Free Republic

Mexicans Flee Tijuana for U.S. Jan 09 2:28 PM US/Eastern By ELLIOT SPAGAT Associated Press Writer CHULA VISTA, Calif. (AP) -- A border city that has long watched illegal immigrants pass through on their way to low-wage jobs up north is increasingly welcoming a very different kind of arrival: wealthy Mexicans seeking refuge from kidnappings and other violence. Francisco Villegas Peralta is among the new residents of Chula Vista, where new boulevards run past gated communities and trendy malls. He said he knew he had to get out of Tijuana, Mexico, one July morning when three SUVs trailed him from...

TIJUANA, Mexico – Police in the violent border city of Tijuana have received a wave of death threats on their radios since soldiers sent to restore order in the city took their guns away, officials said Monday. President Felipe Calderon sent 3,300 soldiers and federal police to Tijuana last week to hunt down drug gangs. The soldiers swept police stations and took officers' guns for inspection on Thursday amid allegations by federal investigators that a corrupt network of officers supports smugglers who traffic drugs into the United States. The soldiers have not said when they will return the guns. Tijuana...

TIJUANA – Though stripped of their weapons, the 2,300 members of the local police force were ordered back to work yesterday, and returned to answering calls for help across this sprawling city with assistance from state and federal agencies. For now, the unarmed municipal officers are relying on their armed counterparts to respond to risky situations, according to the city's public safety director, Luis Javier Algorri Franco. But across Tijuana, officers were investigating accidents, directing traffic and responding to a variety of nonviolent situations. President Felipe Calderón's administration ordered the disarming of the entire police force Thursday as part of...

The municipal police force in this troubled border city walked off the job Thursday after soldiers and federal agents ordered its members to turn over their weapons in connection with homicide investigations. The surprising turn of events came two days after Mexican President Felipe Calderon dispatched 3,300 federal troops and police to the city in an effort to combat violence linked to drug cartels. Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon acknowledged in a radio interview Thursday that local and state police were being compromised by narco-traffickers, and he said government salaries could not compete with the financial rewards offered by drug...

TIJUANA – The city's entire 2,300-member municipal police force has been ordered to turn in its weapons, leaving doubt Thursday about who would be patrolling this city of more than 1.5 million residents. The surprise directive from Mexico's Defense Secretariat comes a day after President Felipe Calderon ordered Operation Tijuana, a major offensive against organized crime in the city. More than 3,000 soldiers and federal agents are being sent to the city with the aim of tackling the city's crime problems. Federal officials were expected to conduct ballistics tests on the weapons, apparently to see if they could link any...

A murder spree began in Tijuana, Mexico shortly after American authorities detained suspected drug kingpin Francisco Javier Arellano Félix last August. In September, 44 people were killed, including 5 police officers. Police say the killings are the result of internal strife within the drug cartels, as those in the organizations kill anyone in their way and fight for the power that was vacated upon Arellano Félix's arrest. The killings dropped a bit in October but have since intensified with 11 homicides in the first week of November. The violence has prompted the city's Secretary of Public Security, Luis Javier Algorri...

MEXICO CITY - A district police chief in the border city of Tijuana was shot and killed a day after surviving another attempt on his life, Mexican media reported on Saturday. Hector Gaxiola, chief of one of the city's nine police districts, was found shot to death in a vacant lot on Friday, newspapers reported. On Thursday, he had survived another shooting attack in which he was grazed by a bullet. The body of another man, identified by the Tijuana newspaper El Mexicano as Gaxiola's brother, was found next to him. Both had been shot dozens of times. Tijuana officials...

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's attorney general said the arrest a group of corrupt cops along the border with California is imminent. Daniel Cabeza de Vaca told a Mexico City news conference today the cops protected a Tijuana cartel, the Arellano Felix gang, which smuggled tons of pot, cocaine and meth into the United States. Two were already arrested Saturday and charged with taking bribes to protect the gang. The attorney general said they worked at the Rosarito police department just over the border from San Diego border. The two are accused of decapitating three of their fellow officers. The news...

Mexico's attorney general said Wednesday there will be a wave of arrests of corrupt police on the Mexico-California border following an investigation into a network of officials protecting the Arellano Felix drug trafficking gang, whose alleged leader awaits trial in the United States. Daniel Cabeza de Vaca told a news conference that the network protected the so-called Tijuana cartel as it smuggled tons of marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine over the border to U.S. consumers. The corrupt officers also killed honest colleagues, decapitating three fellow officers in June, he said. "These criminal groups, especially the Tijuana cartel, depend on the support...

War On Drugs: While not the end of the tale, the crushing of the Javier Arellano Felix drug cartel is a victory that should be played up. By itself, the arrest is satisfying. Better still, it shows the U.S. can work with Mexico. That wasn't the case when Enrique "Kiki" Camarena, an agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, was murdered by drug traffickers in Guadalajara in 1985. Back then, Mexican authorities threw roadblocks at apprehending drug lord Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, who was a leading member of the group that kidnapped, tortured and killed the agent. Mexican police told...

Mexico City, Jun 23 (EFE).- The Mexican Attorney General's Office is investigating the possible responsibility of Central American street gangsters for the decapitation this week of four people in the area along the U.S. border. "At this time there is a very recent investigation of a similar occurrence in Guerrero (state)," the head of the SIEDO narcotics division of the AG's Office, Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, said in a press conference. "And this is the kind of violence and brutality that are characteristic of these gangs - so logic tells us that an individual or a group of them could...

Tijuana, Mexico, Jun 21 (EFE).- The decapitated bodies of four people, including three police officers, were found Wednesday in northern Mexico near the U.S. border, authorities said. The four individuals went missing Tuesday night and on Wednesday morning their bodies were found wrapped in blankets in the Pacific coast city of Rosarito and their heads in bags in Tijuana, said Rosarito police chief Valente Montijo. He identified the dead as police officers Ismael Arellano Torres, Jesus Hernandez and Adrian Ventura, and civilian Fernando Aguilar, a Mexican-American resident of Arizona. According to Montijo, the cops and the other man - who...

TIJUANA – They were just miles away but worlds apart, two presidents grappling with the thorny issue of illegal immigration from opposite sides of the fence. As President Bush swung through southern Arizona yesterday, Mexican President Vicente Fox traveled to his country's northern border, speaking out against U.S. proposals for strict immigration enforcement. “Walls are not the solution,” Fox said after sharing lunch with a group of factory workers in Tijuana. “And neither is the National Guard.” Fox took advantage of his visit to two of Mexico's largest border cities – Tijuana and Mexicali – to signal his opposition to...

LONDON – Britain's secret intelligence service, MI6, has established the first proof al-Qaida is playing a major role in the new Cold War between North and South America – with Osama bin Laden's terror network seeing itself in league with Mexican subversives in infiltrating the U.S. border. The evidence emerged as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez swash-buckled into London after scoring a win in yet another venomous battle with Washington for influence and economic advantage across the Latin American continent. Chavez is in London to meet the capital's anti-Bush mayor, Ken Livingstone, and other prominent British opponents of the war in...

Several hundred protesters in Tijuana, Mexico blocked vehicle traffic heading to San Diego on Monday, turning the world's busiest border crossing into an empty parking lot. U.S. authorities responded by closing the metal barriers in front of vehicle inspection lanes for "security purposes" about 1 p.m. at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, which links Tijuana with San Diego. However, Angelica De Cima, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Customs Service, which runs the port, stressed that the port remained open to the few vehicles that were able to make it through the crowd. "We are there to do our law...

A van packed with 55 people and equipped with specially-modified tires drove the wrong-way across the U.S.-Mexico border early Monday and struck an oncoming vehicle before coming to a halt a short time later on a major freeway, officials said. There were no immediate reports of any injuries in what appeared to be the latest in a series of smuggling attempts by drivers who take enormous risks in vans crowded with illegal immigrants. The blue Ford XLT 350 van drove north at 3 a.m. in the southbound lanes of the San Ysidro Port of Entry, which links Tijuana, Mexico with...

José Luis Cano was back at work driving his taxicab this week after surviving a kidnapping that started in San Diego and ended when he escaped the same day from a Tijuana house where he was being held. “It's difficult to describe how I feel,” he said. “I felt powerless, I felt fearful, and when I was in the house I focused on observing and listening to everything so I could get away.” Two men were arrested after Cano escaped and reported the crime to Mexican authorities. It's been a particularly busy week for kidnapping investigators on both sides of...

MEXICO CITY — The Mexican clinic where Coretta Scott King died has been closed, U.S. Embassy officials said Friday. Mexican officials were not immediately available to explain why the Santa Monica Health Institute in the Mexican beach resort of Rosarito, 16 miles south of San Diego, was shut. Judith Bryan, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, said the U.S. consulate in Tijuana was helping patients find new facilities. King last week traveled to the beachside clinic. She was seeking treatment for advanced stage ovarian cancer and a stroke she suffered several months ago. The clinic specializes...

"Every year, more than 8 million people walk past the old port of entry building at the San Ysidro border crossing on their way into the United States. But some recently agreed to pay $3,000 to be smuggled through the historic building, 10 feet north of the Mexican border, investigators said.

"U.S. agents had been investigating the possibility of an elaborate drug-smuggling tunnel between Tijuana and San Diego for more than a year, but couldn't find it despite using military equipment so advanced it's classified" ~snip "“This tunnel beats them all,” said Michael Unzueta, special agent in charge of the San Diego office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, " ~snip "“People are always going to find a way around us,” he said."