Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives under pressure to turn over documents on anti-gun-trafficking strategies

Gruesome Discovery in Mexico

 

Associated Press= MEXICO CITY (AP) — Investigators found 26 badly decomposed bodies at a vacant lot in the northern Mexico state of Durango on Wednesday and said they were looking for more.

The grisly Holy Week discovery came just days after police found 10 complete bodies, three headless bodies and four severed heads in a pit in Durango, a state that has become a battleground between the Zetas and Sinaloa drug cartels.

Acting on information that there were skeletal remains at the lot, state and federal authorities launched a joint operation to search the site in the state capital, also known as Durango.

The search uncovered 26 bodies, but they were too badly decomposed to immediately identify them or their cause of death, the Durango state prosecutor's office said in a statement.

Prosecutors did not answer phone calls seeking to determine whether the bodies were found in multiple-burial pits, like the 145 bodies that have been pulled from mass graves in the border state of Tamaulipas.

While Mexican drug cartels frequently use such pits to dispose of the remains of executed rivals, many of those buried in the Tamaulipas mass graves are believed to have been passengers kidnapped from passing buses.

In Tamaulipas on Wednesday, authorities reported they had rescued 68 people, including 12 Central American migrants, allegedly kidnapped by a drug cartel.

Mexico Rattled by 6.5 Quake

USGS
A magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck Mexico early Thursday morning.
Southern Mexico was shaken by an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.5 Thursday, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said.
The quake was centered about 35 miles from Las Choapas, a city of about 70,000 people in the state of Veracruz, at a depth of 104 miles. A slight tremor from the quake was felt in Mexico City, about 250 miles away.
Buildings swayed for several seconds in the capital city of Mexico, prompting people to flee into the streets, and the temblor was felt strongly in Chiapas, a state bordering Guatemala, the Associated Press reported.
The quake was about 300 miles from Guatemala City, according to a USGS preliminary report. A USGS map of the area shows reports of the temblor spanning the Mexican peninsula.
There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.




Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/04/07/mexico-rattled-65-quake-damage-reported/#ixzz1IrDy171c

Mexican Authorities Find Mass Grave Holding 59 Bodies

AP

Feb. 27: State police guard the site where at least five bodies were found in a clandestine grave in Santa Mara Tlalmanalco on the outskirts of Mexico City.

MEXICO CITY -- Mexican security forces searching for abducted bus passengers in a violent northern state bordering Texas have stumbled on a collection of pits holding a total of 59 bodies.

The grisly find was made near the ranch where drug cartel gunmen less than a year ago massacred 72 migrants who were trying to reach the United States.

Investigators struggled to exhume the bodies in the mass grave to determine whether they belonged to kidnapped bus passengers, migrants who frequently ride buses in the area, or drug traffickers executed by rivals.

Tamaulipas state investigators and federal authorities went to the site about 80 miles south of the border at Brownsville, Texas, to investigate reports that gunmen had begun stopping buses and pulling off some passengers in the area starting March 25.

Two other such cases were reported in subsequent days, in what may have been an attempt at forced recruitment by a drug gang, Tamaulipas state interior secretary Morelos Canseco said. The gunmen reportedly abducted almost exclusively men and allowed the remaining passengers to continue on their way.

State and federal investigators and soldiers conducted the raid, but differed on what exactly happened.

The federal Interior Department said the first pit was discovered Saturday and soldiers detained five suspected kidnappers. Tamaulipas officials said the pits were found Wednesday, and a total of 11 suspected kidnappers were captured and five kidnap victims were freed. The reason for the discrepancy was not clear.

But the security forces agreed that a series of eight burial pits had been found, one of which contained 43 bodies and the others 16 corpses. The bodies were being examined to determine their identities and cause of death.

Canseco said two of the dead were women. Many of the victims found in the pits appeared to have died between 10 and 15 days ago, dates that would roughly match the bus abductions, he said.

A statement from the Tamaulipas government, which "energetically condemned" the killings, did not say what drug gang, if any, the suspects belonged to.

President Felipe Calderon's office issued a statement saying the find "underlines the cowardliness and total lack of scruples of the criminal organizations that cause violence in our country."

While there was no immediate confirmation that a drug cartel was involved, officials refer to the cartels as "criminal organizations."

The pits were found in the farm hamlet of La Joya in the township of San Fernando, in the same area where the bodies of 72 migrants, most from Central America, were found shot to death Aug. 24 at a ranch.

Authorities blamed that massacre on the Zetas drug gang, which is fighting its one-time allies in the Gulf cartel for control of the region.

The victims in the August massacre were illegal immigrants from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Ecuador and Brazil. An Ecuadorean and Honduran survived the attack, which Mexican authorities say occurred after the migrants refused to work for the cartel.

Mexican drug cartels have taken to recruiting migrants, common criminals and youths, Mexican authorities say.

But drug gunmen also operate kidnapping rings, and erect roadblocks on highways in Tamaulipas and other northern states, where they hijack vehicles and rob and sometimes kill passengers.

San Fernando is on a major highway that leads to the U.S. border, but it wasn't immediately known whether the victims found in the mass grave had been kidnapped from that road.

Drug gangs across Mexico also sometimes use mass graves to dispose of the bodies of executed rivals.

The wave of drug-related killings -- which has claimed more than 34,000 lives in the four years since the government launched an offensive against drug cartels -- drew thousands of protesters into the streets of Mexico's capital and several other cities Wednesday in marches against violence.

Many of the protesters said the government offensive has stirred up the violence.

"We need to end this war, because it is a senseless war that the government started," said protester Alma Lilia Roura, 60, an art historian.

Several thousand people joined the demonstration in downtown Mexico City, chanting "No More Blood!" and "Not One More!" A similar number marched through the southern city of Cuernavaca.

Parents marched with toddlers, and protesters held up signs highlighting the disproportionate toll among the nation's youth. "Today a student, tomorrow a corpse," read one sign carried by demonstrators.

The marches were spurred in part by the March 28 killing of Juan Francisco Sicilia, the son of Mexican poet Javier Sicilia, and six other people in Cuernavaca.

"We are putting pressure on the government, because this can't go on," said the elder Sicilia. "It seems that we are like animals that can be murdered with impunity."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/04/07/mexican-authorities-mass-grave-holding-5-bodies/#ixzz1IqqTK866

Federal Agents Told to Reduce Border Arrests, Arizona Sheriff Says

AP

Nov. 1, 2010: Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever, left, speaks about illegal immigration at an event in Arizona also attended by Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu.

An Arizona sheriff says U.S. Border Patrol officials have repeatedly told him they have been ordered to reduce -- at times even stop -- arrests of illegal immigrants caught trying to cross the U.S. border.

Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever told FoxNews.com that a supervisor with the U.S. Border Patrol told him as recently as this month that the federal agency’s office on Arizona's southern border was under orders to keep apprehension numbers down during specific reporting time periods.

“The senior supervisor agent is telling me about how their mission is now to scare people back,” Dever said in an interview with FoxNews.com. “He said, ‘I had to go back to my guys and tell them not to catch anybody, that their job is to chase people away. … They were not to catch anyone, arrest anyone. Their job was to set up posture, to intimidate people, to get them to go back.”

Dever said his recent conversation with the Border Patrol supervisor was the latest in a series of communications on the subject that he has had with various federal agents over the last two years. Dever said he plans to relay the substance of these conversations when he testifies under oath next month before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

“I will raise my hand to tell the truth and swear to God, and nothing is more serious or important than that,” he said. “I’m going to tell them that, here’s what I hear and see every day: I had conversation with agent A, B, C, D and this is what they told me.”

Dever’s charges were vigorously denied by a commander with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

“The claim that Border Patrol supervisors have been instructed to underreport or manipulate our statistics is unequivocally false,” Jeffery Self, commander of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Joint Field Command in Arizona, said in a written statement.

“I took an oath that I take very seriously, and I find it insulting that anyone, especially a fellow law enforcement officer, would imply that we would put the protection of the American public and security of our nation’s borders in danger just for a numbers game," he said. "Our mission does not waiver based on political climate, and it never will. To suggest that we are ambiguous in enforcing our laws belittles the work of more than 6,000 CBP employees in Arizona who dedicate their lives to protect our borders every day.”

In recent days, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has said the U.S.-Mexican border is more secure than ever, and Homeland Security officials have used recent statistics to support those claims.

"There is a perception that the border is worse now than it ever has been," Napolitano said at the El Paso border crossing last week. "That is wrong. The border is better now than it ever has been."

Dever doesn’t agree.

“Janet Napolitano says the border is more secure than it’s ever been. I’ve been here for 60 years, and I’m telling you that’s not true,” he said.

The sheriff of Santa Cruz County, which borders Dever’s Cochise County to the west, said, “This is news to me,” when asked about reports that border agents were being told to turn illegal immigrants back to Mexico rather than arrest them.

“It comes as a complete surprise that that would be something that’s going around,” Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada said. “I meet with Dever all the time and I have great respect for him, so I expect he’d come forward and say what he knows and give the source.

“Not knowing who the source is, how reliable that source is, I really don’t have much of a position,” Estrada said. “I’ve been around a real long time and haven’t heard anything like this. By the same token, you learn new things every day.”

Both sheriffs are elected officials. Dever is a Republican, Estrada, a Democrat.

Others have questioned the methodology and conclusions of the Homeland Security numbers showing the border is more secure.

Mark Hanna, CEO of Real Life Enterprises, a Phoenix-based technology integration and security company, has testified before the Arizona Senate about what he called Homeland Security’s flawed methodology used to compile border security statistics. Hanna maintains the numbers are dangerously misleading.

Hanna, who is currently working on a private/public partnership pilot program along the Arizona border, said he attended a February conference at which Michael Fisher, chief of the United States Border Patrol, and Mark S. Borkowski, assistant commissioner for technology and innovation acquisition, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, showed off charts indicating arrests were decreasing and argued the border was more secure. The charts also showed an increase in marijuana seizures along the border and an increase in Border Patrol agents.

But those charts left out crucial data, Hanna said.

“Since we don't know how many illegal crossings are occurring, then a decrease in apprehensions might mean that there are fewer illegal crossings, and the border is more secure. But it could also just as easily mean that more illegal border crossings are occurring, and we're just not catching as many. In order to know how secure the border is, you need to know how many are crossing and the threat level of those who are crossing illegally," he said.

“It is a very dangerous condition for the secretary of Homeland Security to be using incomplete data to form such a conclusion, and then repeatedly announce these conclusions as fact,” he said.

The Department of Homeland Security did not return repeated requests for comment on Hanna’s specific challenges to the agency’s methodology.

Whatever the methodology, Dever said the numbers don’t accurately describe what’s happening on the ground.

“We do not know who’s crossing that border, but that anyone who wants to can. That’s the message our nation needs to hear, that anyone who wants to can, and is. And our own Department of Homeland Security does not have clear definition of what securing the border even means," Dever said.

“People are disgusted, the smiles are gone off their face, their general sense of welfare been taken away from them and until that’s returned you can throw all the numbers on the board. … I’ll tell Napolitano, in spite of all of your declarations and efforts to the contrary, things are not safe. No, they are not secure.

“You can use your numbers to say it’s more secure, but it does not define a sense of safety or well-being. You can say it’s more secure, but it’s more dangerous than ever.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/04/01/exclusive-federal-agents-told-reduce-border-arrests-arizona-sheriff-says/#ixzz1IgCi7vre

Should Americans Travel to Mexico ???

Hey Bill,  This guy is a dumba$$ !!!

American Professor Kidnapped in Mexican Border City

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- Armed men kidnapped an American university professor while she was visiting her mother in the violent Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez, the state prosecutor's office said Saturday.

The American was identified as Veronica Perez Rodriguez, an archeologist at Northern Arizona University.

A source at the Chihuahua state prosecutor's office said she was visiting her mother in Ciudad Juarez Friday afternoon "and the moment she left her family's house she was intercepted by armed men and deprived of her liberty."

Since 2003, Perez has been an associate professor of anthropology at the university in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Perez attended elementary, junior high, and high school in Ciudad Juarez, according to her resume, posted on the university's website. She is fluent in Spanish and English.

Perez, on her Northern Arizona University web page, describes herself as an ecological and environmental anthropologist and archeologist.

"My primary focus is the study of social complexity, urbanism, and its environmental impact in the Mixteca Alta region of Oaxaca, Mexico," she wrote.

She earned two degrees from the University of Texas at El Paso and a doctorate in 2003 from the University of Georgia, according to her resume.

At least 39 U.S. citizens were killed in 2010 in Ciudad Juarez, which has 1.3 million people. It is Mexico's most violent city, according to a report by state prosecutors.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/03/12/professor-kidnapped-mexican-border-city/#ixzz1GQHCx1Tf

2nd Mexican Police Chief Seeks Asylum, in USA.

Oct. 20, 2010: Twenty-year-old Marisol Valles Garcia listens to a question during a news conference after her swearing-in ceremony as the new police chief of the border town of Praxedis G. Guerrero, near Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. (AP)

A young police chief who fled a violent Mexican border town is now seeking asylum in the United States, FoxNews.com has learned.

Marisol Valles-Garcia, 20, made international headlines last year when she accepted the post as top law enforcement official of Praxedis G. Guerrero in October. The town had been without a police chief since her predecessor was shot to death in July 2009.

Garcia was granted a leave of absence from March 2-7 to travel to the U.S. for personal matters, but she failed to return as agreed, city officials said. The town's mayor removed her from the post on Monday.

Officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Garcia is now seeking asylum in the United States following death threats she received in Mexico.

"Marisol Valles-Garcia is in the United States and she will have the opportunity to present the facts of her case before an impartial immigration judge," a statement to FoxNews.com from DHS officials read. "Absent a signed privacy waiver, there are no additional details."

A local official accompanied the police chief last week to the international bridge connecting El Porvenir to Fort Hancock, Tex., according to Human Rights Commission official Gustavo de la Rosa Hickerson.

De la Rosa Hickerson said Monday that he still had not been able to reach her and did not know where she was. He added that he would ask officials to retract their dismissal of the young chief.

"I have the impression that this position by the mayor is a bit hasty," he said. "Because right now Marisol needs support, and one way to be supportive is to leave her in office."

De la Rosa Hickerson said residents of Praxedis told him Valles-Garcia had received threats against her life, and there may even have been an attempt to kidnap her.

Drug violence has transformed the township of about 8,500 people from a string of quiet farming communities into a lawless no man's land. Two rival gangs -- the Juarez and Sinaloa drug cartels -- are battling over control of its single highway, a lucrative drug-trafficking route along the Texas border.

Police will answer to the mayor until a new chief is appointed, the city government's statement said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Former Border Agent on 'Bean Bag' Policy

Human Trafficking Along U.S./Mexican Border -- 'Startling Pattern of Torture, Rape and Murder'

Posted by The Blaze on March 6, 2011 at 5:49pm by  Meredith Jessup

Brutal crimes crossing over the U.S. southern border from Mexico is the latest dangerous import threatening America’s cities. Growing cases of human trafficking, drug smuggling and violent acts are overwhelming law enforcement officials from Texas to California in scenes reminiscent of the days of organized crime waves orchestrated by professional criminal syndicates.

Is there a “new mafia” in America today?

The Daily:

A brutal new crime wave from Mexico is hitting America’s suburbs. Drug cartels and their heavily armed henchmen are moving into the house next door, torturing and imprisoning victims for profit in middle-class neighborhoods. Law enforcement agencies from Texas to Northern California report being overwhelmed by the surge of violence.

“Mexican drug cartels are in well over 200 cities here in the United States,” Gil Kerlikowske, the White House drug czar, told The Daily. When his boss, President Obama, meets with President Felipe Calderón of Mexico today in Washington, violence from the drug war will be at the top of the agenda.

One of the most disturbing and least discussed aspects of this new crime wave is the “drop houses” — rented homes that function as makeshift prisons where criminal gangs and human smugglers hold large numbers of victims for ransom. The phenomenon is centered in the Southwest, often in foreclosure-devastated suburbs, but is spreading across America.

“What we’re talking about is nightmares, the stuff of nightmares,” said Los Angeles-based special agent Jorge Guzman of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  ”[It’s] playing out in suburban America — playing out all over America.”

 Hundreds of police reports and thousands of crime scene photographs obtained by The Daily expose a startling pattern of torture, rape and murder.

Read the rest of Part One here.

The Daily:

To judge by the tone of the White House news conference President Obama held with Mexico’s leader Felipe Calderon, better days are ahead in the war against cross-border violence.

“We are very mindful that the battle President Calderon is fighting inside of Mexico is not just his battle, it’s also ours,” Obama said. “I have nothing but admiration for President Calderon in his willingness to take this on.”

But missing from the discussion were many of the thorny new realities of the Mexican drug cartels’ expanding influence in the United States, including places like Vekol Valley.

Law enforcement sources describe the nearly 1,000-square-mile swath of desert along Interstate 8 between Arizona and California as one of the most dangerous places in America. It has been effectively ceded to Mexican drug cartels and human smugglers, they say.

Read the rest of Part Two here.