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On Wednesday, a Charlotte, NC man and woman -- illegally residing in the U.S. -- were charged in federal court with conspiracy to kidnap two children in Mecklenburg County, NC in 2009, according to reports obtained by the National Association of Chiefs of Police from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. According to the indictment, Ruben Garcia-Rosario, 25, and Linda Gonzalez, 21, aided and abetted one another in the attempted kidnapping through the use of cellular telephones and a motor vehicle. Garcia-Rosario is also charged in three additional counts alleging possession of a firearm by...

Five police officers were killed yesterday in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico in a two separate incidents. In the first attack, two officers were killed while on patrol. Witnesses say gunmen killed one officer in his vehicle and the other as he tried to escape. In the second attack, four police officers were shot at while filling up their vehicles at a gas station. Two died on the scene, another died at a local hospital, and the fourth officer is being treated for his injuries. The total number of police officers killed to 47 this year, making it one of the most...

Note: The following text is a quote: Dallas Resident Uriel Palacios Sentenced to 30 Years in Federal Prison for His Role in Cocaine Trafficking and Money Laundering Conspiracy Related to Mexico's Gulf Cartel DALLAS—Uriel Palacios, 23, of Dallas, was sentenced this morning by Chief U.S. District Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater to 360 months (30 years) in federal prison, announced U.S. Attorney James T. Jacks of the Northern District of Texas. Palacios pleaded guilty in June to one count of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and to distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine and one count of conspiracy...

A federal judge in Pittsburgh on Tuesday sentenced an illegal immigrant to time served in jail for his 10th illegal entry into the country. Uziel Jesus Lopez-Jiminez, 28, of Mexico has been deported nine other times between 1998 and 2007, prosecutors said. He was last deported in March, re-entered the country in May or June and was arrested in Beaver County on Aug. 16.

HOUSTON — The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has refused to allow additional DNA testing requested by a Mexican national condemned for the gruesome killing of a 16-year-old girl in San Antonio. Thirty-six-year-old Humberto Leal, from Monterrey, Mexico, wanted more testing to try to clear him of the May 1994 bludgeoning death of Adria Sauceda. Her body was found on a dirt road not far from a party they both attended.

<p>The former head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection called Monday for the U.S. to reinstitute the ban on assault weapons and take other measures to rein in the war between Mexico and its drug cartels, saying the violence has the potential to bring down legitimate rule in that country.</p>

EL PASO, Texas -- The widespread violence in Juarez is affecting a lot of things in El Paso, including the UTEP athletic program. The basis of UTEP's athletic teams are formed by recruiting student-athletes from across the state and country to study and play in El Paso. And now many of them, especially their parents, are now expressing concern about what is going on across the border. UTEP's campus is located just a few football fields away from Juarez, where thousands have been murdered this year, and that is not easy to hide. "I just recruited a girl from Sweden...

MANAGUA – An arsenal of military weaponry seized over the weekend in the province of Matagalpa belonged to a cell of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel, Nicaraguan authorities said Monday. The National Police said Monday in a communique that the arsenal – including 58 assault rifles, two mortars, 10 grenades, 30 sticks of TNT and 19,236 rounds of ammunition – “were being transported by members of the Sinaloa cartel” in a pickup truck with Nicaraguan plates. The shipment of arms, ammo and explosives was confiscated on Sunday in a joint operation involving the police and the army, the statement said. The...

The Texas Department of Public Safety is warning parents across the state that violent Mexican cartels and transnational gangs are actively recruiting Texas youngsters in schools and communities. These criminal organizations are luring teens with the prospect of cars, money and notoriety, and promise them that if they are arrested, they will receive light sentences. The gangs are responsible for massive drug deals and related slayings, and authorities say that they will often use youths in their crimes because juveniles are typically treated with more leniency by the criminal justice system.

A shootout at this hospital in Mexico claims two more lives — victims of the country's bloody drug war. The hospital is in Ciudad Juarez — the epicenter of the drug cartel violence convulsing Mexico. Two gunmen burst into the emergency room looking to finish off two rival gang members wounded in an earlier shootout. Witnessess said the pair fired their weapons as they roamed the corridors, looking for their targets. Patients and staff fled the building in terror. Police rushed to the scene, shooting dead two gunmen outside the hospital and arresting several others inside. The men being hunted...

During the best of the times, Miguel Salcedo’s son, an illegal immigrant in San Diego, would be sending home hundreds of dollars a month to support his struggling family in Mexico. But at times like these, with the American economy out of whack and his son out of work, Mr. Salcedo finds himself doing what he never imagined he would have to do: wiring pesos north. ==snip== Still, poverty is a relative concept. It is easier to get by on little in Mexico, especially in rural areas, allowing the poor to help the even more precarious.

A total of 15 people were killed in separate incidents in Juarez Friday. State prosecutor's spokesman Arturo Sandoval said a university professor, three women and a 7-year-old boy were among those who were killed.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and environmentalists reached an agreement Friday that scraps a rule the agency had used to kill or permanently remove any wolf that killed three heads of livestock in a year. Fish and Wildlife spokesman Tom Buckley said the three-strikes rule "will no longer stand." Ranchers said the policy targeted wolves that grow accustomed to preying on cattle. Several environmental groups sued in May 2008, asking a U.S. District Court in Arizona to stop the removal policy on the Mexican gray wolf, a subspecies of the gray wolf. Buckley said agency officials hope a judge...

Consulting firm AlixPartners has found Mexico to be the cheapest place in the world to manufacture products for the U.S. market. India comes in second, while China and Brazil are the third and fourth cheapest places. This isn't news for some Chinese companies, who have been setting up manufacturing capacity in Mexico for years as a way to reduce their production costs. It's important to remember that costs, even wages, have been rising rapidly in China over the years. Combined with transportation and other factors, it all eventually adds up and apparently has. Moreover, Mexico's competitive position vs. China is...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Obama administration has met many of the border security benchmarks Congress set in 2007 as a prerequisite to immigration reform and now it's time to change the law, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Friday. Napolitano, designated by President Barack Obama to lead the administration's immigration reform efforts, said many members of Congress had said they could support immigration reform, but only after border security improved, Napolitano said. "Fast forward to today, and many of the benchmarks these members of Congress set in 2007 have been met," she said in a speech to the Center for...

MEXICO CITY (November 12, 2009)--Some business groups in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, are calling on the United Nations to send peacekeepers to quell the drug-related violence. Groups representing maquiladora plants, retailers and other businesses said yesterday they'll submit a request to the Mexican government and the Inter American Human Rights Commission. The Mexican government has sent more than 5,000 soldiers to the city across the border from El Paso, but killings, extortions and kidnappings continue. Ciudad Juarez has had 1,986 homicides through mid-October this year - averaging seven a day in the city of 1.5 million people. Soledad Maynez with the...

The Atlantic Foreign Affairs December 2009 In the almost three years since President Felipe Calderón launched a war on drug cartels, border towns in Mexico have turned into halls of mirrors where no one knows who is on which side or what chance remark could get you murdered. Some 14,000 people have been killed in that time, the worst carnage since the Mexican Revolution, and part of the country is effectively under martial law. Is this evidence of a creeping coup by the military? A war between drug cartels? Between the president and his opposition? Or just collateral damage from...

El Financiero (Mexico City) 11/7/09 Mexico and US working together as never before: Napolitano In an interview with the Spanish daily El Pais, US Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said that the US and Mexico have, at this time, the best cooperation in working jointly against narcotraffic. ”We work very closely with President Calderon and his government and there cannot be more agreement in that there is enormous interest by the US in defeating the cartels,” she said. ”For us, it is a matter of national security in that these organizations should introduce drugs in hundreds of communities,” she...

MONTERREY, Mexico — When soldiers tried to halt a suspicious-looking SUV that was being escorted through Monterrey by a state policeman, the officer radioed for backup. In minutes, police from 40 patrol cars surrounded the troops, drawing their guns and sending the soldiers diving for cover in an hour-long standoff. Confrontations like that are happening with increasing frequency in Mexico's wealthiest city as soldiers fight corrupt police officers helping drug cartels — in addition to taking on the drug dealers themselves. This year alone, police and soldiers have confronted one another more than 65 times, The Associated Press has learned...

McALLEN(Texas) — Immigration advocates shouted support for health care reform Monday afternoon as Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison was ushered away from the airport during a campaign stop in the Rio Grande Valley. As health care reform takes center stage in the U.S. Senate, the shouting over one divisive and complicated issue won’t stop soon. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are grappling with how to handle illegal immigrants — an issue, along with abortion, that at times threatened to derail reform efforts in the House — in the health care bill. While both chambers seem to agree that taxpayers shouldn’t subsidize health...

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - A gang of gunmen killed an off-duty U.S. airman and five other people early today at a bar in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez. Authorities say four other men were killed outside an elementary school in another part of town. That raises to 30 the number of homicides in Ciudad Juarez in just four days. There was no immediate information on a motive for the early morning attack at the Amadeus bar, which also left a seventh person wounded. But Arturo Sandoval, a spokesman for prosecutors in northern Chihuahua state, says the methods bore...

In the story making the rounds here in Mexico's drug capital, the setting is a beauty parlor. A woman with wealth obtained legally openly criticizes a younger patron who is married to a trafficker. The "narco-wife" orders the hairdresser to shave the first woman's head. Terrified, the hairdresser complies. Urban legend or real? It almost doesn't matter; it's the sort of widely repeated account that both intimidates and titillates. And it highlights a disturbing trend: As drug violence seeps deeper into Mexican society, women are taking a more hands-on role. In growing numbers, they are being recruited into the ranks...

CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico – Gunmen killed a police commander Friday here in Mexico's deadliest city, across the border from El Paso. He was the second senior police official gunned down in northern Mexico in recent days. Noel Martínez, a former military officer who was a district supervisor for the police in Ciudad Juárez, was shot inside his car Friday morning, police spokesman Jacinto Segura said. The city is caught in a turf war between rival drug cartels. Drug violence has killed more than 2,000 people in Juárez this year. In the northern town of García, outside Monterrey, five police officers...

Wanna buy a baby for a-thousand bucks? Three doctors and a nurse have been arrested for allegedly selling newborns after telling mothers their babies had died, at a private hospital in Mexico City, authorities said Wednesday. Police uncovered the scheme after one of the women learned her baby was alive and had been sold to another woman for 15,000 pesos, $1,130 in US dollars, said Luis Genaro, the capital's deputy attorney general. The woman gave birth to a girl in a working-class district in October 2008, Genaro said at a news conference. He said she told authorities she heard her...

GARCIA, Mexico - A Mexican police chief has been murdered after being on the job for only five days. Brig. Gen. Juan Arturo Esparza is the latest officer suspected of being killed by a drug cartel. He was the police chief of Garcia, a town outside Monterrey. Esparza was on his way to confront drug cartel members who were threatening the city's mayor. Officials say the suspects opened fire on the police chief's car. The chief, two former soldiers, and two police officers were all killed. Five police officers and five other suspects were arrested and are behind bars at...

The illegal immigration issue is emerging as the biggest threat to passing healthcare reform in the House. Congressional Hispanics have threatened to vote against the bill because of a last-minute threat from within the Democratic Caucus to bolster the House bill’s immigration restrictions to match those included in the Senate Finance bill. And they’re also fighting President Barack Obama, the original sponsor of the language prohibiting illegal immigrants from accessing the public health insurance exchange. On Thursday afternoon, four leaders of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) traveled to the White House to meet with Obama on behalf of the entire...

Amid Rising Violence, Mexicans Fight Back Government Efforts to Control Drug Turf Wars Aren't Enough, Some Say; Mayor Promises to 'Clean Up' Organized Crime By DAVID LUHNOW and JOSÉ DE CÓRDOBA MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's war on drugs took a grim twist this week, as a prominent mayor said he had created an undercover group of operatives to "clean up" criminal elements -- even if it had to act outside the law. Underscoring why the mayor may have felt compelled to take such steps, the new police chief in a neighboring town, a retired brigadier general, was shot and killed...

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) – Gunmen with automatic weapons burst into a Mexican strip club on the U.S. border, opened fire on patrons and killed six people including an American soldier, the army said on Wednesday. The hooded gunmen stormed into the bar in Ciudad Juarez as strippers were dancing for customers, sought out the six men and shot them each several times. A 26-year-old off-duty U.S. soldier who had crossed over from El Paso, Texas, was among the dead, army spokesman Enrique Torres said. "It appears drugs were being sold at the place," Torres said of the strip joint....

MEXICO CITY — The leader of a Mexican farmworkers' organization and 14 other people were killed in a mass shooting in the northern Mexico state of Sonora... Sonora prosecutors' spokesman Jose Larrinaga said the victims include farm leader Margarito Montes, 10 other men, one woman and three minors. Most were believed to be Montes' relatives or employees. Larrinaga said the victims' bullet-ridden bodies were found on a roadside near a farm Friday. The killers apparently used assault rifles, the sort of weapon favored by Mexico's drug gangs.... Montes was the leader of the General Popular Union of Workers and Farmers,...

A group of illegal immigrants from two East African nations and and two Asian nations are expected to face a federal judge Monday morning. Border Patrol agents caught the eight immigrants near Brownsville over the Halloween weekend. Court records show Border Patrol agents caught three Eritrean immigrants after they allegedly crossed the Rio Grande on Friday. Another group of immigrants from Nepal, China and Ethiopia was caught early Sunday morning after they waded across the Rio Grande late Saturday night. Court records identified the immigrants as: Goitom Messazgi-Araya (Eritrea) Tedros Ghide-Ketema (Eritrea) Merhawi Zemichael-Gebremedhn (Eritrea) Salikram Bishwokarma (Nepal) Yu Gao...

MEXICO CITY -- Mauricio Fernandez couldn't have been happier. Here he was, being sworn in again as mayor of one of northern Mexico's most exclusive communities, and he had wonderful news to share: "Black Saldana, who apparently is the one who was asking for my head, was found dead today in Mexico City," he told his cheering supporters Saturday in San Pedro Garza Garcia, near Monterrey. The problem was that the barefoot, blindfolded corpse of "Black Saldana" -- whose real first name is Hector -- wasn't found for another 3½ hours, according to Mexico City prosecutors. And he wouldn't be...

DOUGLAS — Federal authorities say they have seized nearly 700 pounds of marijuana at the Douglas Port of Entry. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers were screening travelers and vehicles Sunday night when they came in contact with a 20-year-old Douglas man driving a truck. The vehicle was inspected and authorities discovered that the bed of the F-150 had been completely altered to accommodate the concealment of nearly 700 pounds of marijuana with an estimated street value of $1.1 million, authorities said. Officers seized the vehicle and marijuana and the man was turned over to the custody of Immigration and...

MEXICO CITY – A news reporter who wrote about violent drug crimes has been strangled in the northern Mexican state of Durango, authorities said Tuesday. El Tiempo de Durango journalist Jose Bladimir Antuna was kidnapped Monday morning, said Ruben Lopez, spokesman for the state Attorney General's Office. Authorities found his body that night in a vacant lot in the state capital, about 400 miles southwest of Laredo, Texas. State authorities are investigating the murder. Lopez would not specify whether they suspected connections with organized crime. But Antuna had told his colleagues at the newspaper that he had received multiple telephone...

Note: The following text is a quote: Three Louisiana individuals sentenced for transporting illegal aliens Defendants Part of Large Scale Operation to Transport Illegal Aliens LAKE CHARLES, La. - Members of a large scale illegal alien transportation operation based in Sulphur, La., were sentenced in federal court yesterday following an investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. U. S. District Judge Patricia Minaldi sentenced Carolyn Joyce Metcalf, 62, to 30 months in prison, followed by three years supervised release; Terri Lynn Fields, 41, to 27 months in prison, followed by three years supervised release; and Jean Morgan Vincent,...

I'm writing this in West Africa where I have spent eleven of the last fourteen months working with compassionate, dedicated, and brave people on humanitarian programs designed to save lives and alleviate human suffering. During the past five years, I have traveled to the Eastern Congo where the deaths of millions of people have gone largely unnoticed by the rest of the world, been to Darfur, responded to famines in Ethiopia, helped end a measles epidemic in Burkina Faso, and been deployed to Guinea Bissau in response to a cholera epidemic. I am currently focused on helping people affected by...

A record 100 alleged murderers and sex and drug offenders have been extradited this year from Mexico to the United States, where they are to stand trial. AFP - Mexico has extradited a record 100 alleged murderers, sex and drug offenders to face trial in the United States this year, the US Department of Justice said Sunday. The arrival of 11 more fugitives north of the US-Mexican border this weekend to face a range of charges in six states brought the overall count to "the highest yearly number of extraditions from Mexico to date," a statement said. "The defendants are...

As immigrants’ rights groups are pressing President Barack Obama to step up efforts at comprehensive reform this year, one prominent member of Obama’s cabinet is acknowledging that the economic downturn has made legalization of illegal immigrants tougher to sell to the American public. “When unemployment is up, anything that looks like you’re taking jobs away from …people who are lawfully here—citizens of the United States—is going to meet a lot of resistance,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said during an exchange with reporters Tuesday morning. The homeland security chief and former Arizona governor said the economic slump may also have...

Por Esto (Merida, Yucatan) 10/28/09 “Mordida”, a favorite extortion and bribe in Mexico In Cancun, Mexico, police stopped a driver, a visiting tourist, for an alleged “administrative violation.” Then they asked the tourist for up to $300 dollars so she could proceed without having a penalty issued to her. It turned out that the victim of this extortion was Michelle Fischbach, a state senator from Minnesota, who later presented a written complaint to the local authorities regarding the episode. Five Cancun “Tourist Police” officers are now under investigation for their personal attempt at extortion. “Mordida” (a “bite”) is a common...

Rights activists in the northern Mexican border city of Tijuana have hung 5,100 small white crosses on the fence straddling the U.S. frontier to commemorate migrants who have died trying to cross. The protest coincides with preparations for Mexico's Nov. 1 Day of the Dead holiday. The crosses represent the number of migrants estimated to have died in the 15 years since the United States toughened border security. The Coalition for the Defense of Migrants also erected a traditional floral offering for the dead. The Mexican government estimates about 350,000 of its citizens migrate to the U.S. annually.

SAN JUAN — Federal authorities arrested a 38-year-old man on felony weapons charges at a house where investigators said he manufactured scores of grenades and performed occult ceremonies with human bones. Ruben Ambrosio Fonseca Jr. had his initial appearance in U.S. District Court on Thursday after undercover agents posing as drug cartel members purchased 183 grenades from him that he allegedly manufactured at a San Juan house, law enforcement officials said. Federal agents and the San Juan police SWAT team raided the property Wednesday morning, finding weapons, firearms and a blood-stained altar alongside human and animal bones in the backyard....

Police have captured a suspected member of a notorious drug cartel. The Jalisco state attorney general's office says Abel Valadez Oribe is accused of trafficking drugs, kidnapping and extortion. Valadez Oribe is also known by the nickname of "El Clinton"and is a suspected leader of the La Familia Michoacana cartel. He was arrested on a highway in Guadalajara late Tuesday. The La Familia cartel mixes violence and pseudo-religion to inspire its traffickers and says its purpose is to protect the local population from rival drug gangs.

(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...

Thursday, October 29, 2009 More Census: While Dems Block Citizenship Question, the Mexican Government Urges Mexicans To Participate   [Andy McCarthy] I recounted earlier this morning that Democrats are trying to block a requirement that the census inquire whether respondents are American citizens.  At the same time, the Mexican government is interfering in our census by urging Mexican nationals to get themselves counted so they can grab bigger slices of hundreds of billions in social welfare spending — i.e., the redistribution of wealth from taxpaying American citizens to Mexican immigrants — legal and illegal.Check out this story in the Spanish...

Lingo is grim as new terms spring up to describe violence MEXICO CITY — Words can hardly convey how vicious, how over the top, Mexico's drug war has become. So those involved invented some. The Mexican media now have a special expression for being lined up and shot, and another for being dumped in the trunk of a car. There are also terms for mafia kidnappings, for drug-gang spies and for the hand-scrawled notes hit men leave with their victims' bodies. The lingo is grim, but how else to portray such savagery as beheadings and bodies cut up and cooked...

Laredo Community College got a visit from a Mexican congressman today who talked about Mexico’s stance on the United States immigration reform. Congressman Jose Medina says the immigration crisis is a human problem that begs a human solution and that the U.S., Mexico and other nations should work together to become one America on one continent. Medina also stated his own views on immigration reform. "I think legalization is the solution for people asking for permission to work legally in this country." Medina was elected as a member in Mexico’s lower house of congress in 2000.

NUEVO LEON, MEXICO - The number two leader of the Zetas Drug Cartel was arrested during a raid. Hernandez and the eight members were arrested and are behind bars. Two police officers, who were standing watch outside the home, were also put arrested for allegedly providing security for the cartels. Mexican authorities got a tip the Zetas leader Carlos Martinez Hernandez and eight other cartel members were hiding out ina house in Nuevo Leon. When police raided the home, they found two people who had been kidnapped being held hostage. During the investigation, authorities found an arsenal of weapons. They...

CBS News is reporting that McAllen is the most multilingual city in the United States, according to the latest census data. The Census Bureau Tuesday released its American Community Survey results, which charts a range of social, economic and housing data in U.S. metropolitan areas. CBS reported that the running survey, which is different from the traditional once-a-decade census, tracks three years worth of data. The latest figures cover 2006 to 2008. Among the findings: • McAllen, Texas has the highest percentage of people age 5 and older who speak a language other than English at home - 84.2 percent...

If you listen to the mainstream media, the swine flu pandemic, at least in the United States, is being spread by tourists and college students returning from spring break. Little or no mention is made of the thousands of illegal aliens streaming across our border from Mexico, some undoubtedly bringing with them more than a desire for a better life. Nearly two years ago we warned that one of the consequences of illegal immigration was the reemergence of diseases long thought to be vanquished. Among the infections being spread were a drug-resistant form of tuberculosis and an outbreak of dengue...

Beheadings and amputations. Iraqi-style brutality, bribery, extortion, kidnapping, and murder. More than 7,200 dead—almost double last year’s tally—in shoot-outs between federales and often better-armed drug cartels. This is modern Mexico ... law enforcement officials on the take from drug lords—is becoming an American problem as well.

Federal law enforcement in Nuevo Laredo is finally releasing information about the shoot out Wednesday afternoon . According to the release only two people are dead but there is no confirmed number of injured people. The release also says that some Nuevo Laredo police officers were involved in the shootout. According to federal authorities in Nuevo Laredo six officers allegedly assaulted soldiers from the Mexican military with their handguns. The assault happened when the officers were patrolling Avenida Monterrey. That’s when the shots started two people are dead and have not been identified. Federal authorities also confiscated four handguns, 13...