuana drug trafficking operation. The Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Narcotics Unit has confirmed that the camp at the origin of the fire was an illegal marijuana operation believed to be run by a Mexican National Drug Organization. The Narcotics Unit has...

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — Gunmen attacked a vehicle carrying a prison director in the northern Mexico state of Chihuahua, killing three bodyguards and wounding two more seriously, authorities said Wednesday. Prison director Gerardo Hernandez was unharmed in the attack late Tuesday, but has been replaced in the post for his own safety, Chihuahua state Public Safety Secretary Victor Valencia said. He started the job in June. Valencia said the two surviving guards are in serious condition at local hospitals. The attack occurred in the state capital, also known as Chihuahua. In the border city of Nuevo Laredo, city police found...

Expanding Corruption in the United States Another disturbing result of the northward expansion of the cartels is that corruption has seeped across the border into the United States. This is to be expected, given the money involved and the way the United States has for years mismanaged the border. For example, Rey Guerra, sheriff of Starr County, Texas, pled guilty in 2009 to charges that he exchanged information to drug traffickers for money and gifts. And on a federal level a U.S. customs memo of June 29, 1990, obtained by Narco News and published in 2004, tells of corruption that...

Mexican officials aware of 190 thefts this yearU.S. refineries bought millions of dollars worth of oil stolen from Mexican government pipelines and smuggled across the border, the U.S. Justice Department told The Associated Press -- illegal operations now led by Mexican drug cartels expanding their reach. Criminals -- mostly drug gangs -- tap remote pipelines, sometimes building pipelines of their own, to siphon off hundreds of millions of dollars worth of oil each year, the Mexican oil monopoly said. At least one U.S. oil executive has pleaded guilty to conspiracy in such a deal. President Barack Obama arrived in Mexico...

Empty turtle shells, decaying skunk carcasses and a set of deer antlers lay strewn about an empty campsite in California's Sierra National Forest. The butchered animals, as well as several five-pound propane canisters, camp stoves and heaps of trash, were all that remained of the 69 marijuana plantations recently uncovered in Fresno County as part of operation "Save our Sierras." The massive operation that began in February has already seized about 318,000 marijuana plants worth an estimated $1.1 billion, officials announced last week. In addition to 82 arrests, the multi-jurisdictional federal, state and local operation netted 42 pounds of processed...

SNIPPET: "The military "cannot be everywhere all the time and the drug dealers eventually learn their patterns," said Tony Payan, a professor at the University of Texas at El Paso who studies the problem. Payan said it is a "stroke of luck" that more American citizens have not been killed. Yet, if you look at this map, it is pretty clear that the spread of drug-related violence knows no boundaries, and is not restricted to Juarez."

CHULA VISTA, Calif. — Police in Mexico have announced the arrests of four men in connection to the killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent as their counterparts in the United States search hospitals for suspects possibly wounded in the first such shooting in more than a decade. The men detained in Mexico are allegedly part of an immigrant smuggling ring, and 21 people were found with them when police detained them and seized four guns near Tecate, Mexico, said Elias Alvarez Hernandez, coordinator of federal police in Baja California state. During a news conference Saturday, Mexico police did not...

On July 11th, PFC James Gonzalez told his family he was heading to Laredo to hang out with friends before returning to the Ft Hood. But on July 13th Gonzalez' commander called looking for the private. "They've asked what our thoughts are about him going AWOL. It just doesn't add up with the phone..it goes straight to voice mail. If he would have done it he would have contacted somebody," said Jason Gonzalez, who is James' brother. The Gonzalez family says the FBI called them to say the Army had received a call saying the private had been kidnapped. The...

Note: The following text SNIPPET is a quote: Alleged Mexican Cartel Leaders, Associates Targeted in Newest Effort to Combat Drug Trafficking Organizations Today the Departments of Justice, State and Treasury announced coordinated actions against the Gulf Cartel/Los Zetas drug trafficking organization, now known as the "Company," in the latest in a series of efforts by the U.S. government to neutralize and dismantle this violent cartel. Antonio Ezequiel Cardenas-Guillen, Jorge Eduardo Costilla-Sanchez, Heriberto Lazcano-Lazcano and Miguel Trevino-Morales, high-level Mexican leaders of the Company and 15 of their top lieutenants, have been charged in U.S. federal courts with drug trafficking-related crimes. Also...

Note: The following text is a quote: Remarks by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder on Efforts to Combat Mexican Cartel Efforts and Grants for Local Assistance Los Angeles, Calif. Wednesday, July 15, 2009 Thank you, DEA Special Agent in Charge Tim Landrum for hosting us today. And thank you to all of the federal law enforcement officials from California and Arizona who took part in our discussion of the challenges we face as we confront the Mexican cartels and cross-border drug trafficking on the Southwest border. I’m also pleased to be joined today by Ralph Partridge, Special Agent in Charge...

Two of the District's top law enforcement officials are warning that dozens of federal prisoners with ties to Colombian rebel groups and international drug rings are a threat to security at the D.C. Jail and pose a risk of escape into the surrounding neighborhood. The concerns have led city officials to ask the federal government for more money to provide security for the increasing numbers of prisoners, who are being held at the District's corrections campus in Southeast. Devon Brown, director of the D.C. Department of Corrections (DOC), outlined concerns about such prisoners in a U.S. District Court filing last...

A proposal to send National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to counter drug trafficking has triggered a bureaucratic standoff between the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security over the military's role in domestic affairs, according to officials in both departments. The debate has engaged a pair of powerful personalities, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, in what their subordinates describe as a turf fight over which agency should direct the use of troops to assist in the fight against Mexican cartels and which one should pay for them. At issue is a proposal...

LAREDO, Tex. — When he was finally caught, Rosalio Reta told detectives here that he had felt a thrill each time he killed. It was like being Superman or James Bond, he said. “I like what I do,” he told the police in a videotaped confession. “I don’t deny it.” ... The young men all paid a heavy price. Jesus Gonzalez III was beaten and knifed to death in a Mexican jail at 23. Mr. Reta, now 19, and his boyhood friend, Gabriel Cardona, 22, are serving what amounts to life sentences in prisons in the United States. Other young...

Some find El Monte police officer's side business -- selling clothing with gang symbols -- dismaying June 20, 2009 When El Monte Police Officer George Fierro was seen on video kicking a prone, heavily tattooed gang member in the head at the end of a televised high-speed chase, he received some criticism but also a good amount of praise. Then the 15-year police veteran's side business made the news, and no one advocated giving him a medal for that. When he's not fighting crime and chasing gang members, Fierro sells a line of clothing. Hiscompany's website is known "for its...

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security and, under current law, its agents can investigate any crime with a connection to the American border, from weapons trafficking to child pornography. Any crime, that is, except drug crimes. The ability to investigate such crimes, known as Title 21 authority, rests with the Drug Enforcement Administration, which is part of the Department of Justice. The attorney general can and, under certain circumstances, does give other federal agents the power to investigate drug crimes. But a longstanding dispute with the D.E.A. severely limits the number...

A secret intelligence mission recently conducted along the southern border of the United States found that drug cartels are teaming with terrorists to exploit the numerous vulnerabilities along the sparsely defended 2,000-mile Mexican border. The mission, dubbed Operation Red Zone was conducted in February and March by the Army's Asymmetrical Warfare Group (AWG). The clandestine intelligence gathering organization is a 350-member "special mission unit" that works to "identify critical threats and enemy and friendly vulnerabilities through global first-hand observations," the Army says. Red Zone investigators discovered numerous alien smuggling and drug trafficking operations along the border. Perpetrators are using "maritime...

US border czar Alan Bersin warned Mexico's brutal drug cartels Tuesday that threats to target law enforcement officials on both sides of the border would be met by a "significant response." Bersin said a recent call by one cartel kingpin to ramp up violence against US and Mexican law enforcement agents was potentially of "grave significance" and was being "taken seriously" by the administration. "Should law enforcement, border patrol agents, customs officers or local and state law enforcement officers be targeted that would be considered a major departure from existing practice of the cartels, and a threat that called for...

MEXICO CITY -- Mexican police found 11 bodies - most with their hands and feet cut off - inside an abandoned car in the border state of Sonora Thursday in violence attributed to drug traffickers battling for control of the region. Sonora's state prosecutors said in a statement that the bodies were discovered inside a sport utility vehicle on a road between the towns of Caborca and Sonoyta along with a threatening message. The SUV had been stolen in Arizona. Prosecutors did not reveal what the message said or the identities of the bodies. They said the killings are linked...

Strategy is to avoid attracting attention.Metro counties form major hub for East Coast drug distribution. The man who lived on a quiet cul-de-sac in Forsyth County appeared to be an ordinary guy. He ran a small fencing company. His grade-school-aged children played with others in the subdivision. His lifestyle was simple and unassuming. Neighbors in the Whisper Walk subdivision in Cumming had no idea that Paul Longoria was using his business as a front for cocaine trafficking until authorities arrested him in 2007. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison on felony drug charges a year later in federal...

Slaying of Deputy Jerry Ortiz triggered four-year investigation HAWAIIAN GARDENS - Almost 1,400 law enforcement officials converged on Hawaiian Gardens in a series of pre-dawn raids Thursday as part of the largest federal indictment against a street gang in United States history. Varrio Hawaiian Gardens, Hawaiian Gardens' oldest and most notorious gang, waged a racist campaign to eliminate black people from the community via attempted murders and other crimes, according to the federal racketeering indictments that werei unsealed Thursday. A total of five indictments charged 147 members and associates of the gang, and federal, state and local law enforcement officials...

Briant Rodriguez, the 3-year-old boy kidnapped from his San Bernardino, CA home earlier this month by two Mexican nationals, was found safe last Thursday but with his head shaved "wandering the streets of Mexicali, Mexico, by a police officer" according to a CNN report. Although authorities will not disclose the underlying motive some have speculated that the boy may have been kidnapped by a drug cartel to enforce a debt payment, and San Bernardino County Sheriff Rod Hoops told reporters "[i]f you take a look at the case, I'll let you do your own homework on it." The identity of...

Since 1999, he's been buying himself favors by working with the DEA. No wonder he still hasn't been arrested. From the very beginning of the Allen Stanford scandal, there's been speculation of his playing some role in the drug trade, and talk that he may have been some kind of US government asset. That's been confirmed by the BBC: Secret documents seen by Panorama (BBC) show both governments knew in 1990 that the Texan was a former bankrupt and his first bank was suspected of involvement with Latin American money-launderers. ... He was initially investigated by the SEC for running...

PHOENIX (AP) - Sen. John McCain says the United States needs to do more to crack down on gun smuggling into Mexico, but that such assistance in Mexico's war against drug cartels doesn't require restrictions on the gun rights of law-abiding Americans. McCain told several thousand people at the National Rifle Association's convention in Phoenix on Friday that limiting guns sales in the United States won't prevent the cartels from buying weapons from other countries. . . . . . McCain says the U.S. government has overstated the prevalence of guns being smuggled from the United States into Mexico for...

COLUMBUS, N.M. – This dusty little border town with almost no visible means of support has been seeing something of a boom in the past year: Brand-new Lincoln Navigators and Cadillac Escalades with flashy wheel rims are parked just off the bleak main drag. Homes are selling quickly, sometimes for cash. The source of this sudden wealth? An influx of Mexican drug smugglers, investigators say. The smugglers are fleeing the Mexican army's occupation of the town of Palomas, on the other side of the U.S.-Mexico border fence, and settling in Columbus, where there has been a law enforcement vacuum. The...

Mexico City, Mexico, Apr 22, 2009 / (CNA) -- Various Mexican bishops have rejected an offer by government officials to provide them with special protection against threats being made by drug traffickers, saying security officials should protect all citizens equally. Bishop-elect Salvador Rangel of Huejutla said the state governments of Guanajuato and Michoacan offered to provide security, but the offer was not accepted. He said the lives of priests have the same worth as any other citizen who is in danger. The bishop-elect’s comments came as reports surfaced that a priest in the town of Cuitzeo received death threats from...

With growing violence on the U.S.-Mexico border fueled by powerful drug cartels, officials from both countries have been repeating a shocking statistic to suggest this isn't just a Mexican problem. But Obama, Clinton and others have left out important qualifiers when citing the 90 percent statistic, which originates from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The agency doesn't have statistics for all weapons in Mexico, where gun sales are largely prohibited; it is based on only guns that the Mexican government sent to the ATF for tracing and that the ATF found were traceable.

Violent Mexican drug cartels have been making headlines in recent weeks. And now comes word that the Department of Justice reports cartel organizations exist in 230 American cities. Of alarming note for Arkansans is that three cities on the list are in the Natural State: Little Rock, Fort Smith and Fayetteville. U.S. Senator Mark Pryor says coordination of counternarcotics enforcement among every level of government is critical in order to combat drug smuggling across the border and cartel infiltration of U.S. cities. He held a Senate hearing Tuesday, entitled “Counternarcotics Enforcement: Coordination at the Federal, State and Local Level,” where...

Mexican drug cartels have displaced the mafia as the "number one organized crime threat" in the United States, Sen. Joe Lieberman said Monday as his Senate committee heard testimony in Phoenix on border violence. Lieberman, an independent Democrat from Connecticut, and Sen. John McCain, a Republican on Lieberman's panel, told FOX News that the United States needs to step up the fight against the drug cartels. The two senators were in Arizona, McCain's home state, to hear from local officials on their advice for dealing with the drug-fueled violence many fear is spilling across the border.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (AP) - U.S. Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl say they support sending National Guard troops to the nation's southern border to guard against spillover violence from Mexico's drug war. McCain says border violence has reached a point to where the government should respond to requests from Arizona, New Mexico and Texas to station additional Guard troops at the border. McCain doesn't foresee the Guard staying at the border for an extended amount of time, but says they're now needed there because of the violence.

MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) -- Mexican authorities arrested a woman guarding an arsenal that included the first anti-aircraft machine gun seized in Mexico, police said Tuesday, as the army announced the capture of an alleged top drug cartel lieutenant. The arsenal belonged to a group linked to the powerful Beltran-Leyva drug cartel, federal police coordinator Gen. Rodolfo Cruz said. It also included ammunition, five rifles, a grenade and part of a grenade launcher. ... Cruz said the confiscated .50-caliber, anti-aircraft machine gun can fire 800 rounds per minute and is capable of penetrating armor from more than 5,000 feet (1,500...

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In 2006, I conducted a three-part interview with former US Border Patrol Supervisor David J Stoddard. For 27 years, David served in Calexico, California, Vermont, Yuma, Tucson Sector Headquarters and Naco, Arizona and worked in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and other locations. He also provided testimony about immigration reform to Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner's (R-WI) House Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims in 1999 and a Congressional subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources in 2002. With the current US-Mexico border crisis — including an actual ongoing war on our southern border — I thought it was time to...