Vocabulary > Violence > Drugs, Drug war > USA / Mexico

The corpses of a woman and her granddaughter

lie on the floor after being shot by gunmen in Acapulco March 15, 2011.

Another granddaughter was also killed in the assault.

Pedro Pardo/AFP/Getty Images

Boston Globe > Big Picture > Mexico's Drug War        8 April 2011
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/04/mexicos_drug_war_1.html

A body lies on a stainless steel table waiting for an autopsy

at the morgue in Tijuana, Mexico,

Monday, Jan. 19, 2009.

AP Photo/Guillermo Arias

Boston Globe > Big Picture > Mexico's drug war        25 March 2009
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/03/mexicos_drug_war.html

John Trever

The Albuquerque Journal

New Mexico

Cagle

29 April 2010

drugs

The world in drugs use
Want to know how many people use drugs in your country? These are the latest numbers        May 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/jun/24/drugs-trade-drugs
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2009/06/24/druguse2506.pdf

UN Office on Drugs and Crime        UNODC
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/24/united-nations-world-drug-report
 

drugs trade
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/drugs-trade

Britain's cocaine trade
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/16/liverpool-cocaine-mexico-cartels

cocaine use / abuse
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/apr/10/cocaine-review-government-drug-advisers

Watch the 'Frank' anti-cocaine ad voiced by Peep Show star David Mitchell        December 2008

See the advert for the government's 'Frank' drugs awareness campaign,
focusing on cocaine and featuring the character 'Pablo the drug mule dog',
voiced by Peep Show star David Mitchell.
The ad was created by Mother
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2008/dec/04/advertising-drugsandalcohol

Watch an anti-cocaine ad voiced by Peep Show star David Mitchell        December 2009

Pablo the drug mule dog interviews DJ Brandon Block about his cocaine addiction
for the next stage of the government's anti-drugs campaign.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2009/dec/18/david-mitchell-cocaine-pablo-the-drug-mule-dog

methamphetamines

Sometimes called crank, ice, tina or crystal meth, methamphetamine is not new.
For years, abuse has spread from rural areas of the West and South,
slowly expanding to the Midwest and the East.
Today meth abuse exists around the globe

Updated: March 29, 2011
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/methamphetamines/index.html
 

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/methamphetamines/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/10/world/americas/mexico-seizes-15-tons-of-methamphetamine.html

Drugs party gets wild in viral ad        January 2008

Teenage drug users at a party
get David Attenborough-style wildlife documentary treatment
in a viral ad as part of drugs awareness programme Frank
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2008/jan/18/frank.advertisement

Boston Globe > Big Pictures > Marijuana        October 18, 2010
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/10/marijuana.html

Boston Globe > Big Picture > 2009 UN World Drug report        October 21, 2009
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/10/2009_un_world_drug_report.html 

drug kingpin / drug lord / cartel boss
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/21/us-mexico-drugs-idUSTRE74K0CE20110521
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/30/us-mexico-drugs-idUSTRE73S68T20110430
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/13/mexico-drugs-arrest-el-grande
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/09/13/world/international-us-mexico-drugs-capture.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/09/us/09barbie.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-09-16-drug-extradition_x.htm

drug clan

drug gang
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/world/americas/21mexico.html

drug feud
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/us/09border.html

gun battle
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/03/world/americas/03drug.html

drug smuggler
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-08-02-drug-smugglers_x.htm

drug violence
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/26/world/americas/26border.html

drug raid
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/09/29/business/AP-US-Aircraft-Plant-Raid.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2010/sep/03/mexico
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/us/politics/11drugs.html

smuggling ring
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/world/americas/us-agents-aided-mexican-drug-trafficker-to-infiltrate-ring.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/us/officials-bust-drug-smuggling-ring-linked-to-mexican-cartel.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-09-16-drug-extradition_x.htm

infiltrate
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/world/americas/us-agents-aided-mexican-drug-trafficker-to-infiltrate-ring.html

Tijuana > tunnels
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/02/world/americas/despite-raids-tijuana-tunnels-keep-humming-underground.html

American drug enforcement agents
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/world/americas/us-agents-aided-mexican-drug-trafficker-to-infiltrate-ring.html

pose as money launderers
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/world/americas/us-agents-aided-mexican-drug-trafficker-to-infiltrate-ring.html

D.E.A. special agents
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/world/americas/
united-states-drug-enforcement-agency-squads-extend-reach-of-drug-war.html

Boston Globe > Big Picture > Mexico's drug war        8 April 2011
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/04/mexicos_drug_war_1.html

Mexico drug war: the new killing fields

In the first of a three-part investigation,
Rory Carroll reports from the gateway to America,
at the centre of drug cartel violence that has claimed 28,000 lives        3 September 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/03/mexico-drug-war-killing-fields

Mexico's drug wars: interactive map

Soon after taking office in December 2006,
President Felipe Calderón launched a military offensive
against Mexico's drug cartels.
Between then and the end of July 2010,
28,353 people were killed in fighting between state forces and the traffickers,
and in turf battles between rival criminal groups
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2010/sep/03/mexico-drugs-trade-interactive-map

Mexico's war on drugs
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/03/mexico-war-drugs-violence

Mexican Drug War
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/19/us-mexico-drugs-idUSTRE74I4WL20110519
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/17/world/americas/17juarez.html

Mexico drug war  / drug-related violence in Mexico
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/14/world/americas/police-find-49-bodies-by-a-highway-in-mexico.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/05/bodies-bridge-23-mexico-drug
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/08/us-mexico-drugs-idUSTRE7375RX20110408
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/opinion/17mexico-intro.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/26/twitter-blog-mexico-drug-wars
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/mexico-drug-war
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/05/mexico-drug-war-surenos-cartel
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/15/police-video-mexico-drug-war 

Mexican drug cartel
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/25/opinion/25sat4.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/13/mexico-drugs-arrest-el-grande
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/03/mexico-army-kills-drug-suspects
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2010/sep/03/mexico-drugs-trade
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/23/us/23border.html
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/09/01/world/AP-LT-Mexico-Forgotten-Victims.html

Mexico's "Zetas" drug cartel
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/11/us-mexico-drugs-migrants-zetas-idUSTRE73A2E020110411

Mexican drug trafficking
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/mexico/drug_trafficking/index.html

drug trafficker
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/world/americas/us-agents-aided-mexican-drug-trafficker-to-infiltrate-ring.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/31/us-guatemala-drugs-idUSTRE72T7X620110331

mass kidnappings
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/11/us-mexico-drugs-migrants-idUSTRE73A2D220110411

Karla Johnson looks at the border between the U.S. and Mexico

near El- Paso and the Mexican city of Juarez April 6, 2009.

Nadav Neuhaus

Boston Globe > Big Picture > Mexico's Drug War        8 April 2011
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/04/mexicos_drug_war_1.html

Nuevo Laredo:
the border town on the frontline of the drugs trade

The US-Mexico border runs for nearly 2,000 miles.
Last year Observer writer Ed Vulliamy travelled its entire length.
In this extract from his new book, Amexica,
he tells the incredible story of the town
that doubles as the world's largest transport hub for narcotics        September 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/26/nuevo-laredo-mexico-usa-drugs
 

hitman
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/09/us-mexico-drugs-idUSTRE7485JX20110509
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/08/29/world/americas/AP-LT-Drug-War-Mexico.html

cartel hitmen

mass grave
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/19/us-mexico-drugs-idUSTRE74I4WL20110519
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/27/us-mexico-drugs-idUSTRE73Q4Z920110427
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/22/us-mexico-drugs-idUSTRE73L0HM20110422
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/16/world/americas/16mexico.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/12/us-mexico-drugs-idUSTRE73B7HP20110412
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/07/mexican-mass-grave-59-bodies-tamaulipas

organized crime
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/world/americas/21mexico.html

Merida Initiative:

Proposed U.S. Anticrime and Counterdrug Assistance for Mexico and Central America
Colleen W. Cook, Rebecca G. Rush, and Clare Ribando Seelke
Analysts in Latin American Affairs
Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division

Summary

Increasing violence perpetrated by drug cartels, youth gangs, and other criminal
groups is threatening citizen security and democracy in Mexico and Central America.
Mexican and Central American government efforts to combat drug trafficking and
organized crime have been hindered by inadequate resources, corruption,
and weak judicial systems. On October 22, 2007, the United States and Mexico issued a joint
statement announcing the Mérida Initiative, a multi-year plan for U.S. assistance to
Mexico and Central America aimed at helping those governments combat drug
trafficking and other criminal organizations. The Administration requested $500 million
for Mexico and $50 million for Central America in the FY2008 supplemental appropriations request.

For more information, see CRS Report RL32724, Mexico-U.S. Relations: Issues for Congress,
and CRS Report RL34112, Gangs in Central America.
http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/103694.pdf

illegal drug use
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/09/16/us/politics/AP-US-Drug-Abuse.html

drug user
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/dec/07/ex-offenders-drug-users-westminster-policy-makers

addiction
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/science/08prof.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/us/23drugs.html

heroin addict
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-10-04-baltimore-addiction_x.htm

ageing addicts
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jan/26/older-drug-users-habits-die-hard

Center for Substance Abuse Treatment        CSAT
http://csat.samhsa.gov/

street value

addiction

fall into heroin addiction
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/us/31border.html

Boston Globe > Big Picture > Mexico's drug war        25 March 2009
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/03/mexicos_drug_war.html 

launder
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangs

Military and forensic experts inspect the body of a man who was killed

outside a nightclub in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico

on August 31, 2009.

A man was handcuffed to a fence and shot several times

by drug hitmen outside a nightclub, according to local media.

The assailants also left a warning message, known as "narco mensaje", at the site of the shooting.

REUTERS/Alejandro Bringas

Boston Globe > Big Picture > 2009 in photos (part 1 of 3)        December 14, 2009
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/12/2009_in_photos_part_1_of_3.html

The body of an unidentified man hangs from his neck

under a bridge on the old Rosarito highway as authorities stand by in Tijuana, Mexico,

Friday, Oct. 9, 2009.

Authorities found the dead man beaten, naked and castrated,

and have not identified him but believe he is Rogelio Sanchez,

a Baja California state government official who went missing this week. No suspects were named.

AP Photo/Guillermo Arias

Boston Globe > Big Picture > 2009 UN World Drug report        October 21, 2009
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/10/2009_un_world_drug_report.html

The severed head of an unidentified man lies on the hood of a car

as police work the crime scene on the outskirts of Juarez, Mexico,

Saturday, Aug. 8, 2009.

According to police, the rest of the victim's body was found in the trunk.

AP Photo/Reymundo Ruiz

Boston Globe > Big Picture > 2009 UN World Drug report        October 21, 2009
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/10/2009_un_world_drug_report.html

Mexico Seizes Record Amount of Methamphetamine

February 9, 2012
The New York Times
By DAMIEN CAVE

MEXICO CITY — Mexican authorities announced their largest methamphetamine seizure ever late Wednesday: 15 tons, found in pure powder form at a ranch outside Guadalajara. It was about 13 million doses worth $4 billion — more than double the size of all meth seizures at the Mexican border in 2011.

But while the authorities proudly showed off the seizure to local reporters, the sheer size of the find set off alarm among experts and officials from the United States and the United Nations. It was a sign, they said, of just how organized, efficient at manufacturing and brazen Mexico’s traffickers had become even after expanded efforts to dismantle their industry.

“The big thing it shows is the sheer capacity that these superlabs have in Mexico,” said Rusty Payne, a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration. “When we see one lab with the capability to produce such a mass tonnage of meth, it begs a question: What else is out there?”

Methamphetamine is difficult to produce in large quantities. Unlike marijuana, which can be grown almost anywhere, meth requires international connections to suppliers of precursor chemicals, which are tightly regulated in the United States and Mexico, as well as manufacturers with a degree of chemistry expertise.

The Sinaloa cartel is believed to be Mexico’s main producer, partly because it has a reputation for being the world’s most multinational and sophisticated cartel. And some experts say that the seizure, along with increased seizures of meth, cocaine and marijuana at the Mexican border, suggests that Sinaloa is producing more than ever before, despite five years of increased Mexican and American efforts to defeat the Mexican cartels.

“Sinaloa has been hit hard in the past four to six months, but they are clearly operating at a volume they were not able to do 5 or 10 years ago,” said David Shirk, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego. With methamphetamine, he added: “There is really not much competition. They are probably the only ones with the organizational and logistical capacity to move this kind of product.”

United Nations figures suggest that the supply of meth in the United States has been growing, with seizures at the Mexican border increasing 87 percent in 2011. At the same time, demand in the United States has been falling. According to the 2010 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the number of Americans 12 and older who said they had used methamphetamine in the past 12 months declined 46 percent from 2002 to 2010, to 954,000 from an estimated 1.8 million.

But just as Mexican and Colombian drug traffickers are increasingly focused on the market in Europe, experts said that the meth not sent to the United States might be heading to other parts of the world. Sinaloa’s tentacles have been found on nearly every continent.

Over all, experts said, meth appears to be providing an increasingly important revenue stream for the cartel, and the seizure this week is likely to have little long-term impact.

“It’s important to keep the seizure in perspective,” said Eric Olson, a security expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “It’s huge. Eye-popping. But seizures, even huge ones, don’t generally change the demand for the drug in the long run. If a seizure of this magnitude raises the street price, consumption may go down for a time, but it is only a matter of time until the market adjusts and the supply comes back up.”

    Mexico Seizes Record Amount of Methamphetamine, NYT, 9.2.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/10/world/americas/mexico-seizes-15-tons-of-methamphetamine.html

Raids Don’t Keep Tunnel City From Humming Underground

December 1, 2011
The New York Times
By DAMIEN CAVE

TIJUANA, Mexico — Squatting and sweating inside the latest drug tunnel found here in this Pacific border city, it was easy to understand the amazement expressed by Mexican and American officials. This one was a stunner.

The tunnel ran for almost half a mile, with wooden planks holding off the earth on all sides. Energy-saving light bulbs illuminated the route. A motorized cart on metal rails ensured quick passage, while a steel elevator hidden beneath the floor tiles in a warehouse made the 40-foot descent to the tunnel’s entrance feel like the slow drop into an unregulated mine shaft.

And yet, here is the simple fact 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.

Residents now shrug them off. “If you have a lot of money, you can do anything,” said Blanca Samaniego, 36, as she walked by the warehouse where Mexican officials unveiled the tunnel on Wednesday. “It will never change. It will never stop.”

The ground beneath her neighborhood in the hills — near the airport and the upgraded, shimmering border fence patrolled 24/7 by American agents — has been punched full of holes for years. Almost every kind of building has been used to hide a logistical operation that is as much about the American taste for a high as it is about the low-down removal of dirt.

Just a few weeks ago, below a more rudimentary warehouse nearby, the authorities found a different tunnel with an elaborate ventilation system. A few blocks from that, there sits an empty flophouse, where thick concrete now caps a passageway discovered by the authorities last year. Farther east, residents note a tunnel found in 2008, and just past the next major intersection, there are two more: one under a small home and the other below a bodega across from a factory.

Other tunnels have been found downtown, near the main border crossing. Wherever there is a border fence climbing high, there seems to have been an attempt to burrow below, usually to a parking lot in California where drugs can be hauled through a manhole cover, or to a business that almost looks legitimate.

In the latest case, the tunnel ran to Hernandez Produce Warehouse, a fruit and vegetable company in California whose only product seemed to be green and best when smoked.

Luis Ituarte, 69, an artist who runs a gallery here called La Casa del Túnel — where a tunnel was found about decade ago — said that Tijuana officials would be smart to move beyond publicizing their subterranean finds and then shutting them down. He argued that Tijuana should capitalize on its historic identity as a city that has been serving up vice since 1907, when President Porfirio Díaz legalized gambling, or 1920, when the United States made alcohol illegal.

“Las Vegas, Tijuana and Havana were all built by the same kind of people,” Mr. Ituarte said. “Only Vegas has taken on its bad reputation.”

Not that this is the direction things are heading. The mayor here recently rejected demands from cultural groups asking to take over La Ocho, a notorious prison that had been decommissioned.

Mexican Army officials, during a tour of this week’s elaborate tunnel, mostly focused on the triumph of the discovery.

“These are achievements that increase public security,” said Gen. Gilberto Landeros, standing at the tunnel entrance as local reporters took snapshots of one another in front of the long, dim hole. “We’re pounding at the economy of narcotrafficking.”

At the very least, he had a lot of marijuana to point to. Hefty bricks of the stuff, wrapped tightly in orange and green plastic, surrounded him when he announced the discovery of the tunnel inside the empty warehouse here in Tijuana. The total haul, from both sides and a truck driven from the site in San Diego, was 32.4 tons, with a street value of about $65 million — a new record for a tunnel-related seizure, according to American officials.

Harder to see, unmentioned, but easy to imagine: how many tons moved across before that load was found.

The evidence around the tunnel — worn-out soccer cleats, dusty oscillating fans, empty water bottles — suggested that the operation had been going for months, a supposition Mexican officials did not deny. 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.

    Raids Don’t Keep Tunnel City From Humming Underground, NYT, 1.12.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/02/world/americas/despite-raids-tijuana-tunnels-keep-humming-underground.html

U.S. captures major Guatemalan drug trafficker

GUATEMALA CITY | Thu Mar 31, 2011
12:32am EDT
Reuters

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - U.S. and Guatemalan agents captured Guatemala's top drug trafficker on Wednesday as the United States pitches in to help curb drug cartels' expanding reach in Central America.

Soldiers and police in helicopters swooped into Guatemala's second largest city, Quetzaltenango, and arrested Juan Ortiz-Lopez in his home, where he appeared to be only lightly guarded by two men, the Guatemalan interior ministry said.

Ortiz-Lopez, 41, is considered Guatemala's most important drug smuggler by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, an indictment by a U.S. prosecutor said.

Heavily armed agents landed at the air force base in Guatemala City with Ortiz-Lopez, handcuffed and wearing a leather jacket, and escorted him and two bodyguards to court.

The suspects are accused of smuggling tonnes of cocaine through Guatemala to Mexico and the United States over the past decade, according to the U.S. indictment.

"This is the capture of a big fish," Guatemala's Interior Minister Carlos Menocal told a news conference.

He said Ortiz-Lopez and his associates were likely to be extradited to the United States.

Ortiz-Lopez's capture follows the arrest in October of his henchman, Mauro Solomon, in another joint operation as Washington tries to stop Guatemala from being sucked deeper into Mexico's drugs wars.

Guatemala is struggling to prevent Mexican cartels from destabilizing parts of the country, a poor but democratic U.S. trading partner and a major coffee and sugar exporter.

Officials worry that Central America's weak governments do not have the capacity to contain the spreading threat of cartels as their armies and police are no match for gangs equipped with rocket launchers and semi-automatic weapons.

President Barack Obama announced $200 million in fresh funds for the drug fight in Central America this month during a trip to neighboring El Salvador. Until now, most U.S. aid is for Mexico, where turf wars between the gangs have killed more than 36,000 people over the past four years.

(Reporting by Mike McDonald in Guatemala City and Kevin Gray in Miami; writing by Robin Emmott. Editing by Christopher Wilson)

    U.S. captures major Guatemalan drug trafficker, R, 31.3.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/31/us-guatemala-drugs-idUSTRE72T7X620110331

U.S. and Mexico offer rewards over shooting of U.S. agents

WASHINGTON | Wed Mar 30, 2011
2:44pm EDT
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. and Mexican governments on Wednesday announced multimillion dollar rewards for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the shooting of two U.S. immigration agents.

The United States issued a statement saying it offered a reward of up to $5 million while the Mexican government offered 10 million pesos ($839,000). Both countries set up telephone hotlines for individuals to call if they have information.

In February, two unarmed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were driving in an armored vehicle on a highway from San Luis Potosi to Mexico City when they were ambushed in broad daylight by suspected drug gang members.

One ICE agent, Jaime Zapata, was killed and another agent, Victor Avila, was wounded in the leg in one of the more brazen attacks by drug cartels as they battle with authorities who are trying to crack down on drug and weapons trafficking.

Mexican authorities have already detained more than 30 people in connection with the shooting, including a suspected money man for the Zetas drug cartel arrested earlier this month.

U.S. authorities have traced one of the weapons used in the shooting back to a Texas man who bought the gun last year. He and two others have since been charged by prosecutors for illegally buying guns for others, though they have not been charged for anything related to the shooting in Mexico.

(Reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky, editing by Deborah Charles)

    U.S. and Mexico offer rewards over shooting of U.S. agents, R, 30.3.2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/30/us-mexico-usa-shooting-idUSTRE72T4QT20110330

Report: Illegal Drug Use Up Sharply Last Year

The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 16, 2010
Filed at 3:28 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The rate of illegal drug use rose last year to the highest level in nearly a decade, fueled by a sharp increase in marijuana use and a surge in ecstasy and methamphetamine abuse, the government reported Wednesday.

Gil Kerlikowske, the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, called the 9 percent increase in drug use disappointing but said he was not surprised given ''eroding attitudes'' about the perception of harm from illegal drugs and the growing number of states approving medicinal marijuana.

''I think all of the attention and the focus of calling marijuana medicine has sent the absolute wrong message to our young people,'' Kerlikowske said in an interview.

The annual report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found marijuana use rose by 8 percent and remained the most commonly used drug.

Mike Meno, a spokesman for the pro-legalization Marijuana Policy Project, said the survey is more proof that the government's war on marijuana has failed in spite of decades of enforcement efforts and arrests.

''It's time we stop this charade and implement sensible laws that would tax and regulate marijuana the same way we do more harmful -- but legal -- drugs like alcohol and tobacco,'' Meno said.

On a positive note, cocaine abuse continues to decline, with use of the drug down 32 percent from its peak in 2006.

About 21.8 million Americans, or 8.7 percent of the population age 12 and older, reported using illegal drugs in 2009. That's the highest level since the survey began in 2002. The previous high was just over 20 million in 2006.

The survey, which was being released Thursday, is based on interviews with about 67,500 people. It is considered the most comprehensive annual snapshot of drug use in the United States.

Other results show a 37 percent increase in ecstasy use and a 60 percent jump in the number of methamphetamine users. In the early 2000s, there was a widespread public safety campaign to warn young people about the dangers of ecstasy as a party drug, but that effort declined as use dropped off.

''The last few years, I think we've taken our eye off the ball on ecstasy,'' Kerlikowske said.

Meth use had been dropping after a passage of a 2006 federal law that put cold tablets containing pseudoephedrine behind pharmacy counters. But law enforcement officials have seen a rise in ''smurfing,'' or traveling from store to store to purchase the medicines, which can be used to produce homemade meth in kitchen labs.

Kerlikowske attributed the rise in meth abuse to more people getting around the law and an increase in meth coming across the border with Mexico.

The rise in marijuana use comes as California voters prepare to decide in November whether to legalize the drug. An Associated Press-CNBC poll earlier this year found that most Americans still oppose legalizing marijuana, but larger majorities believe it has medical benefits and want the government to allow its use for that purpose.

Medical marijuana sales in the 14 states that allow it have also taken off since the federal government signaled last year that it wouldn't prosecute marijuana sellers who follow state rules. The survey does not distinguish between medicinal and non-medicinal marijuana use.

The survey found the number of youths aged 12-17 who perceived a great risk of harm from smoking marijuana once or twice a week dropped from 54.7 percent in 2007 to 49.3 percent in 2009.

------

Online:

SAMHSA: http://www.samhsa.gov/

    Report: Illegal Drug Use Up Sharply Last Year, NYT, 16.9.2010,
    http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/09/16/us/politics/AP-US-Drug-Abuse.html

21 Die in Gun Battle Near U.S. Border

July 2, 2010
The New York Times
By ANAHAD O’CONNOR

Nearly two dozen people were killed in a Mexican border area on Thursday during a fierce gun battle between suspected members of rival drug gangs, Mexican authorities said.

The bloodshed took place only 12 miles from the U.S. border, in Sonora, a state that is a popular tourist destination famed for its beaches but whose interior has increasingly been consumed by drug violence. Prosecutors said the battle was a showdown between two rival drug and migrant-trafficking gangs, who sprayed gunfire at one another in a sparsely populated area near a dirt road between the hamlets of Tubutama and Saric, an area frequented by traffickers, the Associated Press reported.

The shooting culminated in the deaths of 21 people, with Mexican authorities taking another nine people into custody, including six with bullet wounds.

The Sonora state Attorney General’s Office said in a statement that nine people were captured by police at the scene of the shootings, six of whom had been wounded in the confrontation, according to the A.P. Eight vehicles and seven weapons were also seized. All of the victims were believed to be members of the gangs.

For several years now, Mexico has been gripped by violence as warring drug cartels battle over lucrative drug routes through border regions like Sonora, Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez. The heavily armed and ruthless cartels have murdered wantonly, killing hundreds of police, military officers, top officials and politicians.

In the last year, the rate of killings has only surged, and this year is already on track to become the deadliest in half a decade. More than 5,000 drug-related killings have occurred thus far in Mexico, eclipsing the totals in 2007 and 2008 and nearing the 6,500 killed in 2009 alone.

    21 Die in Gun Battle Near U.S. Border, NYT, 2.7.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/03/world/americas/03drug.html

Hundreds Held in Drug Raids in 16 States

June 10, 2010
The New York Times
By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — A coordinated series of law enforcement raids across 16 states this week resulted in the arrests of 429 people accused of participating in smuggling and transportation networks for Mexican drug cartels, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced Thursday.

The raids, which took place Wednesday and involved more than 3,000 federal, state and local law enforcement officers, were a “very significant blow” to the cartels’ ability to move drugs across the border and distribute them in the United States — and to smuggle cash and weapons into Mexico, Mr. Holder said.

“This interagency cross-border operation has been our most extensive, and most successful, law enforcement effort to date targeting these deadly cartels,” Mr. Holder said at a press conference.

Officials seized $5.8 million in cash, 2,951 pounds of marijuana, 247 pounds of cocaine, 17 pounds of methamphetamine, 141 weapons and 85 vehicles.

Those raids were part of a larger, 22-month effort, called Project Deliverance, in which a series of related operations aimed at delivery networks resulted in some 2,200 total arrests and the seizure of 74.1 tons of illegal drugs, the Justice Department said.

Michele M. Leonhart, the acting administrator of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, said the effort had “inflicted a series of blows that will have a real impact on the cartels and their ability to function.”

She also said federal agents were seeing “more sophisticated” ways of smuggling drugs across the border. In the past, she said, agents had seized drugs carried by individual passengers on commercial buses. But during this operation, drugs and money were found hidden within the structure of commercial buses.

At a background briefing for reporters, another D.E.A. official said some drug smugglers had developed ways to hide several pounds of drugs inside a car’s transmission while still allowing the engine to function. He also described the alleged smugglers and distributors arrested in the sweeps as “mercenary transportation groups” who worked for multiple cartels, rather than operating as arms of specific gangs.

The official also said the operation was likely to disrupt the flow of drugs from Mexico for a period by removing the “institutional memory” of figures who are experts in drug transportation.

Mr. Holder also praised Mexican government officials as “waging a courageous battle” against the violent drug cartels, singling out their arrest last month of Carlos Ramon Castro-Rocha, who has been indicted in the United States on charges of importing heroin.

Mr. Holder rejected the notion that there may be mounting tension between law enforcement agencies in Mexico and the United States after the shooting death of a 14-year-old Mexican by United States border agents on Monday.

While expressing “our sincere regrets about the loss of life for that 14-year-old youngster,” and saying that the F.B.I. was investigating the incident, Mr. Holder said law enforcement officials on both sides of the border have an enduring “bond” based on their interest in combating violent drug trafficking organizations.

While praising the operation as a success, Mr. Holder and other officials said it would not stop drug smuggling from Mexico.

“Has drug trafficking come to an end? Of course not,” said John Morton, the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “But it just got harder and there are a lot of people this morning who wish they had a made a better career choice in life.”

    Hundreds Held in Drug Raids in 16 States, NYT, 10.6.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/us/politics/11drugs.html

Obama to Send Up to 1,200 Troops to Border

May 25, 2010
The New York Times
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

LOS ANGELES — President Obama will send up to 1,200 National Guard troops to the Southwest border and seek increased spending on law enforcement there to combat drug smuggling after demands from Republican and Democratic lawmakers that border security be tightened.

The decision was disclosed by a Democratic lawmaker and confirmed by administration officials after Mr. Obama met on Tuesday with Republican senators, several of whom have demanded that troops be placed at the border. The lawmakers learned of the plan after the meeting.

But the move also reflected political pressure in the president’s own party with midterm election campaigns under way and with what is expected to be a tumultuous debate on overhauling immigration law coming up on Capitol Hill.

The issue has pushed Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, into something of a corner. As governor of Arizona, she demanded that Guard troops be put on the border. But since joining the Obama administration, she has remained noncommittal about the idea, saying as recently as a month ago that other efforts by Mr. Obama had made the border “as secure now as it has ever been.”

The troops will be stationed in the four border states for a year, White House officials said. It is not certain when they will arrive, the officials said.

The troops will join a few hundred members of the Guard already assigned there to help the police hunt for drug smugglers. The additional troops will provide support to law enforcement officers by helping observe and monitor traffic between official border crossings. They will also help analyze trafficking patterns in the hope of intercepting illegal drug shipments.

Initial word of the deployment came not in a formal announcement from the White House — indeed, it was left to administration officials speaking on the condition of anonymity to fill in some details — but from a Democratic member of the House from southern Arizona who is running in what is expected to be a competitive race for re-election.

“The White House is doing the right thing,” the congresswoman, Representative Gabrielle Giffords, said in a statement announcing the decision. “Arizonans know that more boots on the ground means a safer and more secure border. Washington heard our message.”

Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican whose opponent in a coming primary has relentlessly criticized him on immigration, said Tuesday that he welcomed Mr. Obama’s move but that it was “simply not enough.”

Mr. McCain called for the introduction of 6,000 National Guard troops to police the Southwestern border, with 3,000 for Arizona alone. In a letter to Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, two Obama administration officials said that the proposal infringed on his role as commander in chief and overlooked gains in border security.

Calls for sending the Guard to the border grew after the shooting death of an Arizona rancher in March that the police suspect was carried out by someone involved in smuggling. Advocates of the controversial Arizona state law giving the police a greater role in immigration enforcement played up what they described as a failure to secure the border as a reason to pass the law.

Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona, a Republican who is running for a full term, has requested Guard troops at the border but decided not to use her authority to do it herself, citing the state’s tattered finances. The governors of New Mexico and Texas also pleaded for troops.

From 2006 to 2008, President George W. Bush made a larger deployment of Guard troops under a program called Operation Jump Start. At its peak, 6,000 Guard troops at the border helped build roads and fences in addition to backing up law enforcement officers.

Those Guard troops contributed to the arrest of more than 162,000 illegal immigrants, the rescue of 100 people stranded in the desert and the seizure of $69,000 in cash and 305,000 pounds of illicit drugs.

The soldiers will not directly make arrests of border crossers and smugglers, something they are not trained to do.

Rick Nelson, a senior fellow who studies domestic security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that the additional spending could improve security over the long term but that the National Guard deployment was not sufficient for “an overwhelming change that will change the dynamics on the border.”

“This is a symbolic gesture,” he said. “At the end of the day, the face of border security is still going to be Customs and Border Protection, the law enforcement community. It’s not going to be the National Guard.”

Democrats and Republicans who agreed with the move rushed to take credit for it, including Ms. Brewer, who said her signing of the new Arizona law had pushed the administration.

“I am pleased that President Obama has now, apparently, agreed that our nation must secure the border to address rampant border violence and illegal immigration without other preconditions, such as passage of ‘comprehensive immigration reform,’ ” she said.

Terry Goddard, the Arizona attorney general and a Democrat running for governor, released a statement with the headline “Goddard Secures Administration Commitment for $500 million for National Guard, Border Security.” In an interview, Mr. Goddard said, “I think it is a good indication that the administration is taking us seriously.”

But some Democrats were skeptical.

Representative Harry E. Mitchell of Arizona, a Democrat facing re-election in a Republican-leaning district, said it was “going to take much more to secure the border.” He proposed a minimum of 3,000 troops.

Some Republicans said the deployment of the troops should not overshadow the need for a comprehensive approach to the illegal immigration problem.

“Arizona and other border states are grateful for the additional resources at the border,” said Representative Jeff Flake of Arizona. “But I hope that this is merely the first step in a process that culminates in Congress passing comprehensive immigration reform.”

Obama administration officials had resisted sending Guard troops to the border but had never ruled it out. They pointed to a variety of improvements at the border, including a record seizure of drug-related cash and guns, falling or flat rates of violent crime in border towns, and record lows in the flow of illegal immigrants across the border. Analysts give the dismal economy much of the credit for that.

In his meeting with lawmakers on Tuesday, Mr. Obama said improving border security alone would not reduce illegal immigration and reiterated that a reworking of the immigration system could not be achieved without more Republican support.


Carl Hulse contributed reporting from Washington.

    Obama to Send Up to 1,200 Troops to Border, NYT, 25.5.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/26/us/26border.html

Drug Slayings in Mexico Rock U.S. Consulate

March 15, 2010
The New York Times
By ELISABETH MALKIN and MARC LACEY

CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — The married couple gunned down Saturday as they drove back from a children’s birthday party with their infant daughter in the back seat were concerned about the violence plaguing this border town, but they never believed they could be its next targets, the husband’s brother said in an interview on Monday.

The couple, Leslie Enriquez, 35, a pregnant American consulate worker, and her husband, Arthur H. Redelfs, 34, an officer at the county jail in El Paso, were within sight of the bridge leading to the United States border crossing when gunmen said to have links to drug traffickers drove up to their car and opened fire, killing them both.

“He was a wonderful man,” said the brother, Reuben Redelfs. “We just regret this as a senseless act of violence.”

Gunmen also killed the husband of another consular employee and wounded his two young children in a near-simultaneous shooting elsewhere in the city, in what appeared to be coordinated assaults on American officials and their families. The killings provoked outrage from Washington and raised new questions about whether employees of the United States and their family members were increasingly at risk of being swept into the cross-fire of Mexico’s bloody drug wars.

The couple had been married for a couple years and lived in El Paso, where they were raising their 7-month-old daughter, who was unharmed in the shooting. Mr. Redelfs said he was now caring for the girl.

Despite concerns about the security in Ciudad Juárez, the couple traveled frequently between Texas and Mexico, where they had friends and Ms. Enriquez worked in the section of the American Consulate dealing with complaints or concerns of Americans in Mexico.

“They weren’t worried as targets,” Mr. Redelfs said.

Asked if he believed the couple were targets because of Ms. Enriquez’s consular job, Mr. Redelfs chose his words cautiously, saying, “I find it more than a coincidence that two separate incidents involving consular employees who were shot and killed occurred on the same day.”

Silvio Gonzalez, a spokesman for the United States Consulate in Ciudad Juárez, said the agency would be closed Tuesday “as we mourn the loss in our community.” The consular office was closed Monday for a holiday.

On Sunday night, staff at the consulate in Juárez held a meeting in which they vented their fears and discussed ideas for improving security.

State Department officials said concerns about security were not new along Mexico’s northern border, long the scene of some of that country’s worst violence. But as levels of drug violence soared in recent years, the State Department has looked at ways to tighten security at its border consulates.

Unlike other consulates around the world, those along Mexico’s northern border have their own diplomatic security officers assigned to oversee the security at the consulate and at the homes of all foreign service officers. Security at most other consulates is managed by regional officers that oversee the safety of consulates in various countries.

Diplomats at border consulates receive hardship pay to compensate them for the increased risk they assume by accepting assignments at those posts. And they are eligible for special antiterrorism training — known in State Department as “crash-bang courses” — meant to teach them how to respond to robberies, shootings and kidnapping attempts.

The killings came during a particularly bloody weekend when nearly 50 people were killed nationwide in drug-gang violence, including attacks in Acapulco as American college students began arriving for spring break.

The killings followed threats against American diplomats along the Mexican border and complaints from consulate workers that drug-related violence was growing untenable, American officials said. Even before the shootings, the State Department had quietly made the decision to allow consulate workers to evacuate their families across the border to the United States.

In Washington, President Obama denounced the “brutal murders” and vowed to “work tirelessly” with Mexican law enforcement officials to prosecute the killers. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the killings underscored the need to work with the Mexican government “to cripple the influence of trafficking organizations at work in Mexico.”

In a sign of the potential international reverberations of these killings, President Felipe Calderón of Mexico similarly expressed his indignation and condolences and said he would press forward with “all available resources” to control the lawlessness in Ciudad Juárez and the rest of the country.

The F.B.I. was sending agents to Ciudad Juárez on Sunday to assist with the investigation and American diplomats were en route to meet with their Mexican counterparts, said Roberta S. Jacobson, the American deputy assistant secretary of state who handles Mexico.

The coordinated nature of the attacks, the automatic weapons used and the location in a city where drug cartels control virtually all illicit activity point toward traffickers as the suspects, said Mexican and American officials, declining to be identified. Officials with the state of Chihuahua issued a statement Sunday night saying that initial evidence, corroborated by intelligence from the United States, pointed to a gang known as Los Aztecas, which is linked to the major drug cartel in Ciudad Juárez.

American interests in Mexico have been attacked by drug traffickers before but never with such brutality. Attackers linked to the Gulf Cartel shot at and hurled a grenade, which did not explode, at the American consulate in Monterrey in 2008.

The shootings in Ciudad Juárez took place in broad daylight on Saturday as the victims were en route home from a social gathering at another consulate worker’s home. The first attack was reported at 2:32 p.m.

Jorge Alberto Salcido Ceniceros, 37, the husband of a consular worker, was found dead in a white Honda Pilot, with bullet wounds to his body, the authorities said. In the back seat were two wounded children, one aged 4 and one 7. They were taken to the hospital.

Shell casings from a variety of caliber weapons were found at the scene.

Another call came in 10 minutes later, several miles away. This time it was a Toyota RAV4 with Texas plates that had been shot up, with Mr. Redelfs and Ms. Enriquez dead inside and their baby crying from a car seat in the back. Mexican officials initially gave Ms. Enriquez’s age as 25. Ms. Enriquez, an American citizen, was shot in the head. Her husband was shot in the neck and left arm. A 9-millimeter bullet casing was found at the scene.

Mr. Calderón is scheduled on Tuesday to make his third visit to Ciudad Juárez in the last five weeks as he tries to contain the disastrous public relations fallout from the killing of 16 people in January that Mr. Calderón first brushed off as “a settling of accounts” between members of criminal gangs.

It turns out the victims of the massacre were mostly students celebrating a birthday. By all accounts, they were just young people from a rough neighborhood trying to steer clear of the drug gang violence that has turned Ciudad Juárez into Mexico’s deadliest city. More than 2,000 people were killed there last year, giving it one of the highest murder rates in the world.


Elisabeth Malkin reported from Ciudad Juárez, and Marc Lacey from La Unión, Mexico. Ginger Thompson and Helene Cooper contributed reporting from Washington, Antonio Betancourt from Mexico City, and Jack Healy from New York.

    Drug Slayings in Mexico Rock U.S. Consulate, NYT, 15.3.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/world/americas/16juarez.html

War Without Borders

How U.S. Became Stage for Mexican Drug Feud

December 9, 2009
The New York Times
By SOLOMON MOORE

CHULA VISTA, Calif. — Eduardo Tostado was a prosperous man whose businesses and pleasures straddled the coastal border. He owned a big house and a used-car lot in the San Diego suburbs, and a seafood restaurant in Tijuana.

He was also part of the border underworld, the authorities say — a high-ranking member of the Mexican drug cartel driving much of the United States’ illegal marijuana trade and the cascade of violence in a 40-year drug war. Some evenings, Mr. Tostado drank tequila at the Baby Rock club in Tijuana or sipped Scotch at the Airport Lounge in San Diego. He socialized mainly with men he knew well and women he knew not at all.

His wife, Ivette Rubio, was aware of this, and they were having problems in their marriage. So when Mr. Tostado called her in June 2007 to say he had been kidnapped and needed her to sell their house to pay a ransom, she did not believe him.

“You got drunk,” she said, “and you went out, and you didn’t come to sleep in the house.”

Click, the phone went dead.

Mr. Tostado was in the hands of Jorge Rojas-López, a former member of the cartel, the Arellano Félix organization, who had turned on it. Based in the San Diego suburbs, Mr. Rojas-López was running a renegade squad of kidnappers and hit men, fighting for a piece of the marijuana market.

Across the border, the Mexican government, with $1.5 billion from the United States, is battling its drug cartels, and the cartels are battling one other. The Arellano organization has borne the brunt of these drug wars, and has fragmented into smaller crews spinning across the border like shrapnel.

“We believe there has been a splintering of the A.F.O. and that it has lost the power that they once wielded,” said Keith Slotter, the agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s office in San Diego.

The illegal drug market has never been so unsettled, drug enforcement experts say, with small elite killing squads like the one Mr. Rojas-López was running — Mr. Slotter identified three in San Diego alone — operating on both sides of the border. For three years, Mr. Rojas-López’s rogue squad, a mix of United States citizens and Mexicans, used houses in tract developments as roving bases, hunting cartel members and imprisoning their prey along bland residential streets. They secured ransoms worth millions. Payment, however, did not guarantee that the victims survived.

At stake were billions of dollars in profits from tons of smuggled marijuana, and other drugs, and the precious control of Mexican border cities like Ciudad Juárez; Nogales; and Tijuana. Those cities are thoroughfares to the world’s most lucrative drug market: the United States.

The authorities in Kansas City, Mo., and Miami are also investigating the Mr. Rojas-López’s squad for drug trafficking and killings in their cities.

Mr. Rojas-López and eight other members of the squad, called Los Palillos, are now on trial in San Diego, charged with kidnapping 13 men and killing 9 from 2004 to 2007. Seven other co-defendants are fugitives. Since the investigation began, three more fugitive squad members have been killed.

This account of Los Palillos in Tijuana and San Diego, based on more than 6,000 pages of court documents, testimony from 175 witnesses and co-defendants, and interviews with law enforcement officials, offers a window into how Mexico’s drug wars are playing out on American soil.

Mr. Rojas-López’s ambitions were fueled by more than just desire for a piece of the marijuana trade. He also wanted revenge for the death of his brother, Victor, a cartel enforcer, who was killed by the Arellanos organization in 2003 for insubordination. Mr. Rojas-López’s squad eluded the Arellanos cartel and law enforcement officials in San Diego for three years. Investigators heard whispers of a mutinous enforcement squad operating in the area but were unable to put the pieces together.

Relatives of the kidnapping victims either avoided the police or withheld crucial information about their loved ones. Instead, they quietly sold assets on both sides of the border, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars in a matter of days.

Some victims were released unharmed. Others were smothered with masking tape, shot in the stomach or pulverized with a police battering ram and dumped on a suburban street. Or they were boiled down in acid and never seen again, a technique known in Mexico as “pozole,” or Mexican stew.

Mr. Tostado, the kidnapped businessman with the big house here, and his wife were among the pawns in this underworld, with Mr. Rojas-López demanding $2 million from Ms. Rubio for her husband’s life. The next call she received that day was not from her husband.

She did not recognize the voice that said, “Hey, you want me to send your husband in pieces or what?”

 

Call to Police Pays Off

At the time of his abduction, Mr. Tostado, a legal resident of both the United States and Mexico, was helping the Arellanos cartel “pass tons of marijuana” across the United States border, according to the federal agents and José Olivera-Beritan, one of the nine suspected members of Los Palillos who is on trial in San Diego Superior Court for murder and kidnapping. “He knew in advance which trucks will be searched,” Mr. Olivera-Beritan said of Mr. Tostado in a jailhouse interview. “He told us he was giving cops money under the table.”

Mr. Tostado has offered contradictory statements to agents regarding his cartel affiliation.

His wife, Ms. Rubio, took a risk that night in June 2007 by calling the police. Investigators say that it made the difference between Mr. Tostado’s survival and the stories of less-fortunate kidnapping victims.

The event that led to the renegade squad occurred in 2003, when Victor Rojas-López crossed the cartel.

One evening at Zool, a nightclub in Tijuana, members of his enforcement squad got in a fight with members of another Arellano squad over a woman. A member of Victor Rojas-López’s team pushed a gun into the face of a man who happened to be the brother-in-law of the cartel leader, according to grand jury testimony.

The bosses ordered Victor Rojas-López to kill the underling. He refused and was shot to death.

His younger brother, Jorge, then took over the squad, called it Los Palillos — “the toothpicks,” after Victor, who was skinny but tough — and fled to San Diego.

Mark Amador, a San Diego County deputy district attorney who is the lead prosecutor against Los Palillos, said that much of the evidence about what happened next came from an insider, Guillermo Moreno, an American citizen and the member of Los Palillos who had pulled the gun at Zool.

“He is the witness that pulls all the pieces together,” Mr. Amador said. Mr. Moreno, who was arrested after Mr. Tostado’s kidnapping, ultimately led investigators to rental houses around San Diego used by Los Palillos. In a deal with prosecutors, he agreed to a minimum 25-year prison sentence, rather than life. At some houses, forensic investigators found DNA from victims.

When members of Los Palillos first arrived in San Diego, they lived quietly off earlier spoils. Then they went back to the work they knew best: killing and drug trafficking.

The first corpses were found on Aug. 15, 2004, decomposing in a Dodge minivan.

The police said the bodies belonged to three drug smugglers who had crossed the border to do a deal with the squad members.

The squad used safe houses with attached garages so they could move drugs or bodies in and out without being seen, Mr. Moreno, the witness, said. In many neighborhoods, the real estate bubble created a constant churn of new faces, so it was easy to go undetected.

The three smugglers expected to drop off several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of marijuana, sleep over and leave for Mexico in the morning. Instead, Mr. Moreno said, the squad waited for the men to fall asleep, then shot one of them in the stomach.

“Someone said, ‘Quit crying, you,’ ” Mr. Moreno told the grand jury. The man bled to death.

The other two smugglers were suffocated. Mr. Rojas-López is accused of stealing their marijuana and ordering Mr. Moreno to dump the bodies.

The Arellanos cartel, meanwhile, ordered a former Baja California police officer named Ricardo Escobar Luna, 31, who was working for the cartel, to hunt down Los Palillos in San Diego.

But members of the squad learned that Mr. Escobar was after them and abducted him from his home in Bonita, Calif., according to testimony from Mr. Moreno. The kidnappers disguised themselves as police officers and drove up in a BMW with flashing lights.

Mr. Escobar’s wife called the police but never mentioned that her husband worked for the Arellanos cartel, said Steve Duncan, an investigator for the California Department of Justice.

Testifying before the grand jury, Mr. Moreno described how he had overheard a discussion among squad members before the kidnapping: “Well, he’s here to kill us; we might as well kill him.”

On Aug. 20, 2005, Mr. Rojas-López took a police battering ram into the bedroom where Mr. Escobar, the former police officer, was tied up, according to testimony by Mr. Moreno.

Meanwhile, Mr. Moreno went outside to water the lawn and keep an eye on the neighbors, he said. When he went back inside, he saw blood on the walls.

Victor Escobar, the former officer’s brother, told investigators that he had paid the squad $600,000 for his freedom, but he never had much hope. “Yeah, I knew they’d kill my brother,” he said. “But what else could I do?”

By September 2005, the police were beginning to understand that the killings around San Diego were related, but they still did not know how. The case began to unfold when two squad members with automatic rifles and pistols bungled the kidnapping of an Arellanos cartel trafficker in a cul-de-sac in Chula Vista, in broad daylight.

A police cruiser chased the gunmen to a strip mall parking lot and was barraged by bullets.

The gunmen were caught later that day and eventually convicted for attempted kidnapping and the attempted murder of a police officer.

Within a few years, Los Palillos had become a minicartel with a drug trafficking network that snaked through the Mexican cities of Ensenada and Tijuana, San Diego and on to Missouri and Florida, according to federal agents.

Two Cuban nationals ran Los Palillos operations in Kansas City, Mo., Mr. Moreno, the witness, told federal officials.

In September 2006, a woman in the small farming community of Jameson, about 50 miles north of Kansas City, heard gun shots and then found two bodies near a barn. Deputies discovered a 47,000-square-foot marijuana garden behind rows of corn stalks. Members of Los Palillos were arrested on suspicion of killing local rivals, the authorities said.

By 2007, the authorities said, the renegade squad had made millions of dollars. Mr. Rojas-López wore Rolex watches. Photographs on MySpace showed his squad members hoisting drinks at trendy San Diego bars.

In May 2007, two more drug smugglers, both 33, were kidnapped, and they were never seen again. Mr. Moreno told federal agents that their bodies had been dissolved in a vat of acid.

 

Beer, Soccer and Arrests

Before he was kidnapped, Mr. Tostado was worried. A man had left an extortion note at the front door of his home, recorded by his security camera. Armed with a picture of the man, Mr. Tostado drove down to Tijuana to find some answers.

Mr. Tostado, an avid off-road racer, who admitted in court that he had socialized with members of the Mexican underworld and had accepted a $200,000 race car from the Arellano family, learned that the man in the photo was a member of Los Palillos.

A few weeks later, an acquaintance introduced Mr. Tostado to a Tijuana woman named Nancy. On June 8, Nancy invited Mr. Tostado to her home in Chula Vista. Mr. Tostado walked in carrying bottles of Cognac and whiskey. Hands grabbed him from behind in the darkened room. Someone fired a Taser, immobilizing him.

Mr. Tostado was held for eight days while Los Palillos negotiated by phone with his wife. He said that he drank beers with his abductors, who watched soccer on television and smoked marijuana.

Occasionally, Mr. Rojas-López would vent angrily about the Arellanos cartel.

“They have killed my family and my brother,” he told him. “I had to do something, and I have the nerve to do it over here.”

By June 16, Mr. Rojas-López had agreed to accept $193,000 in cash. Wiretapped calls recorded the kidnappers directing the dropping off of the ransom money.

On June 16, 2007, federal agents arrested the squad leaders, Mr. Rojas-López and Juan Estrada-Gonzalez, the second-in-charge, after they dropped the money off at a motel. Another team of agents stormed the house where Mr. Tostado was being held and freed him.

Later that day, as Mr. Tostado recounted his experience to federal agents, he pledged to leave the underworld behind.

“I think I need to start over again,” he said. “I’m reborn right now.”

Mr. Tostado is keeping a low profile these days. He sold his house in Chula Vista and no longer races the off-road circuits in Mexico.

He sold his restaurant in Tijuana, too, after someone left three barrels in front of it in 2008. They were full of bones and acid.

    How U.S. Became Stage for Mexican Drug Feud, NYT, 9.12.2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/us/09border.html

U.S. Arrests Hundreds in Drug Raids

October 22, 2009
Filed at 12:17 p.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Attorney General Eric Holder calls it the largest single strike at a Mexican drug cartel operating in the U.S. -- the arrest of more than 300 people in a series of drug raids across the country.

Holder said at a news conference that the arrests over the past two days were aimed at the U.S. operations of the La Familia cartel. Holder said La Familia is the newest and most violent of Mexico's five drug cartels.

More than 3,000 federal agents and police officers made the arrests in more than a dozen states. The raids are part of a long-running anti-drug operation that has led to nearly 1,200 arrests over almost four years.

A New York grand jury has indicted alleged cartel leader Servando Gomez-Martinez.

------

On the Net:

Justice Department: http://www.usdoj.gov/

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Attorney General Eric Holder calls it largest single strike at a Mexican drug cartel operating in the U.S. -- the arrest of more than 300 people in a series of drug raids across the country.

Holder said at a news conference that the arrests over the past two days were aimed at the U.S. operations of the La Familia cartel. Holder said La Familia is the newest and most violent of Mexico's five drug cartels.

More than 3,000 federal agents and police officers made the arrests in more than a dozen states. The raids are part of a long-running anti-drug operation that has led to nearly 1,200 arrests over almost four years.

A New York grand jury has indicted alleged cartel leader Servando Gomez-Martinez.

    U.S. Arrests Hundreds in Drug Raids, NYT, 22.10.2009, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/10/22/us/AP-US-Drug-War-Arrests.html

War Without Borders

In Heartland Death, Traces of Heroin’s Spread

May 31, 2009
The New York Times
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

GROVE CITY, Ohio — For five hours, Dana Smith huddled stunned and bewildered in her suburban living room while the body of her son Arthur Eisel IV, 31, lay slumped in an upstairs bathroom, next to a hypodermic needle.

Family and friends streamed in. Detectives scurried about. For Mrs. Smith, the cold realization set in that her oldest son Artie — quiet, shy, car enthusiast, football and softball fanatic — was dead of a heroin overdose.

The death was the end of a particular horror for Mrs. Smith, whose two other children, Mr. Eisel’s younger brothers, also fell into heroin addiction “like dominoes,” she said, and still struggle with it.

To the federal government, which prosecuted the heroin dealers for Mr. Eisel’s death, it was a stark illustration of how Mexican drug cartels have pushed heroin sales beyond major cities into America’s suburban and rural byways, some of which had seen little heroin before.

In Ohio, for instance, heroin-related deaths spread into 18 new counties from 2004 to 2007, the latest year for which statistics are available. Their numbers rose to 546 in that period, from 376 for 2000 to 2003.

Federal officials now consider the cartels the greatest organized crime threat to the United States. Officials say the groups are taking over heroin distribution from Colombians and Dominicans and making new inroads across the country, pushing a powerful form of heroin grown and processed in Mexico known as “black tar” for its dark color and sticky texture.

Their operations often piggyback on a growing and struggling Mexican immigrant population. In a case that provides a window into how this works, two illegal immigrant dealers pleaded guilty to manslaughter last year in Mr. Eisel’s death, in a rare federal manslaughter prosecution from a drug overdose.

Investigators determined that the two immigrants, Jose Manuel Cazeras-Contreras, 30, and Victor Delgadillo Parra, 23, began distributing heroin when they were unable to find jobs. Mr. Parra, in an interview from prison, where he was sentenced to spend 16 ½ years, said he was afraid of being arrested at first, but took the job to support his wife and son, as well as relatives in Mexico.

“I was living a hard life here in the United States,” Mr. Parra said. “And I didn’t have any other job I was going to go to.”

Another man in the drug ring, who was not directly connected to the death and therefore not charged with manslaughter, was recruited off the streets of Mexico and smuggled into the country expressly to peddle drugs in Ohio, the government said.

Fat on profits made largely in the United States, drug traffickers in Mexico are engaged there in a bloody war among themselves and with the government, which began a crackdown on them three years ago. Since then the violence, including assaults on the police and the army, has left more than 10,000 people dead.

But on this side of the border, the traffickers continue to expand their reach.

Drug Enforcement Administration officials say that Ohio is of particular concern because of the crisscrossing network of freeways here that make it well suited as a transshipment point. Anthony C. Marotta, who heads the agency’s Columbus office, said heroin tied to the Columbus-area dealers had been cropping up in nearby states like Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia and as far away as the Baltimore area.

The case of Arthur Eisel and the men arrested for selling him heroin shows how the traffickers pushed their product and how in Mr. Eisel, already addicted to expensive pain killers because of a back injury, they found a ready customer for heroin, which was cheaper.

Investigators say that Arthur Eisel was not alone in switching from a prescription painkiller to heroin. It gives a similar, euphoric high at a fraction of the cost, $10 to $20 for a “balloon” — one dose, usually a gram or less — as opposed to upwards of $60 for a typical prescription pill dose on the street.

The traffickers found a ripe market in Grove City, a suburb of Columbus, as they have elsewhere in the nation. Drug seizures ebb and flow over the years, but the amount of heroin confiscated nationwide has been arcing up since the mid-90s, going from 370 kilograms in 1998 nationwide to about 600 kilograms — roughly $150 million worth of heroin — last year, though officials believe it is a small fraction of what is available on the street.

The share of heroin-related prosecutions among federal drug cases in this region has also been climbing, reaching 15 percent of cases last year compared with 4 percent a decade ago.

The numbers here are small in comparison with other populous states like New York, California or Texas, which have always been centers of drug use. But the growth here has prompted much soul-searching.

Mr. Marotta said he had been alarmed recently to see dealing in the parking lot of a supermarket in Dublin, a quiet, upscale suburb of Columbus, where he was shopping.

Paul Coleman, the director of Maryhaven, the largest rehabilitation center in the region, said the percentage of patients reporting opiates, principally heroin, as their preferred drug — whether it is smoked, inhaled or injected — grew to 68 percent last year from 38 percent in 2002.

Mr. Coleman said he believed that the trend reflected an increased supply of heroin.

Mike G., who is undergoing treatment at Maryhaven and asked that his last name be withheld for fear enemies on the street would find him there, said, “In some places it is like going to pick up beer.”

 

A Fatal Link

The group linked to the Mexican cartel that sold Arthur Eisel his fatal dose was just one of at least 10 trafficking organizations, known by the authorities as cells, operating in central Ohio, said Tim Reagan, a D.E.A. agent who investigated the case as part of the Southwest Border Task Force, a group of Ohio law enforcement officials focused on drugs coming from Mexico.

Each cell consists of a handful of people who distribute the drug after it is smuggled across the Southwest border, 1,500 miles away. Many cell members, like Mr. Parra and Mr. Contreras, have roots in Nayarit, a state on the Pacific Coast of Mexico.

Mexican authorities say that growers in Nayarit are using a highly productive form of the poppy from Colombia and processing the heroin in laboratories scattered around Tepic, Nayarit’s capital, despite efforts to kill the plants through fumigation.

The cells take orders over disposable mobile phones, making it hard for the police to trace them or their calls. They use a system of “dispatchers” and “runners” to take orders and deliver the drug. Members of the cells typically stay in an area for only four or five months before replacements arrive. The drugs are sold at rendezvous points, usually in shopping center parking lots, in an effort to blend in with the bustle.

The men convicted in the Eisel case told the authorities similar stories. Mr. Contreras, the dispatcher in the case, told federal authorities that he had crossed the border illegally and lived in Oregon for several years before moving to Columbus in 2007 on the promise of a job as an auto mechanic. But that job never materialized. In a letter to The New York Times, he said he had worked a variety of other jobs but had hit an unemployment streak that left him without a car or a house for his wife and two young children.

Desperate for work, he said he found an acquaintance in Columbus who promised him easy money for distributing heroin.

“Since I spoke English and Spanish, they proposed that I answer the phone only,” Mr. Contreras wrote. “I didn’t touch the drug or see it. I was only answering the phone. I was with them for three months, and that was when they caught me.”

He said he never imagined that anyone could die from the heroin, “since I have used the drug and nothing ever happened to me.”

Mr. Parra said he illegally crossed the border in 2005 and settled in California, working in the kitchen of a seafood restaurant for several months. When that work and other jobs dried up, friends suggested he come to Ohio for work. But when he arrived, Mr. Parra said, he learned that the work would be helping to distribute heroin.

At turns repentant and defiant, Mr. Parra said he felt sorry for the family of Mr. Eisel but did not fully accept responsibility for his death and wondered aloud if the government was making an example of him.

“It was never my intention for someone to die,” Mr. Parra said, “but neither did I put a syringe or something in somebody so that they could inject the drug,” adding, “I am serving as an example” to discourage other dealers.

Jose Garcia Morales, a third man who was arrested in the case but was not prosecuted for the death of Mr. Eisel, was recruited off the streets of Nayarit’s capital, according to a memorandum his lawyer prepared for the court in urging a lenient sentence.

The document describes how the ring arranged for the payment of a “coyote,” or human smuggler, to bring Mr. Morales across the border. Then, he piled into the back of a Ryder truck, was driven to Columbus and, over a two-week training period, was taught to deliver heroin by other drug traffickers already established there.

“Mr. Morales was promised that he would make a lot of money,” the document said. “In reality, when he was paid, if it all, he generally received between $400 and $500 a week, a place to sleep, and occasionally some food. As expected, Mr. Morales sent much of the money he earned back to his family in Mexico.”

Connecting the distribution rings to the cartel leadership in Mexico has proved difficult. Those arrested here typically say they fear for the safety of their families in Mexico if word gets back that they have been too cooperative.

“If they are caught, they are terrified what will happen to their families, and for good reason,” said David M. DeVillers, a federal prosecutor here who has handled several drug cases. “They want to do the prison time.”

The authorities say that local arrests rarely make a difference. New dealers pop up within weeks.

“It’s like sweeping sunshine off the roof,” Mr. Marotta of the D.E.A. said.

 

Shared Addictions

Standing before a federal judge last summer as he faced the prospect of 20 years in prison on manslaughter charges in Mr. Eisel’s death, Mr. Contreras begged for forgiveness.

“I truly did not intend to do any damage to their family,” said Mr. Contreras, 30, before the judge handed down a 15-year sentence. “I have two children, and I would not like something like this to happen to my sons.”

Dana Smith listened, horrified. At home, her two younger sons were still struggling with addiction.

Arthur had been, in her eyes, a typical suburban child, shy around girls, a devotee of the radio host Howard Stern, a member of a local softball league, popular with the children of friends.

He eventually found work as a bank clerk and rented an apartment with one of his brothers, Robby. Robby Eisel, who is undergoing treatment at a residential center in Columbus, said the progression from prescription medicine to heroin was easy “because the heroin is everywhere around here.”

When Arthur Eisel injured his back in a car accident in 2005, he started taking prescription medication, Percocet and OxyContin, for chronic pain, under a doctor’s supervision.

Robby Eisel said he had been taking similar medications after he broke his arm on the job as a maintenance worker at a golf course. Soon, all three brothers were acquiring OxyContin illegally and sharing it. When supplies dried up and their dealer suggested heroin, they tried it and quickly developed an addiction.

Mrs. Smith said she struggled to comprehend what took hold of her sons. She works as a clerk at a courthouse and had seen the regular parade of drug addicts and offenders come through. But one day in 2007, she heard the names of two of her boys, Arthur and Robby, announced in arraignment court. They had broken into a store.

“It was devastating,” she said.

More horrors came. She would find needles in pillow cases, in coats, under living room chairs. She watched her sons writhe in agony from head and bone pain and diarrhea as they experienced withdrawal trying to beat the addiction at home.

Mrs. Smith said she sometimes feels pangs of guilt and wonders if she could have done more to help Arthur break the addiction. She concedes that she gave him food, a place to stay and sometimes even money when his stupor made clear what he was up to.

“I was an enabler,” she said quietly. “I was his mother.”

At one point, she called a private rehabilitation facility in Florida, hoping to get all of her sons in treatment. But she was told the facility did not accept siblings.

“Which one has it the worst?” she recalled a counselor there asking.

The question still gnaws at her.

“How do you choose which one of your children to save?” Mrs. Smith asks now. She decided at the time that she could not choose and sent none of them to Florida.

 

Regret and Resolve

Arthur Eisel went through a revolving door of treatment centers in the Columbus area in the months before his death. He would get free of the drug, seemingly set on a positive path only to relapse and fall into it again. But, his family said, he did not appear to be using heavily in the weeks before his death.

The night before he died, he and his brother Ryan paid their mother a visit, watching television there until late in the evening.

At work the next morning, Mrs. Smith got the kind of call parents dread. She remembers hearing Ryan say, “His lips are blue.” Mrs. Smith spent the next months in a state of shock. She said she does not remember much.

As it turned out, investigators had already been trailing the ring that sold Arthur his fatal dose. That work, in addition to confidential informants whose testimony would have allowed investigators to trace Mr. Eisel’s dose to Mr. Parra and Mr. Contreras, emboldened prosecutors to charge them with manslaughter and other crimes.

Prosecutors asked Mrs. Smith to go to the sentencing hearings and make a statement. She stood feet from the men accused of killing her son and listened to their words of regret.

“Part of my heart goes out to their families,” she said in a recent interview. “But something has got to be done to stop this.”

 

Antonio Betancourt contributed reporting from Mexico City.

    In Heartland Death, Traces of Heroin’s Spread, NYT, 31.5.2009,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/us/31border.html

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