Filed under: amnesty, Arizona, army, Atzlan, Border Patrol, cocaine, Credit Crisis, death squads, DEBT, DHS, Dollar, drug smuggling, drug trafficking, Economic Collapse, economic depression, Economy, George Bush, Great Depression, Greenback, heroin, Homeland Security, housing market, Illegal Immigration, Immigration, Inflation, los zetas, marine, mexican army, Mexico, Military, national guard, neocons, real estate, Texas, Troops, US Economy, war on drugs | Tags: tijuana
Mexican Army Carrying Out Assassinations In U.S.?
KFYI
June 26, 2008
The suspects may have been hired by drug cartels to perform home invasions and assassinations in the U.S.
Police reports show that three men arrested in a Phoenix home invasion and homicide Monday may have been active members of the Mexican Army.
While on the J.D. Hayworth show, Phoenix Law Enforcement Association President Mark Spencer said that the men involved were hired by drug cartels to perform home invasions and assassinations.
The Monday morning incident at 8329 W. Cypress St. resulted in the death of the homeowner. Between 50 and 100 rounds were fired at the house.
Spencer said a police officer told him that one of the men captured said they were completely prepared to ambush Phoenix police, but ran out of ammunition.
He added that all were all dressed in military tactical gear and were armed with AR-15 assault rifles. Three other men involved in the invasion escaped.
National Guard on U.S-Mexico border will end mid-July
LA Times
June 23, 2008
An upcoming deadline of July 15, when the remaining National Guard personnel on the U.S- Mexico border are due to be withdrawn, has raised fears that without them the increased drug violence in the border area could spill into the United States.
“When the Guard was posted along the frontier in 2006 to help the strapped Border Patrol, critics warned that sending soldiers would be an insult to Mexico and that innocents could get shot by troops trained for combat, not law enforcement.”
“Now those worries have given way to fears that without the Guard’s help, a bloody drug cartel war on the Mexican side will spill into the U.S. and overwhelm the Border Patrol.” Dallas Morning News
Meanwhile, conflict between Mexico’s drug cartels and law enforcement agencies continues. The Associated Press is reporting that Mexican soldiers captured at least 10 suspected members of a Tijuana-based drug cartel in a raid on a child’s baptism party in the border city.
Texas Real Estate Slump Lets Mexicans Take It Back
Bloomberg
June 25, 2008
A rising peso and an economy growing faster than the U.S. have given some Mexicans the buying power to take advantage of the housing slump in Texas, which became part of the U.S. under an 1848 treaty that ended a three-year war between the two countries.
The peso has gained 3.2 percent against the dollar since the beginning of the year. The economy, which rose 2.6 percent in the first quarter from a year ago, is expected to grow 2.6 percent this year, according to a central bank survey of 31 economists in May. The U.S. economy is forecast to grow 1.4 percent in 2008, according to a Bloomberg survey of 57 economists.
Marco Ramirez of McAllen, Texas, is among those trying to sell foreclosed Texas homes to Mexicans. Ramirez’s company, called Now! Co., has bought 32 Texas properties and has options on 88 more. His best prospects are Mexican buyers, especially in Monterrey, 150 miles from the Texas border, he said.
`Great Time to Buy’
“Many of these people have children who are studying in the U.S.,’’ Ramirez said. “They’ve been renting or leasing and now it’s a great time to buy.’’
Mexico is better known for providing the U.S. with cheap labor than investment. The U.S. is home to an estimated 12 million Mexican-born residents, about half of them living there illegally, according to the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington.
Sales of existing U.S. homes in April fell 18 percent to an annual pace of 4.89 million from 5.93 million a year ago as banks shied away from making new loans, according to the National Association of Realtors in Washington.
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewF..0806/INT20080625c.html
Bush Signs Citizenship Bill For Soldiers
http://www.baltimoresun.com/new..7jun27,0,3711849,print.story
Filed under: Border Patrol, cocaine, drug smuggling, drug trafficking, Felipe Calderon, George Bush, Illegal Immigration, Immigration, los zetas, Mexico, Military, war on drugs | Tags: Loma Bonita, tijuana
Mexico Death Rate From Drug Cartels Rise
Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post
March 16, 2008
The killers prowled through Loma Bonita in the pre-dawn chill.
In silence, they navigated a labyrinth of wood shacks at the crest of a dirt lane in the blighted Tijuana neighborhood, police say. They were looking for Margarito Saldaña, an easygoing 43-year-old district police commander. They found a house full of sleeping people.
Neighbors quivered at the crack of AK-47 assault rifles blasting inside Saldaña’s tiny home. Rafael García, an unemployed laborer who lives nearby, recalled thinking it was “a fireworks show,” then sliding under his bed in fear.
In murdering not only Saldaña, but also his wife, Sandra, and their 12-year-old daughter, Valeria, the Loma Bonita killers violated a rarely broken rule of Mexico’s drug cartel underworld: Family should remain free from harm. The slayings capped five harrowing hours during which the assassins methodically hunted down and murdered two other police officers and mistakenly killed a 3-year-old boy and his mother.
The brutality of what unfolded here in the overnight hours of Jan. 14 and early Jan. 15 is a grim hallmark of a crisis that has cast a pall over the United States’ southern neighbor. Events in three border cities over the past three months illustrate the military and financial power of Mexico’s cartels and the extent of their reach into a society shaken by fear.
More than 20,000 Mexican troops and federal police are engaged in a multi-front war with the private armies of rival drug lords, a conflict that is being waged most fiercely along the 2,000-mile length of the U.S.-Mexico border. The proximity of the violence has drawn in the Bush administration, which has proposed a $500 million annual aid package to help President Felipe Calderon combat what a Government Accountability Office report estimates is Mexico’s $23 billion a year drug trade.
A total of more than 4,800 Mexicans were slain in 2006 and 2007, making the murder rate in each of those years twice that of 2005. Law enforcement officials and journalists, politicians and peasants have been gunned down in the wave of violence, which includes mass executions, such as the killings of five people whose bodies were found on a ranch outside Tijuana this month.
Like the increasing number of Mexicans heading over the border in fear, the violence itself is spilling into the United States, where a Border Patrol agent was recently killed while trying to stop suspected traffickers.
Drawing on firepower, savage intimidation and cash, the cartels have come to control key parts of the border, securing smuggling routes for 90 percent of the cocaine flowing into the United States, according to the State Department. At the same time, Mexican soldiers roam streets in armored personnel carriers, attack helicopters patrol the skies, and boats ply the coastal waters.
“The situation is deteriorating,” Victor Clark, a Tijuana human rights activist and drug expert, said in an interview. “Drug traffickers are waging a terror campaign. The security of the nation is at stake.”
Mexico Government and Military Aiding Drug Cartels
http://infowars.net/articles/march2008/060308mexicans.htm
Gang Members Get Trained in the Army
http://www.washingtonpost.com/w..031501013.html?hpid=artslot
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