FSN News: Despite recurrent pronouncements of death by some U.S. and Mexican officials, high-profile organized crime groups continue operating and shedding blood south of the border. Tijuana, where control of both the local and export drug business is the prize of contention, figures once again as a significant flashpoint of violence.
Violent rivalries were on public display this past week as at least five so-called narcomantas, or narco banners, were placed in highly visible spots in the Baja California border city of an estimated 1.6 million people.
The MexicoBlog of the Americas Program, a fiscally sponsored program of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), is written by Laura Carlsen. I monitor and analyze international press on Mexico, with a focus on security, immigration, human rights and social movements for peace and justice, from a feminist perspective. And sometimes I simply muse.
Showing posts with label Tijuana. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tijuana. Show all posts
Sep 16, 2015
May 28, 2015
Pre-Election Day Violence Spikes in Mexico
Frontera NorteSur: Less than two weeks before Mexicans are scheduled to go to the polls in mid-term Congressional, municipal and state elections, violence is on the upswing. The most affected regions include the border city of Tijuana, the Chihuahua-Sinaloa borderlands, and the states of Tamaulipas, Guerrero, Michoacan and Jalisco.
Tijuana killings between groups of street-level drug dealers apparently connected to the Sinaloa, Jalisco New Generation (CJNG) and Arellano Felix cartels, the last group repeatedly declared finished by U.S. and Mexican authorities, recalls the bloodletting of the past decade when the city was considered one of the most violent in the country.
Later touted for its presumed public safety, Tijuana recently has been replete with narco banners threatening individuals displayed in public, executions in broad daylight and the dumping of victims’ severed heads on public streets.
Tijuana killings between groups of street-level drug dealers apparently connected to the Sinaloa, Jalisco New Generation (CJNG) and Arellano Felix cartels, the last group repeatedly declared finished by U.S. and Mexican authorities, recalls the bloodletting of the past decade when the city was considered one of the most violent in the country.
Later touted for its presumed public safety, Tijuana recently has been replete with narco banners threatening individuals displayed in public, executions in broad daylight and the dumping of victims’ severed heads on public streets.
Jan 25, 2015
Mexican Drug Cartels Are Using Magnets To Create Unwitting Mules
Business Insider: Drug smugglers are turning "trusted travelers" into unwitting mules by placing containers with powerful magnets under their cars in Mexico and then recovering the illegal cargo far from the view of border authorities in the United States.
One motorist spotted the containers while pumping gas after crossing into Southern California on Jan. 12 and thought it might be a bomb. Read more.
Sep 8, 2014
Fueling drug gangs' impunity, unidentified corpses pile up in Mexico
Reuters: In Mexico's blood-soaked northern state of Sinaloa, a simple gravestone adorned with pink, blue and yellow plastic flowers marks the tomb of 42-year-old assistant carpenter Carlos Montano.
But Montano is alive and well in the city of Tijuana, hundreds of miles away near the U.S. border, the victim of different enemies: incompetence and indifference in a land where authorities have failed to identify thousands of people killed in grisly gangland violence. Read more.
But Montano is alive and well in the city of Tijuana, hundreds of miles away near the U.S. border, the victim of different enemies: incompetence and indifference in a land where authorities have failed to identify thousands of people killed in grisly gangland violence. Read more.
Mar 21, 2013
Deportation, Drugs and Delinquency in Tijuana
FNS NEWS. Are U.S. and Mexican deportation and reintegration policies fomenting
delinquency in Tijuana? According to a prominent academic researcher and
immigrant rights activist, the answer is yes. Victor Clark Alfaro,
director of Tijuana’s Binational Center for Human Rights, told the local
press that the deportation of gang-affiliated individuals who are left
on their own in the Mexican border city with no resources or legitimate
employment options is exacerbating a serious problem of drug abuse and
delinquency.
Of an average of 200 deportees who arrive daily to Tijuana, Clark Alfaro estimated that at least 30 percent of them have ties with southern California gangs including Mara Salvatrucha, M-18, M-13, Florence, and the Mexican Mafia. After their arrival in Tijuana, the deportees don’t find job opportunities and confront discrimination from the local society because of their dress, style and tattoos, Clark Alfaro contended.
The border anthropologist said the lack of papers on the U.S. side of the border is likewise a problem on the Mexican side, where it is difficult to obtain the birth certificates and federal voter cards which are routinely used for identification in Mexico. Undocumented individuals are then harassed and detained by Tijuana municipal police officers, Clark Alfaro asserted.
He said the desperate situation of the deportees coupled with the cross-border criminal backgrounds of many make them ideal recruits for organized crime. Employed as look-outs, meth cooks, street dealers and hit men, deportees wind up constituting the lower base of the pyramid of organized crime in Tijuana, Clark Alfaro added.
While the high-profile violence between warring drug gangs that shattered Tijuana a few years back has largely receded into the background, local drug consumption and the violence associated with it have not gone away. Regularly, the press reports on the detentions of street dealers, small-scale drug confiscations and killings said to be connected to the lower rung of the underworld.
This week, for example, the Baja California attorney general’s office told the media it was investigating four homicides committed in recent days. In one case, two men were found beaten and strangled in a home. In another case, Roberto Alejandro Cortes Chorta, 25, was arrested and accused of killing his friend, 26-year-old Veronica Palacios Espinoza, and then stuffing her body in a suitcase with the aid of his mother, after the young couple consumed drugs and argued.
In a third instance, 21-year-old Jessica Michele Munoz was found strangled inside a Ford Explorer with a dose of crystal meth on a breast. Reportedly, Munoz was earlier linked to small-time drug dealing. On Wednesday, March 20, 22-year-old Margarita Martinez Michel became the third woman murdered in Tijuana in a week when she was shot to death in front of her home, in a crime also linked to street dealing.
On March 19, Tijuana municipal Baja California state police authorities reported detaining 18 street dealers and confiscating small amounts of meth, heroin, cocaine and marijuana. Separately, two other men were arrested for allegedly preparing a car with California license plates with a marijuana shipment.
In an analysis published last year, Clark Alfaro, who teaches at San Diego State University, wrote that the presumed end of the Tijuana drug war and the decline in murder statistics, which registered more than 2,300 homicides during the peak years of violence between 2008 and 2010 according to the scholar-activist, has not ended insecurity but largely confined it to the working-class neighborhoods of the city and among the lower classes. A similar pattern is currently playing out in Ciudad Juarez, Acapulco and other places.
Clark Alfaro described two Tijuanas: “the modern city. ” a place where the financial and political elite reside, and the rest of the city where poor zones punctuated with islands of walled-off subdivisions proliferate.
As order has been restored for the upper echelons of society, social disintegration has taken hold on the lower end, characterized by rising drug addiction, especially to meth, and the briskness of an illicit market that easily withstands police and military seizures, according to Clark Alfaro. In this schema, the business of murder is systematic but tucked away from the larger society and done in a non-scandalous way.
Wrote the border analyst:
“The murdered, on average one a day, now are not people murdered in abhorrent ways: decapitated, dismembered or incinerated. Rather, they are shot to death…the daily murder victims are now irrelevant persons in the structure of delinquency, since according to the authorities, 80 percent of them were people linked to the sale of drugs on the streets of the other Tijuana, not the modern part of the city,”.
In his more recent comments to the Tijuana press, Clark Alfaro said not enough attention was being paid to the issue of local drug dealing/consumption. He urged giving alternatives to deportees but feared public policy was headed in the wrong direction. “All indications are that a police solution is desired for a problem that requires a humanitarian one,” Clark Alfaro contended.
Sources: Frontera.info March 19, 20 and 21, 2013. Articles by Luis Gerardo Andrade and editorial staff. El Sol de Tijuana, March 18, 20 and 21, 2013. Articles by Juan Guizar and Manuel Cordero. Proceso, August 22, 2012. Article by Victor Clark Alfaro.
Of an average of 200 deportees who arrive daily to Tijuana, Clark Alfaro estimated that at least 30 percent of them have ties with southern California gangs including Mara Salvatrucha, M-18, M-13, Florence, and the Mexican Mafia. After their arrival in Tijuana, the deportees don’t find job opportunities and confront discrimination from the local society because of their dress, style and tattoos, Clark Alfaro contended.
The border anthropologist said the lack of papers on the U.S. side of the border is likewise a problem on the Mexican side, where it is difficult to obtain the birth certificates and federal voter cards which are routinely used for identification in Mexico. Undocumented individuals are then harassed and detained by Tijuana municipal police officers, Clark Alfaro asserted.
He said the desperate situation of the deportees coupled with the cross-border criminal backgrounds of many make them ideal recruits for organized crime. Employed as look-outs, meth cooks, street dealers and hit men, deportees wind up constituting the lower base of the pyramid of organized crime in Tijuana, Clark Alfaro added.
While the high-profile violence between warring drug gangs that shattered Tijuana a few years back has largely receded into the background, local drug consumption and the violence associated with it have not gone away. Regularly, the press reports on the detentions of street dealers, small-scale drug confiscations and killings said to be connected to the lower rung of the underworld.
This week, for example, the Baja California attorney general’s office told the media it was investigating four homicides committed in recent days. In one case, two men were found beaten and strangled in a home. In another case, Roberto Alejandro Cortes Chorta, 25, was arrested and accused of killing his friend, 26-year-old Veronica Palacios Espinoza, and then stuffing her body in a suitcase with the aid of his mother, after the young couple consumed drugs and argued.
In a third instance, 21-year-old Jessica Michele Munoz was found strangled inside a Ford Explorer with a dose of crystal meth on a breast. Reportedly, Munoz was earlier linked to small-time drug dealing. On Wednesday, March 20, 22-year-old Margarita Martinez Michel became the third woman murdered in Tijuana in a week when she was shot to death in front of her home, in a crime also linked to street dealing.
On March 19, Tijuana municipal Baja California state police authorities reported detaining 18 street dealers and confiscating small amounts of meth, heroin, cocaine and marijuana. Separately, two other men were arrested for allegedly preparing a car with California license plates with a marijuana shipment.
In an analysis published last year, Clark Alfaro, who teaches at San Diego State University, wrote that the presumed end of the Tijuana drug war and the decline in murder statistics, which registered more than 2,300 homicides during the peak years of violence between 2008 and 2010 according to the scholar-activist, has not ended insecurity but largely confined it to the working-class neighborhoods of the city and among the lower classes. A similar pattern is currently playing out in Ciudad Juarez, Acapulco and other places.
Clark Alfaro described two Tijuanas: “the modern city. ” a place where the financial and political elite reside, and the rest of the city where poor zones punctuated with islands of walled-off subdivisions proliferate.
As order has been restored for the upper echelons of society, social disintegration has taken hold on the lower end, characterized by rising drug addiction, especially to meth, and the briskness of an illicit market that easily withstands police and military seizures, according to Clark Alfaro. In this schema, the business of murder is systematic but tucked away from the larger society and done in a non-scandalous way.
Wrote the border analyst:
“The murdered, on average one a day, now are not people murdered in abhorrent ways: decapitated, dismembered or incinerated. Rather, they are shot to death…the daily murder victims are now irrelevant persons in the structure of delinquency, since according to the authorities, 80 percent of them were people linked to the sale of drugs on the streets of the other Tijuana, not the modern part of the city,”.
In his more recent comments to the Tijuana press, Clark Alfaro said not enough attention was being paid to the issue of local drug dealing/consumption. He urged giving alternatives to deportees but feared public policy was headed in the wrong direction. “All indications are that a police solution is desired for a problem that requires a humanitarian one,” Clark Alfaro contended.
Sources: Frontera.info March 19, 20 and 21, 2013. Articles by Luis Gerardo Andrade and editorial staff. El Sol de Tijuana, March 18, 20 and 21, 2013. Articles by Juan Guizar and Manuel Cordero. Proceso, August 22, 2012. Article by Victor Clark Alfaro.
Jan 3, 2013
US & Mexico Plan for New Border Inspection Station in Tijuana
Fox News Latino
January 03, 2013
Commercial shipments crossing the Mexican border with the United States will have now have a new layer of screening before they can enter the country thanks to the announcement of a planned customs inspections station in Tijuana that will for the first time ever permit U.S. agents to screen loads before they cross into the U.S.
Funded by the Mexican federal government, the facility will operate on the same compound as the busy Otay Mesa border crossing and will have U.S. and Mexican officials operating in the same facility. This idea of the building is to speed up the process for which certain goods – namely produce – cross the border.
The site supposedly has a laboratory, rooms for cold storage and state-of-the-art inspection equipment and U.S. officials would enter the compound from a secure road on the U.S. side of the border. The site will officially be opened once U.S. President Barack Obama and newly-inaugurated Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto give the joint go-ahead. Read more.
January 03, 2013
Commercial shipments crossing the Mexican border with the United States will have now have a new layer of screening before they can enter the country thanks to the announcement of a planned customs inspections station in Tijuana that will for the first time ever permit U.S. agents to screen loads before they cross into the U.S.
Funded by the Mexican federal government, the facility will operate on the same compound as the busy Otay Mesa border crossing and will have U.S. and Mexican officials operating in the same facility. This idea of the building is to speed up the process for which certain goods – namely produce – cross the border.
The site supposedly has a laboratory, rooms for cold storage and state-of-the-art inspection equipment and U.S. officials would enter the compound from a secure road on the U.S. side of the border. The site will officially be opened once U.S. President Barack Obama and newly-inaugurated Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto give the joint go-ahead. Read more.
Apr 11, 2012
US turns to Mexican newspaper ads to counter drug smugglers who target unwitting job-seekers
Associated Press: The war on drugs is going to the classified sections of Mexican newspapers.
Smugglers have long advertised work as security guards, housecleaners and cashiers, telling applicants they must drive company cars to the United States. They aren't told the cars are loaded with drugs.
Starting this week, U.S. Immigration and Customs and Enforcement began buying ad space in Tijuana newspapers to warn jobseekers they might be unwitting pawns. read more
Smugglers have long advertised work as security guards, housecleaners and cashiers, telling applicants they must drive company cars to the United States. They aren't told the cars are loaded with drugs.
Starting this week, U.S. Immigration and Customs and Enforcement began buying ad space in Tijuana newspapers to warn jobseekers they might be unwitting pawns. read more
Apr 10, 2012
U.S. says beware of ads placed by drug traffickers
UTSanDiego.com: "“Would you like to work in San Diego?” asked the small want ad placed in a Tijuana daily newspaper. “A company that is a leader in its field is looking for male employees.”
It sounded like a good opportunity, but what appeared to be an honest job offer had a major hitch: The work involved smuggling narcotics, and the employer was a drug trafficking organization.
The scenario has become increasingly familiar to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the San Ysidro and Otay Mesa border crossings. Over the past year, more than three dozen drivers caught with drug loads claimed that they had answered want ads, and were simply complying with their new employer’s request that they drive a vehicle across the border." read more
It sounded like a good opportunity, but what appeared to be an honest job offer had a major hitch: The work involved smuggling narcotics, and the employer was a drug trafficking organization.
The scenario has become increasingly familiar to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the San Ysidro and Otay Mesa border crossings. Over the past year, more than three dozen drivers caught with drug loads claimed that they had answered want ads, and were simply complying with their new employer’s request that they drive a vehicle across the border." read more
Mar 15, 2012
Drug War and the Arts: Murder Capital of the World: Documentary On Mexican Drug War & America's Complicity
Houston News: "The documentary Murder Capital of the World debuted in Houston last night at Premier Cinema in Greenspoint Mall. Despite the seemingly over-the-top name, it wasn't a horror flick, but there were several scenes that did manage to horrify the audience. You can't make this shit up.
It would be impossible to make a movie about a topic as hugely complex as the drug war in Tijuana, Mexico without including some blood and gore, but New York filmmaker Charlie Minn used such footage sparingly. He wisely let the facts speak for themselves. No one ran from the theater in disgust. Instead, they stuck around for a Q&A session afterward to discuss the issues the movie brought to light with the filmmaker himself." read more
It would be impossible to make a movie about a topic as hugely complex as the drug war in Tijuana, Mexico without including some blood and gore, but New York filmmaker Charlie Minn used such footage sparingly. He wisely let the facts speak for themselves. No one ran from the theater in disgust. Instead, they stuck around for a Q&A session afterward to discuss the issues the movie brought to light with the filmmaker himself." read more
Mar 14, 2012
Drug War: Young people increasingly being used by Mexico’s drug gangs for smuggling and selling
The Washington Post: "Luis Alberto is only 14 but has the wizened gaze of a grown-up hardened by life. He never met his father, worked as a child, was hired by a gang to sell drugs and then got addicted to them.
In October he checked into Cirad, a rehab center west of this border city that handles about 500 drug addicts at a time, a fifth of them younger than 17."
In October he checked into Cirad, a rehab center west of this border city that handles about 500 drug addicts at a time, a fifth of them younger than 17."
“They brought me here because I was using and selling ‘criloco,’” Luis Alberto said, referring to methamphetamine, the drug of choice for 90 percent of adolescents in detox because of its low cost and easy availability.
Luis Alberto is just one of an increasing number of young people being used as “mules” to ferry drugs across the border into the U.S. or sell them in nearby Mexican towns, said Victor Clark, an anthropologist who studies drug trafficking." read more
Luis Alberto is just one of an increasing number of young people being used as “mules” to ferry drugs across the border into the U.S. or sell them in nearby Mexican towns, said Victor Clark, an anthropologist who studies drug trafficking." read more
Mar 13, 2012
Drug War and the Arts: Art Without Borders
The Huffington Post: "Can art lead the way?
Kenichi Ohmae, author of The End of the Nation State: The Rise of Regional Economies argues that the nation-state is becoming obsolete because it is no longer the optimal unit for organizing economic activity. San Diego/Tijuana is often cited as representing one of the new metropolitan regions, according to Ohmae and other economists looking at potential "region- states" in the emerging global economy." read more
Kenichi Ohmae, author of The End of the Nation State: The Rise of Regional Economies argues that the nation-state is becoming obsolete because it is no longer the optimal unit for organizing economic activity. San Diego/Tijuana is often cited as representing one of the new metropolitan regions, according to Ohmae and other economists looking at potential "region- states" in the emerging global economy." read more
Feb 27, 2012
Mexico Economy: In revived Tijuana, a new calm delights - and mystifies
Kansas City Star: "TIJUANA, Mexico — This border city, once as violent as any in Mexico's drug-fueled trafficking wars, appears to have shaken off narco-related mayhem, allowing an explosion of new music halls, art galleries and world-class restaurants.
Tijuana's 1.6 million residents are grateful for the calm, which allows them once again to dine out at night, visit nightclubs and generally exist without fear of the sudden, random violence that had become so much a part of Mexican life.
But behind the relative peace is a nagging question: Why did it occur? Residents admit that they don't know.
"It's not very clear what happened," said Luis Ituarte, an artist and promoter. "It's just not as bad as it used to be."
Security officials credit better policing and the arrival of army patrols. Activists say that emboldened citizens began ratting out gangsters.
But some experts cite a more sinister reason. They say the calm is because Mexico's most powerful crime group has seized control of Tijuana's key drug-trafficking corridor and now enforces the peace. Rival drug gangs that used to gun down one another simply are working together now." read more
Tijuana's 1.6 million residents are grateful for the calm, which allows them once again to dine out at night, visit nightclubs and generally exist without fear of the sudden, random violence that had become so much a part of Mexican life.
But behind the relative peace is a nagging question: Why did it occur? Residents admit that they don't know.
"It's not very clear what happened," said Luis Ituarte, an artist and promoter. "It's just not as bad as it used to be."
Security officials credit better policing and the arrival of army patrols. Activists say that emboldened citizens began ratting out gangsters.
But some experts cite a more sinister reason. They say the calm is because Mexico's most powerful crime group has seized control of Tijuana's key drug-trafficking corridor and now enforces the peace. Rival drug gangs that used to gun down one another simply are working together now." read more
Feb 10, 2012
Cross-border Cooperation: Border mayors strive for united voice
UTSanDiego.com: "The interdependence of U.S. and Mexican border communities was the central theme of a conference Thursday attended by mayors from both countries.
Topics such as border infrastructure, economic development and the importance of changing negative perceptions about public safety in Mexican border cities were highlighted during the daylong meeting of the U.S.-Mexico Border Mayors Association. It was hosted by Tijuana Mayor Carlos Bustamante, who co-chairs the group with El Paso Mayor John Cook, and held at Tijuana’s World Trade Center.
Founded last August in El Paso, the group has 17 members; 12 of them attended Tuesday’s meeting — five from the United States and seven from Mexico." read more
Topics such as border infrastructure, economic development and the importance of changing negative perceptions about public safety in Mexican border cities were highlighted during the daylong meeting of the U.S.-Mexico Border Mayors Association. It was hosted by Tijuana Mayor Carlos Bustamante, who co-chairs the group with El Paso Mayor John Cook, and held at Tijuana’s World Trade Center.
Founded last August in El Paso, the group has 17 members; 12 of them attended Tuesday’s meeting — five from the United States and seven from Mexico." read more
Jan 11, 2012
Mexico Drug War Bloodshed; 47,512 drug war deaths during during Calderon's presidency
MexicoBlog note: The statistics for 2011, as noted by El Universal, only include through September. If the average rate of 4,301 deaths per quarter continued, the total for all twelve months of 2011 would be 17,294. This would put the five year total at 51,816. The official total for 2010 was 15,273. That would mean a 13.3% increase in deaths in 2011 over 2010.
El Universal: The Mexico Attorney General Office released statistics today on the number of deaths related to "presumed criminal rivalries" from December 2006 to September 2011. The total given is 47,512. The breakdown is as follows: in
El Universal: The Mexico Attorney General Office released statistics today on the number of deaths related to "presumed criminal rivalries" from December 2006 to September 2011. The total given is 47,512. The breakdown is as follows: in
- December 2006 - 62
- 2007 - 2,826
- 2008 - 6,858
- 2009 - 9,614
- 2010 - 15,273
- 2011 - 12,903 (through September)
While the Attorney Generals Office states that there has been an 11% decline in deaths from 2010 to 2011, the 2011 data only includes up until September.
For the nine months of 2011, the states with the highest number of deaths were Chihuahua (2,276), Guerrero (1,533), Tamaulipas (1,153), Sinaloa (1,100), Veracruz (538), Baja California (250).
The municipalities with the highest number of deaths were Ciudad Juarez (1,206), Acapulco (795), Monterrey (399), Culiacan (365), San Fernando (292), Tijuana (183) and Veracruz city (155). Spanish original
Dec 12, 2011
Mexico Drug War: Captured Tijuana Cartel Boss Confirms Sinaloa Truce
InSight Crime: "New Tijuana police chief Alberto Capella Ibarra called a meeting with press and business leaders shortly after Juan Francisco Sillas Rocha, alias "El Ruedas," was arrested. He announced that, according to the criminal boss, Capella had broken longstanding agreements between the police and criminal groups. As El Mexicano reports, Capella claimed Sillas said “Things changed when you arrived, you broke the agreements.” The implications of this, if true, are serious." read more
Dec 2, 2011
Mexico Drug War: Despite Raids, Tijuana Tunnels Keep Humming Underground
A somewhat irreverant look at who may--or may not--be winning the war on drugs: the mole whackers or the moles, who just keep digging.
NYTimes.com: "The tunnel ran for almost half a mile, .... Energy-saving light bulbs illuminated the route. A motorized cart on metal rails ensured quick passage, (and there was) a steel elevator...
And yet, (a) simple fact (was) obscured by superlatives like “the most elaborate” and “the most sophisticated,” which officials seem to lather on each new find. Tunnels are Tijuana. They have become an inevitable, always-under-construction or always-operating part of city life, as entrenched as cheap pharmacies and strip clubs.
NYTimes.com: "The tunnel ran for almost half a mile, .... Energy-saving light bulbs illuminated the route. A motorized cart on metal rails ensured quick passage, (and there was) a steel elevator...
And yet, (a) simple fact (was) obscured by superlatives like “the most elaborate” and “the most sophisticated,” which officials seem to lather on each new find. Tunnels are Tijuana. They have become an inevitable, always-under-construction or always-operating part of city life, as entrenched as cheap pharmacies and strip clubs.
... The evidence around the tunnel ... suggested that the operation had been going for months,... At that rate, hundreds of tons of marijuana worth hundreds of millions of dollars would have moved through this one tunnel during its life span. ... Most likely somewhere nearby, in another tunnel, the flow continues. The next announcement and news tour may be only weeks away." read more
Dec 1, 2011
Drug Trafficking: Major US-Mexico border tunnel highlights seasonal trend in increasingly popular smuggling tack
AP/Washington Post: "The investigation into the largest marijuana bust at a cross-border tunnel followed a familiar timeline. It began in May and ended in November.
The secret passage linking warehouses in San Diego and Tijuana — equipped with a hydraulic lift, electric rail carts and a wooden staircase — highlights an emerging seasonal trend. For three years, authorities have found sophisticated tunnels on the U.S.-Mexico border shortly before the winter holidays in what officials speculate is an attempt by drug smugglers to take advantage of Mexico’s fall marijuana harvest." read more
The secret passage linking warehouses in San Diego and Tijuana — equipped with a hydraulic lift, electric rail carts and a wooden staircase — highlights an emerging seasonal trend. For three years, authorities have found sophisticated tunnels on the U.S.-Mexico border shortly before the winter holidays in what officials speculate is an attempt by drug smugglers to take advantage of Mexico’s fall marijuana harvest." read more
Nov 30, 2011
Drug Trafficking and the Border: Authorities discover another border drug-smuggling tunnel in San Diego - The Washington Post
AP/Washington Post: "U.S. authorities said they discovered a major cross-border tunnel Tuesday, the latest in a spate of secret passages found to smuggle drugs from Mexico.
“It is clearly the most sophisticated tunnel we have ever found,” said Lauren Mack, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Diego. She did not provide details. ... Tunnels have emerged as a major tack to smuggle marijuana. More than 70 have been found on the border since October 2008, surpassing the number of discoveries in the previous six years. " read more
“It is clearly the most sophisticated tunnel we have ever found,” said Lauren Mack, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Diego. She did not provide details. ... Tunnels have emerged as a major tack to smuggle marijuana. More than 70 have been found on the border since October 2008, surpassing the number of discoveries in the previous six years. " read more
Nov 23, 2011
Drug War - the Money: Mexico seizes $15 million said to belong to cartel
$15 million is another drop in the multi-billion dollar bucket of the drug cartels.
Nov 18, 2011
Police Abuse: Mexico state’s rights officials allege former Tijuana police chief abused, tortured suspects
Washington Post: " A former police chief in the border city of Tijuana and several subordinates violated the human rights of suspects and broke the law by torturing people in custody, state human rights officials charged Thursday. Baja California state’s Human Rights Commission and human rights prosecutor made the accusation in a report on the allegations against former chief Julian Leyzaola and others.
Leyzaola, a retired army lieutenant colonel, become known nationally as a tough cop after cracking down on police corruption and drug gang violence in Tijuana. He resigned the Tijuana post in November 2010, but his success there spurred another violence-wracked border city, Ciudad Juarez, to hire him as police chief last March. In both cities, Leyzaola or his subordinates have been dogged by accusations of abuse." read more
Leyzaola, a retired army lieutenant colonel, become known nationally as a tough cop after cracking down on police corruption and drug gang violence in Tijuana. He resigned the Tijuana post in November 2010, but his success there spurred another violence-wracked border city, Ciudad Juarez, to hire him as police chief last March. In both cities, Leyzaola or his subordinates have been dogged by accusations of abuse." read more
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)