Gunmen kill 8 at Mexican border city rehab center

The Associated Press

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - Officials say gunmen killed eight people at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in this border city.Police say five others were wounded in the Wednesday night attack across the border from El Paso.Police spokesman Cesar Ramirez says the people were listening to a pastor's sermon when the gunmen barged in and opened fire. He says police found 61 casings inside the center.Ramirez says authorities are investigating and have made no arrests.

Agents find body of smuggler killed by bandits

Aug. 15, 2008 10:28 AM

Associated Press

TUCSON- U.S. Border Patrol agents say they've found the body of a man believed to have been killed by bandits west of Green Valley while he was smuggling marijuana into the country.

Agency spokesman Rob Daniels says the agency began looking for the man's body after survivors of the attack reported it to the Mexican consulate in Tucson. Consul officials then alerted U.S. authorities.

Daniels says the consulate told authorities that the man was among as group of people carrying bundles of marijuana into the country when they were confronted by bandits early Monday.

Searchers using dogs found the body of a young man on Thursday. He had no identification.

Bloody Monday death toll reaches 15 in Juárez violence

By Daniel Borunda / El Paso Times

Article Launched: 08/13/2008 12:00:00 AM MDT

Related: Find more on the violence in Juárez.

EL PASO -- A narco-message was left by the body of a man killed in Juárez on Monday, which finished with a death toll of 15, making it one of the bloodiest days this year.

The note was next to Jose Luis Trujillo Ramirez, 24, who was found shot to death soon after 10:30 p.m. Monday near Eje Vial Juan Gabriel, Chihuahua state investigators said Tuesday.

"This is for those that continue not to believe, El flaco, El negro gordo and those who continue," stated the note, apparently referring to nicknames of unidentified men.

Notes with threats and taunts left on corpses are a trend believed to be linked to a drug cartel war behind many of the more than 750 homicides in Juárez this year.

The Monday killings included two quadruple-homicides. About 5 p.m., four males, ages 16 to 38, were killed when more than 40 shots were fired on the streets of colonia Independencia II.

About two hours later, a 14-year-old boy survived when four men were shot in a home in colonia Morelos II.

In another case, police detained four men suspected of pulling a man off a bus and beating him to death.

The rest of the victims Monday were shot to death.

In Chihuahua City, assassins gunned down Pedro Aragonez, the forensic science director of the Chihuahua attorney general's office.

Border agent wounds man near Mexican border

Aug. 13, 2008 01:21 PM
Associated Press

SAN DIEGO - A U.S. Border Patrol agent shot and wounded a man throwing rocks at agents near the U.S.-Mexico border in the San Diego area, authorities said Wednesday.

Edgar Israel Ortega Chavez, 22, was hospitalized with a bullet wound in his right torso after Mexican authorities found him alongside the dry, concrete-lined Tijuana River basin, Tijuana police said.

San Diego police said the shooter was a 10-year Border Patrol veteran but did not release his name. The department is investigating the shooting.

A Border Patrol spokesman, Daryl Reed, said the agent fired his gun on U.S. soil Tuesday night after seeing the man wielding a softball-sized rock on Mexican soil. Border Patrol agents tried unsuccessfully to disperse the group who had crossed to the U.S. side by firing pepper balls and using tear gas.

There was no fence separating the agent from the group when he fired, Reed said. A yellow stripe on the bottom of the river basin marks the border in the area.

Tijuana police said about 10 people were threatening Border Patrol agents, according to reports it fielded. Tijuana authorities found a tear gas canister and fragments and two. 223-caliber bullet shells near Ortega's body.

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Mexico criticizes shooting at border

U.S. says agent fired after rocks thrown

By Debbi Baker, Kristina Davis and Sandra Dibble

UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITERS

August 14, 2008

SAN YSIDRO – The shooting of a Mexican man by a U.S. Border Patrol agent during a rock-throwing incident west of the San Ysidro border crossing drew a rebuke yesterday from the Mexican Consulate in San Diego and a demand that U.S. authorities conduct a “thorough investigation.”

“Any kind of shooting toward Mexican territory is rejected by the Mexican government,” Consul General Remedios Gómez Arnau said. “They should have waited for response of the Mexican authorities.”

Yea, right!

Mexican cop killed by colleague working as hit man

Thu Jul 31, 2008 2:28 AM BST

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) - A Mexican police officer working as a hit man for drug gangs killed one of his police colleagues on Wednesday in the violent border city of Ciudad Juarez, police said.

Francisco Ventura was shot and killed by gunmen in two sport utility vehicles as he drove home early on Wednesday in Ciudad Juarez across from El Paso, Texas. Federal police arrested three men following the shootout, including the police officer accused of leading the gunmen.

City police declined to give more details, but Ciudad Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes said the discovery of a police officer working as a hit man showed the urgent need for a "total cleansing" of the city's police force.

"We know there are officers who are in the pay of organized crime and that is why we need to flush out bad police," Reyes told reporters.

Despite the deployment of 3,000 troops and federal police in Ciudad Juarez this year, more than 550 people have been killed in drug violence in the city, Mexico's most lethal front in a drug war that has killed 1,900 people nationwide in 2008.

Daylight gun battles have erupted on city streets and buildings set on fire as Mexico's most-wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, fights drug baron Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, boss of the Juarez cartel, for control of Ciudad Juarez and its lucrative smuggling corridor into the United States.

Juárez officer, 5 others charged

By Daniel Borunda / El Paso Times

Article Launched: 07/30/2008 12:19:50 AM MDT

EL PASO - A Juárez police officer is accused of leading a gang of kidnappers and killers that was captured after a vehicle chase by federal police in Juárez, officials said.

Federal police Tuesday arrested municipal police officer Juan Gallegos Acosta and five other men, seized four AR-15 and nine AK-47 rifles and three vehicles, including a 2002 GMC Yukon and a 2007 Toyota Solara, both reported stolen in Texas.

"Unfortunately, he is a member of the department," said Javier Torres, police force spokesman. "We are working on purging the department. Bad police officers will be sanctioned."

Federal officials said a chase began when federal police saw the sand-colored Yukon speeding on Zaragoza Avenue while carrying a group of men with assault rifles and bulletproof vests. The chase ended in the Oasis area.

The men and seized items were turned over to a federal organized crime unit in Mexico City. No charges were announced.

The federal agents were part of Joint Operation Chihuahua, the anti-crime offensive sent to Juárez to curb a flood of homicides, which have reached about 650 so far this year party because of a war among drug cartels.

At least seven people were slain Tuesday, including a triple homicide in the southern part of the city.

Border Patrol agent pelted by rocks near Douglas

The Associated Press

Published: 07.28.2008

DOUGLAS — A U.S. Border Patrol agent required medical treatment after he was pelted with rocks while trying to arrest five illegal immigrants near Douglas.

The Border Patrol says as the agent sustained a 5-inch cut on his head Sunday night when he was showered with rocks thrown over the fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The illegal immigrants he was trying to arrest, says the patrol, fled back into Mexico.

The agent was airlifted to a Tucson hospital, where he was treated and released.

The Border Patrol's Tucson Sector says there have been 201 assaults on its agents since Oct. 1, the start of the agency's budget year.

Mexican military losing drug war support

The Associated Press

Published: 07.25.2008

OJINAGA, Mexico - This hardscrabble Mexican border town welcomed 400 soldiers when they arrived four months ago to stop a wave of drug violence that brought daytime gunbattles to its main street.

But then the soldiers themselves turned violent, townspeople say, ransacking homes and even torturing people.

The frustration boiled over this week. More than 1,000 people marched through the streets carrying signs begging President Felipe Calderon for protection from his own troops.

Ojinaga, across the Rio Grande from Presidio, Texas, is not alone. People in cities on the front lines of Mexico's battle against trafficking say they are increasingly frustrated with military tactics — a shift in opinion that threatens to undermine Calderon's nationwide crackdown.

Mexico's National Human Rights Commission says it has documented more than 600 cases of abuse since Calderon sent 20,000 soldiers across the nation to take back territory controlled by drug lords.

Mexico's attorney general argues the cases are isolated incidents. The army says it investigates all allegations and punishes those found to have to violated the law.

But many people say the soldiers have become part of the problem.

Mexican border states aim to revive tourism

UNION-TRIBUNE
TIJUANA: Badly hit by declining tourism revenues, Mexico's northern border states are joining forces with Mexico's federal government in a plan to revive the region.

Baja California Gov. José Guadalupe Osuna Millán hosted a meeting yesterday at a coastal development in Tijuana attended by Mexican tourism secretary Rodolfo Elizondo Torres and the governors of Sonora, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas. The governors of Chihuahua and Coahuila sent representatives.

Over the next two months, the states agreed to develop a plan outlining measures to reverse the tourism decline.

While tourism across Mexico is up more than 8 percent since last year, border states have seen declining numbers of U.S. tourists, due to congested border crossings, reports of crime and other factors.

5 South Koreans kidnapped in Mexican border city

Tuesday, 22 July 2008
Kwang-Tae Kim - The Associated Press

SEOUL, South Korea-- Five South Koreans were abducted in a Mexican border city, officials said Tuesday.

Gunmen who seized the four men and one woman demanded a $30,000 ransom in return for their freedom, according to an official from the National Intelligence Service. The official did not give further details and asked not to be named, citing an internal policy.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak instructed his top security adviser to "make utmost efforts for quick and safe return" of the kidnapped victims.

South Korea's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the five were kidnapped in the Mexico border city of Reynosa last Monday when they were traveling there to seek job information. The ministry said the five were confirmed to be alive.

Mexico has a large South Korean population, many of whom are active in the import industry and own assembly-for-export factories.

Reynosa police officer Mario Gomez said local authorities were investigating the reports, but could not release any information.

Kidnappings for ransom have become commonplace in Mexico, which has one of the highest kidnapping rates in the world. Many are never reported to police, in part because of the fear that local officials may be involved or will bungle a possible rescue.

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Kidnappers free 5 South Koreans held for ransom in Mexico by smugglers

By Mark Walsh

ASSOCIATED PRESS

7:32 p.m. July 22, 2008

REYNOSA, Mexico – Five South Koreans abducted in Mexico were set free unharmed on Tuesday, more than a week after they were kidnapped and held for ransom, officials said.

South Korea's Foreign Ministry announced the Koreans were in custody of Mexican police and would be handed over to the South Korean Embassy there.

In an interview with Radio Formula, Tamaulipas state attorney general Jose Herrera confirmed the five had been released Tuesday afternoon in Reynosa, and were meeting with embassy officials.

Mexican authorities said the South Koreans were kidnapped on July 14 while driving in Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas, and their captors had demanded US$30,000.

Herrera said the four men and one woman were not in Mexico on business but instead were here looking to cross into the U.S. illegally.

“They were held so (their kidnappers) could profit for crossing them to the United States,” Herrera said.

Calderón can't avoid Juárez violence in visit

By Diana Washington Valdez / El Paso Times

Article Launched: 07/23/2008 12:00:00 AM MDT

EL PASO -- Three slayings occurred and a small group of protesters gathered Tuesday, the day Mexican President Felipe Calderón arrived for a visit in Juárez.

During his visit, Calderón praised maquiladoras and vowed to strengthen the nation's oil company and the city's security efforts.

Calderón helped inaugurate the second Electrolux assembly plant in the city, and also mentioned the recent maquiladora expansions announced by Ford and Foxconn, which may hire up to 20,000 to 30,000 border workers in the next four years.

"In 2007, Mexico captured nearly $24.7 billion dollars in direct foreign investment. Such investment, like that of Electrolux, generates employment and gives added value to our country," stated a transcript of his speech at the new Electrolux plant. "This is the largest direct foreign investment in the history of Mexico."

The president's entourage was accompanied by Chihuahua Gov. José Reyes Baeza Terrazas, Juárez Mayor José Reyes Ferriz and business leaders.

Calderón also touched on the federal government's role against organized crime, a theme on the minds of Juárez residents who have witnessed more than 600 slayings since January.

"The federal government responded to the community and Chihuahua state's plea for help with more than 4,000 soldiers and federal agents to fortify the citizenry,"

Asylum petitions increase along Mexico border

by Alicia A. Caldwell - Jul. 12, 2008 12:00 AM
Associated Press

EL PASO - Dozens of Mexicans - including police officers, businessmen, at least one prosecutor and a journalist - are asking for political asylum in the U.S. in a desperate and probably hopeless bid to escape an unprecedented wave of drug-related killings and kidnappings south of the border.

Under U.S. law, fear of crime is not, in itself, grounds for political asylum.

But the sharp spike in asylum applications from the areas wracked by drug-cartel violence - and the willingness of asylum-seekers to sit behind bars in the U.S. for months while they await a decision - are a measure of how bad things are in Mexico and how fearful people have become.

"It's hard. I've been doing this work for 25 years. I've been a reporter for 25 years," said newspaperman Emilio Gutierrez Soto, who is seeking asylum. "We had a life there, a house, my family. It's my country. But it's not safe for a journalist."

Between October and July, at least 63 people have sought political asylum at border crossings in New Mexico and western Texas, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That is almost double the 33 claims made for the entire fiscal year that ended in October. Elsewhere in southern Texas, asylum applications are also up sharply.

Mexico says U.S. tried to extradite Navarro too late

Man is suspected of killing Yuma Border Patrol agent

July 10, 2008 - 6:54PM

ASSOCIATED PRESS

TUCSON - The United States did not ask Mexico to arrange for a suspect's extradition in the death of a Border Patrol agent until the man had been freed, a Mexican government spokesman said Thursday.

Ricardo Alday, spokesman for the Mexican Embassy in Washington, said U.S. officials presented Mexican authorities "with a provisional arrest request for extradition purposes'' for Jesus Navarro Montes in late June.

Alday said that request came more than a week after a Mexican judge cleared Navarro of an unrelated migrant smuggling charge and released him from a prison in Mexicali, Mexico.

Alday's announcement came hours after 39 U.S. congressmen wrote President Bush and Attorney General Michael Mukasey asking if the government had asked Mexico to extradite Navarro.

It also occurred shortly after Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr said the department would review the congressmen's letter and that it remains committed to investigating agent Luis Aguilar's death.

Gunmen kill official in Mexican border city

Thu Jun 19, 2008 5:40 AM BST

By Ignacio Alvarado

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) - Gunmen have killed the police administrative director in the violent Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez, the latest high-profile killing in Mexico's drug war, police said on Wednesday.

Silvia Molina was shot outside her house on Monday night by suspected drug hitmen, the first public official in Ciudad Juarez's city police force to be targeted.

"She was shot 10 times as she was parking her car," a police spokesman said. Molina's body was found with a message signed by suspected drug hitmen who said they were working for Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman.

Molina's administrative team and the director of the city police academy resigned on Tuesday in protest at her murder, temporarily leaving the city police force without officials to pay salaries and deal with accounting issues.

About 460 people have been killed in Ciudad Juarez this year -- the greatest concentration of drug killings in the country. Guzman's drug gangs from northwestern Sinaloa state are battling the local Juarez cartel for control of smuggling routes to the United States. Ciudad Juarez is across the border from El Paso, Texas.

Task force to monitor crime along the border

UNION-TRIBUNE

7:37 a.m. June 5, 2008

EL CENTRO: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is launching a task force targeting criminal organizations involved in cross-border crime in the Imperial Valley.

The group will be added to Border Enforcement Security Task Force operations established earlier along the U.S.-Mexico border. Task forces are in place in San Diego; Phoenix and Yuma, Ariz.; and Laredo, El Paso and Harlingen, Texas.

The new force will be made up of officers from federal, state, local and foreign law enforcement agencies, including U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Border Patrol, Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI, the Bureau of Land Management and Mexico's Secretariat of Public Safety.

Violence returns to Tijuana after lull in May

Ten killed brings total to 232 this year

By Jose Luis Jiménez

UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

June 10, 2008

TIJUANA – After a brief calm, the violence that has battered Tijuana returned this weekend when seven people were killed over a 36-hour period, pushing the number of homicides to 232 for the year, authorities said.

An additional three bodies were found near Rosarito Beach, bringing the number of people killed over the weekend to 10.

Among the victims were a Tijuana police officer, two women and the three men found on the outskirts of Rosarito Beach, at least one of whom showed signs that he was burned.

Mexican officials say that after a comparative lull in May, in which 21 homicides occurred in Tijuana, the record-setting pace returned in June. With nearly three weeks left in the month, there have already been 15 slayings.

Mexico: the danger of 'drug ballads'

In the past two years, 15 mexican musicians have been murdered. Their crime: to fall foul of the country's drug barons. Ioan Grillo reports

It was three in the morning and the Mexican group Banda Guasavena were driving back from a concert at a cockfighting festival, just over the border from Texas. The audience had been even more rapturous than usual and Fausto Castro-Elizalde, the band's horn player, recalls them chatting happily about the evening.

Then Kalashnikov bullets started flying through the window. 'The whole moment was unreal,' he says. 'One second we were all happy after the show. The next we being cut up by bullets.'

Castro-Elizalde, 34, was hit by seven 'caps' in his arm and legs but miraculously remained conscious. His cousin and the band's 27-year old singer, Valentin Elizalde, was not so lucky. 'He died instantly. He fell into my arms and I kissed him,' says Castro-Elizalde.

Elizalde's murder is not an isolated incident. In the past two years, assassins have shot, burnt or suffocated at least 15 Mexican musicians. The latest victim was sprayed with 20 bullets as he sang alongside his band, Brisas del Mar, at a dance near the Acapulco resort in March. In December, three entertainers were killed in a week: one singer was kidnapped, throttled and dumped on a road, a trumpeter was found with a bag on his head and a diva was shot dead in her hospital bed.

18 slayings push death toll in Juárez past 400

By Adriana M. Chávez / El Paso Times

Article Launched: 05/30/2008 10:47:00 PM MDT

Juárez officials say federal police will take over the city's emergency 066 hot line next week in an effort to better coordinate response to a wave of violence that continued Friday.

This year's death count surpassed 400 this week, fueled by an ongoing war between drug traffickers from Juárez and Sinaloa.

From Thursday morning to Friday evening, there were at least 18 slayings, and unverified totals discussed among media outlets in Juárez and El Paso have put the total death count at more than 400.

Two men were fatally shot Friday afternoon near a park when someone fired multiple shots from a green car, state police said. The men, identified as Manuel Estrada Arrendondo, 38, and Roman Isidro Zamudio Ugarte, 39, died at a hospital.

Mexican cops seeking refuge in the States

08:41 AM CDT on Friday, May 23, 2008

By Angela Kocherga

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- The drug war along the Mexico border has become so violent that some police officers are going into hiding.

In fact, two officers from Ciudad Juarez are in so much danger they’ve left Mexico and are seeking protection in the U.S.

Cops in Juarez have come well-acquainted with grim crime scenes in which the targets were law enforcement officials.

Gunmen have killed a dozen city cops this year alone. Ten more were attacked, but survived.

The most recent case involved a police officer who fled to Texas after a shooting on a bridge.

The officer was crossing the bridge with his family when gunmen reportedly opened fire on his car. He abandoned the vehicle and ran across the border.

Then, just days after the second in command of the Juarez Police Department died in a hail of bullets, the police chief resigned. His whereabouts are unknown.

The mayor of Juarez named a retired military officer as the new police chief this week.

11 more bodies found in Juárez

By Adriana M. Chávez and Darren Meritz / El Paso Times

Article Launched: 05/24/2008 12:00:00 AM MDT

Juárez recorded at least 11 more homicides linked to organized crime Friday, leading U.S. law enforcement officials to urge El Pasoans to use caution when traveling across the border.

The deaths included the discovery of five bodies wrapped in blankets in an empty lot in an upscale east Juárez neighborhood about a mile from the border, near Prolongación Vicente Guerrero and Antonio J. Bermúdez streets.

The grizzly find came less than a day after an anonymous e-mail warning predicted this would be the "bloodiest and deadliest" weekend in the city's history.

Two of the bodies were decapitated and wrapped in white plastic. Attached to them was a note calling them "traitors" who were associated with a reputed leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel.