Free Republic

A popular Mexican musician who sang the praises of drug lords was shot dead in a parking lot in the west of the country, police said late Tuesday. Ernesto Barajas, a singer with the group Enigma Norteno, which has four million monthly listeners on Spotify, was gunned down in the city of Zapopan in Jalisco state. He is among several performers of so-called "narco-corridos" — a controversial sub-genre of regional music that celebrates the exploits of infamous drug cartels — to have been killed in recent months. In May, five members of the group Fugitivo were murdered by suspected drug...

The article does push gun control but is eye opening none the less. Large numbers of Barrett .50 Cal rifles are being legally purchased in the US and shipped to Mexico to be used by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. Additionally, recent allegation against the Jalisco New Generation Cartel indicate that 4 US Special Forces Soldiers, 1 Green Beret/Delta Force Operator, 2 US Navy Seals and a Ranger from 75th Ranger Regiment. The point that is interesting to me is this one particular cartel has professional military people running their operations who have all received special forces training in the...

A former longtime Drug Enforcement Administration agent who rose to help oversee the agency’s financial operations has been charged with agreeing to launder millions of dollars in narcotics proceeds for a Mexican drug cartel, according to an indictment unsealed Friday in U.S. District Court in the Manhattan borough of New York City. The former agent, Paul Campo, worked for the DEA for about 25 years, the indictment said, first as a special agent in New York and eventually rising to become a high-level official — the deputy chief of the Office of Financial Operations. He retired in January 2016 and...

The FBI on Friday morning raided the home of a high-ranking DEA official under Barack Obama and charged him for conspiring to launder millions of dollars for a Mexican drug cartel. The Feds charged former DEA Deputy Chief of the Office of Financial Operations Paul Campo and friend Robert Sensi for conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. Paul Campo and Robert Sensi were charged with narcoterrorism, terrorism, narcotics distribution, and money laundering charges. Campo and Sensi were arrested on Thursday afternoon in New York, according to the DOJ. Campo and Sensi agreed to launder $12 million...

A former Drug Enforcement Agency agent was indicted on federal charges of conspiring to traffic drugs and launder millions of dollars for a Mexican cartel. Paul Campo, who was a DEA agent for nearly 25 years, his associate Robert Sensi, are accused in a new indictment unsealed Friday of converting cash into cryptocurrency to buy 220 kilograms of cocaine, worth $5 million, and launder $750,000 in proceeds from drug sales for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or CJNG. The State Department designated CJNG as a foreign terrorist organization earlier this year. Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York allege...

Gabbard described an operation in which intelligence provided to Mexican law enforcement led to the arrest of an alleged Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) associate known as “La Diabla.” The individual is accused of leading a criminal network involved in human trafficking, illegal medical procedures, and the sale of newborns. irector of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard praised recent U.S. and Mexican law enforcement operations that she said were supported by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) through intelligence sharing. According to Gabbard, actionable intelligence from the NCTC assisted both U.S. and Mexican authorities in the arrest of a Sinaloa Cartel leader...

Guadalajara, a World Cup site next year, lies in a cartel stronghold. As Trump considers attacking drug gangs, it offers a cautionary tale.Carmen Lucia Carrillo spotted her son immediately. Daniel was dressed in black, stretching his lanky frame over the cars, squirting soapy liquid. Handsome and outgoing, with a gap-toothed grin, he always did like to look sharp, even with a rag dangling from his back pocket. She had just bought him those jeans, from a trendy Mexican discount store, Beware of the Dog. A half-hour later, Daniel vanished. Two men — one carrying a pistol — grabbed him and...

Esmeralda Ferrer Garibay, 32, her husband Roberto Carlos Gil Licea, 36, their 13-year-old son Gael Santiago, and seven-year-old daughter Regina were discovered dead in an abandoned grey Ford Ranger in Guadalajara, Jalisco, last FridayEsmeralda Ferrer Garibay, 32, her spouse Roberto Carlos Gil Licea, 36, their 13 year old lad Gael Santiago, and seven year old daughter Regina were found dead in a deserted grey Ford Ranger in Guadalajara, Jalisco, last Friday. Mexican authorities only confirmed the victims' identities yesterday. The family had moved to the Guadalajara metropolitan region for employment just months earlier. Roberto was involved in vehicle trading and...

Col. Douglas Macgregor is at pains to emphasize how the Narcotraficante Cartels pose a substantial risk to the security of the U.S. through its "soft underbelly". And Azerbaijan, as a remote government strongly involved with organized crime, has emerged as an important player in military attacks on U.S. opponent, Iran. Contrasts between these two criminal governments. The comparison between the Azerbaijani regime under Ilham Aliyev and the Mexican state nominally led by Claudia Sheinbaum, yet heavily penetrated by the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels, is not a contrast between a corrupt and a clean government—but rather a study in...

A drug cartel in Mexico is forcing new members into cannibalism and started sharing videos of gang members feasting on the hearts of their enemies. The Jalisco New Generation Cartel took sickening footage of one of its members eating a rivals' heart straight from his mutilated chest in Zacatecas state last month. The CJNG gang has become one of the most dominant cartels in the country and operates in at least 35 states across Mexico and Puerto Rico. It is led by by Nemesio 'El Mencho' Oseguera Cervantes and has started to incorporate cannibalism as part of its methods of...

A viral video out of Mexico shows an army of uniformed drug cartel members standing beside a long line of armored vehicles which have been outfitted for war, the men flaunting military-grade weaponry as they cheer Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes — the leader of the brutal Jalisco New Generation Cartel who is known as El Mencho.

HONOLULU (KHON2) -- Drug cartels from Mexico are operating in Hawaii, making and pushing deadly drugs including methamphetamines and fentanyl. New tougher penalties akin to murder charges are aiming to take them down. Authorities told KHON2 that the big cartels are ramping up business not just south of the border but right here in our island state. The top federal law enforcement official in Hawaii warns of the dangers not just to drug users, but to drug pushers once caught. Authorities have seen a big shift in recent years to Hawaii’s most dangerous drugs methamphetamine and fentanyl especially coming mostly...

Former Congressman Jim Kolbe was named by Gov. Janet Napoltano to head a task force working to get a NAFTA superhighway built from Mexico through the Southwest and Mountain West to Canada. Kolbe, who retired at the end of last year, will chair the state’s Canamex Task Force. The Canamex highway is proposed to run from Guadalajara, Jalisco, to Edmonton, Alberta. Through Arizona it would use a combination of upgraded existing highways and new highways from Nogales to the Nevada state line, south of Las Vegas

Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio has been killed, the country’s president Guillermo Lasso has said, vowing the “crime will not go unpunished”. Local media had earlier reported Villavicencio, a former lawmaker who had been polling at 7.5%, had been shot at a campaign event in Quito.

Authorities in Mexico have confirmed the remains found in 45 plastic bags near Guadalajara belong to as many as eight call center employees, who were reported missing in May, according to CBS. Six men and two women were reported missing by their families between May 20 and May 22. While their families believed their loved ones worked at a typical call center, the facility was reportedly one of 19 in Mexico under investigation by the United States Department of the Treasury for possible links to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). “CJNG’s deep involvement in timeshare fraud in the Puerto...

The DEA has already seized brightly-colored fentanyl in 18 states so far this month, a a new trend the agency says drug traffickers are capitalizing on to drive young people to the deadly drug. Fentanyl, a powerful opioid up to 50 times stronger than heroin, was responsible for 71,238 of the record 107,000 fatal drug overdoses in the United States last year, according to the CDC. The new brightly-colored fentanyl – which can come in pills, powder, and blocks that look like sidewalk chalk – is not more potent than the traditional form, but could be more attractive to young...

6 illegal immigrants linked to Mexican cartel arrested in NC for drug trafficking operation, officials saySix illegal immigrants with ties to a Mexican drug cartel — a rival of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, whose notorious leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was convicted last week — were arrested in an elaborate drug trafficking operation in North Carolina, according to reports. The massive drug operation included transporting large amounts of cocaine and methamphetamine across state lines — for instance, from Texas to Georgia and North Carolina, WSOC reported. The feds identified the suspects as Oscar Rangel-Gutierrez, Regulo Rangel-Gutierrez, Francisco Garcia-Martinez, Rodolfo Martinez,...

Washington, DC ~ Wednesday, March 11, 2020 Remarks as Prepared for DeliveryGood afternoon, everyone.  Thank you for joining us.Today, we are announcing the results of Project Python, a multilateral interagency operation targeting the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, also known as CJNG.  This operation was led by the DEA, and on behalf of the Department, I want to thank Acting Administrator Dhillon for his strong leadership in the fight against transnational organized crime. And I want to express my appreciation for the courageous law enforcement professionals of the DEA – the men and women who, day in and day out, put...

Forensics officials in the western Mexican state of Jalisco are trying to determine how many victims are accounted for in 26 plastic bags... The Jalisco state prosecutor’s office said in a statement that it began to collect the bags Tuesday in the municipality of Tonala on the outskirts of Guadalajara. Officials initially recovered 14 bags of body parts. They returned Wednesday and found 12 more.

A verified and convicted terrorist who attacked a U.S. Consulate with a grenade and automatic rifle fire has taken over the ruthless Los Zetas cartel, a group headquartered at the Texas border in the Nuevo Laredo-Laredo metropolitan border area. Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, sits immediately across the border from Laredo, Texas, and is the only urban location along the entire U.S.-Mexico Border that does not have any fencing or constructed security barrier of any kind. The convicted terrorist, Hector Raul Luna Luna, is known as “El Tory” and was convicted in the 2008 terror attack on the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey,...