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Last week, Mexican authorities seized over 23 tons of ethyl phenylacetate, which is used in the manufacture of methamphetamine. The drug component was discovered at the Pacific port of Manzanillo, in a shipment from China. In April 2010, Mexican officials seized 80 tons of phenylacetic acid and its derivatives shipped from Shanghai, China. Imports of ethyl phenylacetate require authorization from the country’s health ministry, so the shipments are intentionally mis-labeled before leaving China. Last year, an anonymous U.S. official told Reuters that between October and November 2010, Mexican authorities seized 818 tons of chemicals used in making crystal meth. Due...

On Monday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told a crowd at the University of Texas at El Paso that it is “inaccurate tostate, as too many have, that the border is overrun with violence and out of control.” She continued: “This statement, often made only to score political points, is just plain wrong.” Perhaps, Napolitano has not spoken to, nor ever heard of the Burns family in Brooks County, Texas, who have been forced to pack up and leave their 38,000 acre ranch because the area has become a war zone, thanks to the Mexican drug cartels and...

NUEVO LAREDO— The city's newest police chief was killed late Wednesday night when unknown assailants blocked off a downtown street shortly after he had left police headquarters and machine-gunned his vehicle. Manuel Farfan Carriola, a retired Mexican Army general, had been outspoken about fighting crime in his city, especially drug traffickers who are fighting for control of lucrative illegal trading routes. He was named to the position when the new mayor, Benjamin Galvan Gomez, took office on Jan. 1. Farfan Carriola was usually accompanied by several bodyguards and a personal assistant. Early reports indicated that some of those men may...

Mexican military patrols were on the lookout Tuesday for a group of Zeta gunmen that had entered Matamoros with plans to carry out several attacks. Locals reported seeing the military convoys, which were larger and more heavily armed than usual, patrol the city keeping an eye on high-profile vehicles. A source with firsthand knowledge of criminal activity in Tamaulipas stated that a group of approximately 50 Zetas were able to enter the city and hide amid the confusion of the weekend fighting between the Zetas, the Gulf Cartel and the Mexican military. On Monday afternoon, the source confirmed a clash...

We know about barbarous cartels. But more terrifying is their cancerous spread through Mexican government, and societal decay caused by a state with no justice. There is no avoiding the problem: we need to know all of Mexico, now. For years now, the drug war raging between the well-armed Mexican drug cartels and the Mexican government has been well documented by the international press. And with that war now spilling into American cities located near the Mexican border, news agencies here are paying more attention to the escalating violence. But while there has been no shortage of reportage on the...

The family of a Pharr man is in mourning after their loved one was killed south of the border in Reynosa. The El Universal newspaper is reporting that 35-year-old Ricardo Hugarin Garcia was killed over the weekend. El Universal reported that Garcia went missing on Thursday, December 30th. The newspaper reported that Garcia's body was found in Reynosa's Colonia Francisco Villa on Sunday. El Universal reported that Garcia's body was found in a bag. He had been strangled with a chord that was still tied around his neck. The Tamaulipas Attorney General's Office (PGJE) told El Universal that Garcia lived...

<p>GUATEMALA CITY – Men claiming to belong to the Zetas drug gang forced radio stations to broadcast a threat of war in a northern Guatemalan province where the government declared a state of siege last week, authorities said Tuesday.</p> <p>The men arrived at three radio stations in the northern city of Coban and threatened to burn the premises down and kill journalists and their families if the message was not broadcast...</p>

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- The Mexican government is telling migrants driving home for the holidays that they should form convoys for their own safety while traveling through Mexico. The Interior Department said the government could even provide escorts for such convoys to get them through dangerous areas. It said the Mexican army would assist in the program to help migrants return safely from the United States.

The Mexican drug wars have become an old story. Media of all types have given extensive coverage to the battles between and among criminal gangs and federal police and military. Nonetheless, the Obama Administration has continued a policy of avoiding recognition of the danger of the open warfare that exists immediately south of the United States border with Mexico. The federal and state governments of Mexico have reacted quickly to deny commentary that challenges their commitment to enforcing law and order in their jurisdictions. From Washington comes an active effort to counter any claims by local law enforcement in the...

Slain National Guardsman Lived In MexicoUpdated: Oct 22, 2010 12:56 PM JUAREZ,MEXICO - The Texas National Guard now says a private first class killed in Mexico was actually in the neighborhood where he lived. Jose Hernandez-Ramirez ignored warnings from his superiors and not only crossed into Mexico, he lived there with the rest of his family. He and another man were gunned down in the street. At the time of the shooting, Hernandez was not on duty or in uniform. According to the National Guard Hernandez was a full-time student in El Paso, but so far none of the colleges...

Mexican drug cartels are like a malignant cancer that keeps on spreading. Mexico has spent billions of dollars on its drug war to combat the power and influence of the cartels, but when you look at the statistics it seems as if little progress has been made. Considering the dramatic impact cartels have on the United Sates, America should consider if securing our border is as important to our national security as is the war we are fighting in Afghanistan. Mexico’s war on drugs has been ongoing since 2006, but the problem keeps getting bigger each year. So does the...

OAXACA, Mexico — The mayor-elect of a small town near Oaxaca state's Pacific coast has been shot to death, the latest in a string of politicial figures who have been slain in Mexico this year. Antonio Jimenez Banos, 47, who would have taken office in January in Martires de Tacubaya, was killed Friday afternoon by an assailant as he was returning to his farm. He was hit in the head and chest apparently with a shotgun, prosecutors said. Eleven sitting mayors have been killed so far this year in Mexico. Two of them were also in Oaxaca, but most of...

An eyewitness has come forward in the case of the American who was allegedly attacked by Mexican pirates to claim he saw the man's panicked wife as she fled to the American side of the lake. As a safety precaution, the witness spoke in shadow and with voice alteration to avoid identification because he said he feared for his life. "It was hard, just remembering everything about us going in to go take pictures and enjoying the sunny day and enjoying the nice weather," Tiffany Hartley, wife of missing David Hartley, told "Good Morning America" today, just hours after returning...

Just a matter of time before this was going to happen. HEY! Commander-in-Chief!....Any comment?

Border: Remember when al-Qaida targeted tribal leaders and local officials to assert power in the Iraq War? Today, the story repeats itself on our own doorstep. But incredibly, the Beltway crowd doesn't seem to care. Mexico's war against drug and alien-smuggling cartels grows ever more similar to the horrors of Afghanistan and Iraq. Beheadings, stonings, car bombs and terrorist attacks speak to a lust for power every bit as implacable as that of the Afghanistan's Taliban or the insurgents of Iraq. The cartels may seem to be just a police problem, but Mexico's own officials know better: President Felipe Calderon...

MEXICO CITY, Sept 27 (Reuters) - The mayor of a small town in western Mexico was found on Monday stoned to death in the third attack on a public official in the country in less than a week, local authorities said. The bodies of Gustavo Sanchez, mayor of Tancitaro in Michoacan state, and an aide were found, officials said. "It appears they stoned them to death," a source from the local prosecutor's office said on condition of anonymity. Local media reported that the bodies were found in the back of a flat-bed truck. There was no immediate indication whether the...

In a flabbergasting request, a coalition of Mexican lawmakers has asked the United States to stop deporting illegal immigrants who have been convicted of serious crimes in American courts. The preposterous demand was made at a recent southern California conference in which the mayors of four Mexican cities that border the U.S. gathered to discuss cross-border issues. The only American mayor who attended the biannual event was San Diego’s Jerry Sanders, evidently because his city hosted it this year at a fancy downtown hotel. Among the cross-border topics that were addressed at the conference was the deportation of Mexican citizens...

The Senate's top Republican on foreign policy said this weekend that drug traffickers operating on the Mexican border pose a more immediate national security threat than domestic terrorists. Sen. Richard Lugar (Ind.), senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is calling on the White House to intensify efforts to help Mexico fight drug lords at the border, where escalating violence has killed tens of thousands of people in the past few years. "Transnational drug trafficking organizations operating from Mexico represent the most immediate national security threat faced by the United States in the Western Hemisphere," Lugar said in remarks...

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – Some 230,000 people have left Ciudad Juarez, a border city that has become Mexico’s murder capital, in the past three years as the death toll from a gang war topped 7,000, a non-governmental organization said in a new report. About 124,000 people, or 53.9 percent of the total, have sought safe haven in El Paso, Texas, which is just across the border, the Ciudad Juarez Citizens Security and Coexistence Observatory said. The rest have returned to their hometowns, mainly in Durango, Coahuila and Veracruz states, to get away from the drug-related violence. “Action should be taken...

I watched the new documentary Southern Exposure which was just released and it was very well done. It helps those people who are not versed on the subject to realize that illegal immigration is a bigger problem than what they may have thought. Any effort to help make people understand that this is issue is so much more than migrant workers, is doing a good job. I live in a small town and we have ms-13 graffitti here too.