Ohio’s Attorney General believes the Toledo’s new pot ordinance will turn the city into a haven for drug cartels. In September 2015, residents of Toledo, Ohio voted 11,663 to 4,911 to pass the “Sensible Marihuana Ordinance,” which eliminated the punishments for possessing and trafficking marijuana. It makes the crime either a minor drug offense or a fifth-degree drug felony.
Mexico’s plan to deter illegal immigrants from Central America from crossing its southern border has been effective, as apprehension numbers have plummeted. However, abuse complaints—including violent attacks and extortion—against Mexican immigration officials have skyrocketed.
On October 7, the US Department of Justice announced the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) had dismantled a drug trafficking organization responsible for the transportation of multi-kilogram quantities of cocaine and drug money between Puerto Rico and the Continental United States. This organization was using drug mules to smuggle kilograms of cocaine hidden in suitcases on airplanes.
Mexico’s National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data (INAI) said on October 11 that the Defense Secretariat must find and release any communications with the U.S. government relating to the disappearance last year of 43 education students in southern Mexico.
The United Nations Human Rights Commissioner recently wrapped up a visit to Mexico, describing his visit as “sobering.” Despite noting several legislative developments and reforms in the country, the Mexican people have painted a tragic picture filled with widespread corruption and insecurity.
On October 7, the US Justice Department released a statement saying that one of Honduras’ most powerful businessmen and two of his family members have been indicted for allegedly laundering money for drug traffickers. Seven businesses were also labeled “specially designated narcotics traffickers” under the Kingpin Act.
Crossing our southwest border from Mexico into the US is no easy task. It is also all to often a deadly proposition; if your coyote (human smuggler) doesn’t kill you or leave you for dead, the brutal desert environment will. As the number of illegal immigrant bodies discovered in Texas has grown, so has the concern of civic groups who want to help prevent these deaths.
On October 8, Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office announced that the pilot who helped notorious drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán escape from a high-security prison had been captured. This was the first time any mention had been made of a pilot being involved in the plot, and authorities did not say if the arrest was bringing them any closer to discovering Guzmán’s whereabouts.
It’s an understatement to describe the relationship between the US and Venezuela as strained. The two countries have a history of expelling each other’s diplomats after spats over petroleum, democracy, and human rights. However, that tension was taken to a new level recently when US judges quietly unsealed indictments charging two former top Venezuelan police officials with drug trafficking.
As Breitbart Texas has previously reported, Middle America is awash in deadly heroin coming from south of the border. The Mexican heroin is affecting middle- and upper-class families in unprecedented ways. In a special series for Peoria Public Radio, Camille Phillips takes a look at how this deadly drug has invaded St. Louis, Missouri.
Make no mistake; the new thriller in theaters called Sicario is no documentary-style production of the drug war in Mexico. It’s a movie like any other, with its exaggerations and stylistic decisions. But what makes Sicario one of the better representations of the reality that is cartel violence on both sides of the border is that it’s accurate enough to be believable—even to those well-versed in the tiniest details of this endless war.
“Individuals that come across the Texas-Mexican border from a countries with a known terrorism presence and the answer to that is yes. We have individuals that we’ve needed to debrief in Pashto/Dari. Not a lot of Pashto and Dari speakers around. But you can’t think about the last attack; you have to think of the next attack and where our vulnerabilities are. So, we’re concerned about that.”
Since his highly publicized escape from a maximum-security Mexican prison in July, it has been assumed that notorious drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera has once again taken the reigns of the powerful Sinaloa cartel. By his side for years has been Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada Garcia, who has so far escaped arrest. However, both drug lords are estimated to be in their early sixties, which means successors must be designated and groomed. The question is, will any of El Mayo’s four sons—known as “Los Mayitos”—fit this bill?
Como Breitbart Texas informó recientemente, Enrique Serrano Escobar, el alcalde de Ciudad Juárez, México (al sur de El Paso) declaró que pretende demandar a los creadores de la película de ficción “Sicario” en un tribunal estadounidense por “daños morales” a la ciudad. Escobar dijo que la película representa incidentes violentos que no reflejan la actualidad de la ciudad, diciendo el diario El Norte de México, “Daña la imagen de los juarenses.” Sin embargo, Escobar parece haber olvidado que Ciudad Juárez sigue es sede de dos grandes carteles de la droga y más de 400 pandillas callejeras.
As Breitbart Texas recently reported, Enrique Serrano Escobar, the mayor of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico (just south of El Paso, Texas) stated he aims to sue the makers of the fiction film “Sicario” in a U.S. court for “moral damages” to the city. Escobar said the movie depicts violent incidents that don’t currently reflect the city, telling Mexico’s El Norte newspaper, “It hurts the image of Juarenses.” However, Escobar seems to have forgotten that Cuidad Juárez is still host to two major drug cartels and over 400 street gangs.
This week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released its annual Uniform Crime Report (UCR), which summarizes a year’s worth of violent crime statistics from across the country. At a glance, it shows that violent crime is down across the country and in the State of Texas. However, the data used to make these assessments doesn’t include kidnappings or specify what crimes are drug- or cartel-related, painting a skewed picture of everyday life along some parts of the southwest border.
When most Americans hear the word heroin, they probably imagine a junkie underneath a highway overpass or an aging rock star with a needle sticking out of his arm. But the face of heroin abuse and addiction in America has changed dramatically in the last few years, and Mexican cartel drug traffickers are making sure those deadly little “balloons” filled with black-tar venom get into the hands of Middle America’s youth.
The synthetic drug known as methamphetamine (meth) as steadily increased in the U.S., although domestic production has dropped significantly since one of the key ingredients became highly restricted in 2004. As a result, Mexican meth traffickers have seized upon the market opening and are flooding the U.S. Midwest with Mexican meth.
A New York Times article reveals that Mexico’s opium harvest is more profitable for Mexican children than a school education would be. America is only just starting to wake up to the scourge of heroin abuse among Midwest middle class youth. The spread of black tar heroin and its rising popularity among a demographic that prefers the heroin high—and lower price tag—to Oxycontin pills is truly horrifying.
While much of today’s political debate—and rhetoric—is focusing on Mexican immigrants, pundits and politicians alike have overlooked a very interesting statistic. According to US Census Bureau research released in May 2015, immigrants from China and India, many with student or work visas, have overtaken Mexicans as the largest groups coming into the US.
Charges of assault and animal abuse against two federal border agents were dropped in Sana Cruz County, Arizona, courts. A surveillance camera captured U.S. Border Patrol Agent Aldo Arteaga punching a juvenile detainee in the stomach in a Nogales Station holding cell on January 30, 2014. On February 15, 2014, a different surveillance camera recorded U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Agent Edgard Garcia forcefully slamming a 7 year-old service dog onto the ground. Arteaga was charged with assault and Garcia was charged with animal abuse.
Three members of an Arizona militia have been indicted for allegedly stealing cocaine and cash from drug smugglers. Border bandits and rip crews are nothing new along Arizona’s border with Mexico. These are individuals akin to pirates—drug traffickers who steal loads from other smugglers on the US side of the border so they don’t have to run the risk of physically transporting the drugs from Mexico. Conflicts often arise during these rip-offs (Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered by a rip crew in December 2010), but rarely do the identities of bandits shock US law enforcement.
A federal judge in Phoenix ruled to allow attorneys representing immigrant rights groups to inspect four immigrant detention facilities in Arizona where the attorneys feel immigrants were held under “inhumane and punitive” conditions on August 14. The order comes following an enormous wave of tens of thousands of illegal immigrants who crossed the southwest border in the summer of 2014.
The coastal resort city of Acapulco has always been known for its beautiful beaches and sparkling waters. But in the last decade it has become a regional epicenter of drug war violence that Mexican authorities have been largely powerless to stop. The most recent wave of killings and kidnappings comes as a result of a turf war between multiple drug organizations that want control of the lucrative port city.
The 1980s and early 1990s were very busy times for the US Coast Guard with regards to maritime drug interdiction in Caribbean waters. After the demise of Colombian cartels, much of that drug traffic shifted to land routes in Mexico and across our southwest border.
