Palomas is pretty horrible right now but not much worse than it has been for years, they are just reporting on it now. In 1985 we had a guy who worked for us (legally) but lived in Palomas, there were murders every weekend.
It has always been an unsavory town, the rumor was that the “muy rico” family got it’s money by rolling and murdering tourists and that was in the ‘50s. Their son was being targeted by the Mexican Mafia so he came across the border with drugs and made it obvious so that Customs caught him, he pled guilty, went to prison, got a college degree. The heat was off when he got out and he became mayor.
You are right that Palomas has always been bad, but I have lived in the area for over 25 years and it really is worse. There are still the regular weekend murders that are not reported- what is being reported is the murders related to the overall new little drug war that is going on in Mexico. The Mexican government used to have the ultimate control over the drug leaders, and for years were actually at the top of the drug chain, receiving the biggest profit. The difference now is the drug lords have cut the government out of the chain, and the government no longer has control of them. The government is trying to get control back- on the pretext of trying to stop the drug trade- though I don’t swallow that. Mexico now is like Colombia was a few years back.