Posted on 05/06/2009 11:47:24 AM PDT by An Old Man
The reputed head of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel is threatening a more aggressive stance against U.S. law enforcement, instructing associates to use deadly force, if needed, to protect increasingly contested trafficking operations, authorities said.
Such a move by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, Mexico’s most-wanted man, would mark a turn from the cartel’s previous position of largely avoiding violent confrontations north of the border – either with American law enforcement officers or fellow traffickers.
Local police and federal agents in Arizona said they recently have received at least two law enforcement alerts focused on Guzman’s reported orders that his smugglers should “use their weapons to defend their loads at all costs.”
Guzman is believed to have delivered the message personally in early March, during a three-day gathering of his associates in Sonoita, a small Mexican town a few miles south of the Arizona border, according to confidential U.S. intelligence bulletins sent to several state and federal law enforcement officials, who discussed them on the condition of anonymity.
The Sonoita meeting is one of several signs that Guzman is becoming more brazen even in the face of a Mexican government crackdown on his activities and continued turf rivalries with other traffickers.
Information from informants, wiretaps and other sources has prompted a flurry of warnings to authorities in U.S. border states, instructing them to use extreme caution when confronting people suspected of smuggling drugs and illegal immigrants north from Mexico, or ferrying weapons and cash south from the United States, officials said.
Some U.S. intelligence suggested that Guzman is on the defensive because of enforcement efforts on both sides of the border, and he can no longer afford to ditch valuable cargo when challenged by rivals or authorities.
Acting DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart said Mexican smugglers also are under pressure because their Colombian partners are no longer extending them credit.
“There’s a need to get the cash back itself quicker and faster,” Leonhart said.
U.S. authorities say Guzman has become increasingly intent on gaining dominance over smuggling routes in Mexico and the United States. To do so, they say, he has escalated his assault on some rival smugglers while forging alliances with others.
“Chapo is at the forefront of the efforts to control the routes into the United States,” said Thomas M. Harrigan, the chief of operations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
He said virtually all of the violence remained in Mexico, but U.S. authorities were alarmed that attacks on police, soldiers, government officials, journalists and other potential opponents had intensified near the border.
How much risk that poses to U.S. authorities “depends on how desperate the cartels become to move their cargo in the U.S.,” said Dan Wells, commander of the Arizona Department of Public Safety’s Intelligence Bureau.
So far, the contrast has been stark – near-daily violence in Mexican border towns with relative tranquility on the U.S. side, according to crime data and interviews with law enforcement officials in the region.
For example, Ciudad Juarez had 100 times as many homicides in the 14 months ending February as neighboring El Paso, Texas, which is roughly half its size. In 2008, Nogales in Mexico’s Sonora state had 40 times as many homicides as Nogales, which is roughly one-ninth as populous.
Farther into the United States, narcotics agents say they’ve seen little evidence of spillover from Mexican drug-war violence beyond an increase in ransom kidnappings related to collection of drug debts.
But near the Mexico-Arizona border, Robert W. Gilbert, chief patrol agent for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Tucson sector, said confrontations between law enforcement and suspected traffickers – and among traffickers themselves – have grown more violent. A shootout occurred several weeks ago when one group allegedly tried to hijack another’s load of drugs on one of the main roads leading north to Phoenix. Two of the suspected traffickers were wounded.
“Times have changed,” Gilbert said. “The tactics, the aggressiveness. We’re victims of our own success.”
Now, he said, “they’ll fight us.”
An internal report from the agency, obtained by the watchdog group Judicial Watch, appears to support Gilbert’s assessment: It shows reported weapons-related assaults against border officers rose 24 percent last fiscal year, compared with 2007, and assaults involving vehicles rose 7 percent in the same period.
Among the areas with sharp increases in assaults was the Tucson corridor, according to the report. Mario Escalante, a spokesman for the Tucson sector Border Patrol, said there were 113 assaults against agents in the sector between October and March and an additional 26 last month.
“They’re losing money and they are frustrated, and they are using other tactics to get their loads across,” Escalante said. The tactics include throwing barrages of rocks at agents, ramming their cars into agents’ vehicles and sometimes, shooting. He said the Guzman warning had put agents on edge.
When authorities stopped a vehicle in Douglas, several weeks ago, traffickers on the Mexican side of the border “laid down suppressive fire” to stop the U.S. officials from advancing, enabling the vehicle to make it back across the border with a full load of marijuana intact, one Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said in an interview.
Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard said there appeared to be a shift in the rules of engagement on the part of traffickers affiliated with Sinaloa and other cartels.
“They’ve got to get the dope through or they won’t get paid. … These guys are under orders. … They have rules of engagement and they follow this direction.”
One member of the Shadow Wolves, American-Indian trackers who patrol the Tohono O’odham reservation for the Department of Homeland Security on the Arizona border, said that in the past, weapons largely were used by traffickers to protect themselves from bandits.
“But lately, (the bulletins have warned) that they’ve been carrying them to engage law enforcement,” the tracker said.
Applogize! Same as he does with all the other thugs around the world.
Now me....I would respond by sending a few people to snatch this guy up or put a bullet through his head.
The locals may get to have live fire target practice.
ping
The last FBI stats show these gangs active in 230 USA cities. People die every day, BUT Obama is going to guard the Mexican border from anything headed south, not north!
What is an Army?
http://www.usborderpatrol.com/Border_Patrol901_10.htm
[snip]The United States of America spent over forty years defending itself against a terrible foe. That foe was the Soviet Union.
The United States built 70,000 nuclear weapons of 65 different types to protect ourselves from a Soviet army of two million men. That two million man army was composed of Christians (the govenment leaders were definately not Christian) who were responsible for fine art, fine music, the first man in space and rockets to the moon.
What makes up an army? An army is made of men between the age of 15 and 35.
What comes across our border by the millions each year? Men between the ages of 15 and 35.
Afghan drug lords are now teamed with Mexican drug cartels to flood our cities with heroin. In Mexico, this Muslim Connnection to the drug cartels has brought beheadings to the streets of border towns. Many Mexican cities are now surrounded by Mexican Army troops and tanks — all to quel the violence. The city of Tijuana had its entire 3,000 man police force disarmed and replaced with Mexican Federal Troops.
What we have below are two images. One is of an enemy we fought tooth and claw for seventy years nearly bankrupting our country. The other we today invite across our border with welfare, free medical care, and more. The centers of many American cities are now controlled by MS-13 and others of the most violent gangs in America’s entire history. These gangs want to kill police and federal agents to rise in reputation among their own kind. Our prisons are now filled with a violent criminal class never seen before anywhere on earth.
In all of the 70 years of the Soviet Union — including the years of the proxy war of Vietnam.— they killed fewer Americans in total than Mexican Illegal Aliens do inside this country in a single year.
What is our Border Patrol to do when these people invade our country? Run and hide. This is the actual card carried by the U.S. Border Patrol which spells out in detail what they are to do when these Mexican gangs or the Mexican Army invade our country:
Pancho Villa the second ..... and even this guy knows Obama is weak.
“. The tactics include throwing barrages of rocks at agents, ramming their cars into agents’ vehicles and sometimes, shooting. He said the Guzman warning had put agents on edge.....Local police and federal agents in Arizona said they recently have received at least two law enforcement alerts focused on Guzman’s reported orders that his smugglers should “use their weapons to defend their loads at all costs.””
They make it sound like the cartels are not compromising our security yet...though we see reports of it every day...like Phoenix being the kidnap capital of the world, next to Mexico.
Can we please call this what it is??? Terrorism!
U.S. Law definition of Terrorism:
(1) the term “international terrorism” means terrorism involving citizens or the territory of more than 1 country;
(2) the term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents;
(3) the term “terrorist group” means any group, or which has significant subgroups which practice, international terrorism;
(4) the terms “territory” and “territory of the country” mean the land, waters, and airspace of the country; and
(5) the terms “terrorist sanctuary” and “sanctuary” mean an area in the territory of the country—
(A) that is used by a terrorist or terrorist organization—
(i) to carry out terrorist activities, including training, fundraising, financing, and recruitment; or
(ii) as a transit point; and
(B) the government of which expressly consents to, or with knowledge, allows, tolerates, or disregards such use of its territory and is not subject to a determination...
http://terrorism.about.com/od/whatisterroris1/ss/DefineTerrorism_5.htm
With all the talking he intends to do to save our sovereign soul, he will lose his voice faster than he anticipates.
It's the small timers he can relate to most.
Of course, we don't have a real Commander-In-Chief. We have a Community Organizer and Chicago thug posing as one who would much rather gather all economic and political power into his own personal hands than protect the American people.
He doesn't mind the chaos which these drug gangs cause. Who knows? Maybe he's getting payoffs already from these cartels?
In any case, their violence and murder gives him a great excuse to further curtail American liberty and disarm his real enemies - the American people! If he needs to break a few eggs to make his own special omelet, why should he care?
http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_international/mexican_cartels/index.html?SITE=TXELP Interesting info here.
zee remington 700, no?
This is not terrorism. This is a foreign entity conducting an armed invasion, and it should be treated as an act of war, with US forces being allowed to open fire on armed invaders on sight.
Yes
Ping!
If you want on, or off this S. Texas/Mexico ping list, please FReepMail me.
The primary purpose of our national forces are to defend our country. If they are NOT being deployed to do that when the country is under attack the person responsible for that inaction needs to be removed from their position so a better qualified individual can take charge. If the next person up for that position is deemed senile, foolish or a combination of both (which he is) I recommend Chuck Norris.
Seriously though, it’s obvious this corruption has reached the highest levels of Chicago community outreach and we need to clamp this bastard down by moving for the sake of the national interests over his crony’s financial interests. Let’s admit it: Obama being a criminal will always deal with his type for a cut of something for the sake of his own gang before ever considering what’s best for the United States. Some are saying “let him cut enough rope” but I’m seeing otherwise good people going along with the corruption as he goes along in office - not unlike the Clinton era.
I say he’s cut just enough rope for what needs to be done with it.
He is walking a very tight line. I believe he is entitled to all the rope he wants. Once he crosses the line and one of his policies is ruled Unconstitutional. Then impeach the one and try him as the Constitution requires. Until then, keep track of his activities. He will let us know when the time comes.
I might add that the same should be applied to all those in the Senate or House of Representatives.
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