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Associated PressJanuary 14, 2014 Updated 9 hours ago APATZINGAN, Mexico — Federal forces and heavily armed vigilantes are warily watching each other in a violence-wracked farming area of western Mexico after one deadly clash and a failure by leaders from both sides to work out a deal on disarming.

Early in the morning on January 13, Mexican soldiers clashed with members of an armed citizen’s militia group. Multiple casualties were reported. Mexico’s government recently amped up its presence in the surrounding state of Michoacan after ongoing conflicts between armed civilians and drug cartel members have escalated. A recent push by the vigilante group to drive members of the Caballeros Templarios drug cartel out of the city of Apatzingan has led to an even more complicated situation. While heavily armed soldiers congregated in the center of Apatzingan, other units operating outside of the city tried to disarm some of the...

Residents living in fear of violent criminal gangs in south-west Mexico are taking matters into their own hands .... Hundreds of armed vigilantes stormed a Mexican town and arrested federal police in the latest bloody battle between residents, criminal gangs, and the police locals say are in league with the gang members. Around 600 members of local 'autodefensas', or self-defence groups, stormed Paracuaro in the troubled Michoacan state yesterday in an attempt to seize control of the town back from the feared Caballeros Templarios (Knights Templar) drug cartel. The battle was the latest in a long-running war between the drugs...

Border: A federal judge finds that the Department of Homeland Security, instead of arresting cartel members and the clients who pay them to smuggle children into the U.S., helps the drug lords complete the transactions. Former DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano once proclaimed the U.S. border to be as secure as it has ever been. Yet her department has been found by Judge Andrew S. Hanen of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Texas to have actively undermined that security by enabling drug cartels engaged in the lucrative smuggling of children. The case before Judge Hanen — United...

A federal judge in Texas is accusing the Department of Homeland Security of hand-delivering children smuggled into the United States to their illegal immigrant parents. U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen revealed the practice in a blistering court order filed late last week. He said the "dangerous" practice is effectively aiding human traffickers and particularly the drug cartels, which run many of these operations. "These actions are both dangerous and unconscionable," he wrote. The judge attempted to lift the curtain on what is happening behind the scenes of the Obama administration's changing approach to immigration enforcement. It has been well-documented...

National Security: The theft of a truck carrying dangerous radioactive material combined with terrorist group activity in the hemisphere shows that the need for a secure border involves more than illegal immigration. Mexican authorities said Wednesday they found the stolen truck and likely recovered all of the radioactive cobalt taken by a group of thieves who were probably after the truck, unaware it carried a deadly cargo. Cobalt-60, which is used in radiation therapy to treat cancer, was being transported from a hospital in the northern city of Tijuana to a radioactive waste storage center. But what if the thieves...

The House Judiciary Committee has begun looking at reports that Mexican drug cartel members are abusing the U.S. asylum system to bypass regular immigration checks and get into the country, where some are setting up smuggling operations and others engage in the same violent feuds that caused them to flee Mexico in the first place. In one instance, a woman made a claim of asylum and three months later was apprehended at a Border Patrol checkpoint with more than $1 million in cocaine, according to a memo obtained by the committee that says criminal gangs are exploiting holes in the...

Late last week news broke of a connection between grenades illegally trafficked from the U.S. into Mexico by Jean Baptiste Kingery and the murder of Mexican police officers. Years ago, Kingery was suspected of trafficking parts for grenades into Mexico and then building explosives for cartels. An incident report detailing a fire fight between Mexican police and cartel members states, "Jalisco State Police Officers murdered during a shooting with members of the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion in Tepatitlan, Jalisoc, MX. In the late hours of October 10, 2013, officers with the Jalisco State Police engaged in a shooting with...

Terrorism expert Matthew Levitt writes that an increasing number of U.S. prison inmates have tattoos that are pro-Hezbollah or are in Farsi, the language spoken in Iran. … “Law enforcement officials across the Southwest are reporting a rise in imprisoned gang members with Farsi tattoos” and some express loyalty to Hezbollah. … Hezbollah’s business relationship with Mexican drug cartels is seen as a driving force behind the phenomenon. …

A proposed reunion of Minutemen, tentatively scheduled for a site near the border in October has been postponed, due to word that drug cartels have put a $100,000 bounty out for the death of any Minuteman, and a $250,000 bounty out for the death of any officer or leader of the Minutemen.

The National Black Republican Association (NBRA) based in Sarasota, FL, headed by Chairman Frances Rice, filed Articles of Impeachment against President Barack Obama with the following language: We, black American citizens, in order to free ourselves and our fellow citizens from governmental tyranny, do herewith submit these Articles of Impeachment to Congress for the removal of President Barack H. Obama, aka, Barry Soetoro, from office for his attack on liberty and commission of egregious acts of despotism that constitute high crimes and misdemeanors. On July 4, 1776, the founders of our nation declared their independence from governmental tyranny and reaffirmed...

<p>A loophole is allowing hundreds of immigrants across the Mexico border in to the United States.</p> <p>Immigrants are being taught to use "key words and phrases" to be allowed to enter and stay in the country.</p> <p>Just this past Monday, Border Patrol agents say about 200 people came through the Otay Crossing claiming a quote: "credible fear" of the drug cartels.</p>

In an open letter to the public in late July, several retired Border Patrol agents wrote on behalf of the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers to warn that Mexican drug cartels are actively operating inside the United States spending millions every year to try to build their networks here. They argued that American politicians are protecting their activities as well. “Transnational criminal enterprises have annually invested millions of dollars to create and staff international drug and human smuggling networks inside the United States; thus it is no surprise that they continue to accelerate their efforts to get trusted...

In average, 34 people die every day in Mexico, in crimes related to drug trafficking and the war on drugs. In the latest numbers released by Mexico’s government 4,451 people had been murdered in the period between January and April 2013. Besides the 4,451 deaths, this year there are 26 people that have been reported missing and are currently unaccounted for. ... People executed by drug gangs are found shot, beheaded, dismembered and wrapped in black plastic bags, with or without written messages in pieces of cardboard. In Mexico, drug cartel related executions have become so common that some news...

Exclusive: Barbara Simpson decries 'progressive teachings that all cultures are equal' Do cultural differences matter? Consider: The exhibition soccer match two weeks ago in Las Vegas between Mexican rivals Chivas and Club America hadn’t even begun when fans swarmed the parking lot and the crowd erupted into massive brawl of rock and can throwing and bloody fighting. Despite police presence, fighting continued through halftime and after the game, involving players and fans. One was quoted in the Las Vegas Sun as saying the rivalry is “deadly,” and “We don’t like each other.” Could’ve fooled me. The first week of July...

Honduras? Why would ATF walk guns to Honduras? 1. The national scope of the Gunwalker Scandal & 2. Because that's where some of the action is. "It's just another little garden-variety act of war between hemispheric friends. What's the big deal?" "Why would ATF walk guns to Honduras?" asks a reader. That's easy. First, and this is important to understand: the Tampa operation proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that "Project Gunwalker" was a national strategy, not a Phoenix aberration. The "major media" has been slow to understand this. They have ignored the fact that the Houston Field Division...

"Lebanese Canadian Bank to Pay $102 Million in Hizballah Laundering Case" SNIPPET: "The Beirut-based Lebanese Canadian Bank ("LCB") will pay $102 million as part of a settlement reached this week with federal prosecutors. The LCB was accused in a December 2011 complaint of funneling money to the Lebanese terrorist group Hizballah as part of a global money-laundering scheme. The "settlement shows that banks laundering money for terrorists and narco-traffickers will face consequences for their actions, wherever they may be located. This type of money laundering network fuels the operations of both terrorists and drug traffickers, and will continue to use...

A self-described debt collector for Mexican drug cartels says he has slayed more than 30 people across the United States, according to investigators. If Jose Martinez, 51, is found guilty of scores of homicides on both coasts, he would earn a place among the most lethal serial murderers in American history. Investigators have confirmed that Martinez is responsible for a 2006 double-homicide in Marion County, Fla., a March homicide in Lawrence County, Ala., and at least 10 other killings in California, according to sheriff’s officials. Martinez, a U.S. citizen, told investigators that he committed those murders and more than a...

Critics say intimidation keeps shops, others, from complaining about lack of progress A congressional committee chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., may have moved on to other Obama administration scandals, but Arizonans still want answers to the Fast and Furious gun-running project that sent thousands of weapons to drug lords in Mexico. Will they get them? Not if a reported conspiracy of intimidation and enforced silence wins. Arizona State Rifle and Pistol Association President Noble Hathaway said it angers Arizonans that it looks like the federal officials involved with Fast and Furious “got away with it.” “To Arizonan’s it looks...

As if there were not already enough scandals plaguing the Obama administration, the federal “Fast and Furious” operation that armed Mexican drug cartels is back in the news after the Justice Department Inspector General released a report blasting a government leak intended to smear a key ATF whistleblower.