CaboRon - 2-9-2009 at 05:25 PM
Slideshow: U.S.-Mexico Border Issues Play Video Video: Disorder on the Border FOX News Play Video Video: Border Beat FOX 11 Tuscon Just as
government officials had feared, the drug violence raging in Mexico is spilling over into the United States.
U.S. authorities are reporting a spike in killings, kidnappings and home invasions connected to Mexico's murderous cartels. And to some policymakers'
surprise, much of the violence is happening not in towns along the border, where it was assumed the bloodshed would spread, but a considerable
distance away, in places such as Phoenix and Atlanta.
Investigators fear the violence could erupt elsewhere around the country because the Mexican cartels are believed to have set up drug-dealing
operations all over the U.S., in such far-flung places as Anchorage, Alaska; Boston; and Sioux Falls, S.D.
"The violence follows the drugs," said David Cuthbertson, agent in charge of the FBI's office in the border city of El Paso, Texas.
The violence takes many forms: Drug customers who owe money are kidnapped until they pay up. Cartel employees who don't deliver the goods or turn over
the profits are disciplined through beatings, kidnappings or worse. And drug smugglers kidnap illegal immigrants in clashes with human smugglers over
the use of secret routes from Mexico.
So far, the violence is nowhere near as grisly as the mayhem in Mexico, which has witnessed beheadings, assassinations of police officers and
soldiers, and mass killings in which the bodies were arranged to send a message. But law enforcement officials worry the violence on this side could
escalate.
"They are capable of doing about anything," said Rusty Payne, a Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman in Washington. "When you are willing to chop
heads off, put them in an ice chest and drop them off at a police precinct, or roll a head into a disco, put beheadings on YouTube as a warning," very
little is off limits.
In an apartment near Birmingham, Ala., police found five men with their throats slit in August. They had apparently been tortured with electric shocks
before being killed in a murder-for-hire orchestrated by a Mexican drug organization over a drug debt of about $400,000.
In Phoenix, 150 miles north of the Mexican border, police have reported a sharp increase in kidnappings and home invasions, with about 350 each year
for the last two years, and say the majority were committed at the behest of the Mexican drug gangs.
In June, heavily armed men stormed a Phoenix house and fired randomly, killing one person. Police believe it was the work of Mexican drug
organizations.
Authorities in Atlanta are also seeing an increase in drug-related kidnappings tied to Mexican cartels. Estimates of how many such crimes are being
committed are hard to come by because many victims are connected to the cartels and unwilling to go to the police, said Rodney G. Benson, DEA agent in
charge in Atlanta.
Agents said they have rarely seen such brutality in the U.S. since the "Miami Vice" years of the 1980s, when Colombian cartels had the corner on the
cocaine market in Florida.
Last summer, Atlanta-area police found a Dominican man who had been beaten, bound, gagged and chained to a wall in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood
in Lilburn, Ga. The 31-year-old Rhode Island resident owed $300,000 to Mexico's Gulf Cartel, Benson said. The Gulf Cartel, based in Matamoros just
south of the Texas border, is one of the most ruthless of the Mexican organizations that deal drugs such as cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine and
heroin.
"He was shackled to a wall and one suspect had an AK-47. The guy was in bad shape," Benson said. "I have no doubt in my mind if that ransom wasn't
paid, he was going to be killed."
In July, Atlanta-area police shot and killed a suspected kidnapper while he was trying to pick up a $2 million ransom owed to his cartel bosses,
Benson said.
State and federal governments have sent millions of dollars to local law enforcement along the Mexican border to help fend off spillover drug crime.
But investigators believe Arizona and Atlanta are seeing the worst of the violence because they are major drug distribution hubs thanks to their webs
of interstate highways.
In fact, drug officials have dubbed Atlanta "the new Southwest border," said Jack Killorin, a former federal drug agent and director of the Atlanta
region's High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task force.
El Paso, population 600,000, is only a quarter-mile away from Mexico's Ciudad Juarez, which has seen open gun battles and 1,700 murders in the last
year. But El Paso remains one of America's safest cities, something Cuthbertson said is probably a result of the huge law enforcement presence in
town, including thousands of Border Patrol and customs agents.
In the past year, more than 5,000 people have been killed across Mexico in a power struggle among Mexico's drug cartels and ferocious fighting between
them and the Mexican government. The cartels have established operations in at least 230 U.S. cities, according to the Justice Department's National
Drug Intelligence Center.
Payne said the U.S. and Mexico are working together to pressure the warring cartels. Payne cited the extradition of high-level drug suspects — four
members of the Arellano Felix cartel in Tijuana were brought to the U.S. in December — and the capture or killings of several other top cartel leaders
across Mexico in the past year.
"We have to make sure that we attack these criminal organizations at every level so that we are safer not only in Mexico and on the Southwest border,
but here in the rest of the country," Payne said.
While some Americans may feel victimized by the spillover of violence, others are contributing to it. Americans provide 95 percent of the weapons used
by the cartel, according to U.S. authorities. And Americans are the cartels' best customers, sending an estimated $28.5 billion in drug-sale proceeds
across the Mexico border each year.
desertcpl - 2-9-2009 at 05:53 PM
sorry ron didnt see your post before I posted it,,
Nomad Expert ALERT
The Gull - 2-9-2009 at 08:21 PM
As expected, it is not a Baja problem.
Look at the numbers of dollars involved. Is it any wonder how much wasted life on drugs is north of the US-Mexico border? Staggering statistics.
Look where the weapons come from. Nice exchange rate - US sells guns to the cartel and in exchange the cartel kills US citizens with the guns and
with the drugs. What a deal!!!
Shooting police in the US. Where has that happened before? I thought I read on this board that the US system of juetice and law enforcement was
vastly superior to that of Mexico. Hmmmm, must have been another board I read, huh?
Now, all the experts on this forum need to come up with a solution.
Move to Canada? Move to Alaska? Move to the North Pole?
Woooosh - 2-9-2009 at 09:14 PM
I can't believe the anti-drug crusaders can keep them illegal for much longer. The drug war costs billions of dollars and thousands of lives. They
can't get any traction with their anti-drug message either. Michael Phelps hitting that bong was the nail in the coffin. A-Roid isn't helping in the
baseball world either. Now there is a growth industry that will help the US economy.
Ya know Gull- the world has changed since the days when people had values and respect. The american mafia never touched a woman or child - these
people inject acid into childrens hearts. We have apresident who admits to doing drugs as a youth.
One reason the violence has kicked up on the USA side is the COD coyote deliveries. Once they smuggle you across you are held captive until a
relative pays them in full. That gets grisly.
oldlady - 2-9-2009 at 10:11 PM
And yet we continue to tolerate, admire, worship and elect people whose behavior (illegal drug use) funds this human tragedy. A smoker is more of a
pariah in California than a drug user....what's wrong with that picture?
I guess the majority of the population isn't all that upset about it yet....or can't connect the dots.
Bajahowodd - 2-10-2009 at 12:02 AM
I don't smoke pot. I dabbled with it in college almost 40 years ago. It is a benign high. The stuff grows naturally all over the world. Pot smokers
are less of a threat to society than alcohol imbibers (of which I am one). Since the U.S. is the largest consumer of illicit drugs in the world,
marijuana being one of them, why in the name of sanity does no one see the fatal connection? Legalize, control and tax the hell out of it. It would be
a very big revenue producer. And many European studies have shown that decrimalization or legalization does not result in an increase of usage. Like
many of you, I'm an old fart. I smoked pot 40 years ago, and determined that while it wasn't for me, I really couldn't see why it could be the
platform for billions of dollars in tax revenue to stop its use. So crazy. Why should innocent people lose their lives over this weed? It is not a
threat to civilization as we know it. But it is a sad commentary on our society that we should pee away billions of dollars for so-called interdiction
and see thousands of lives destroyed over a benign weed.
[Edited on 2-10-2009 by Bajahowodd]
it would seem
woody with a view - 2-10-2009 at 07:26 AM
that the situation is EXACTLY how our leaders would like it. keep the people fearful and increase the police powers.....
now i'm sounding like a nutjob, again!
BajaDove - 2-10-2009 at 08:19 AM
If it's death or taxes I'd take taxes
rpleger - 2-10-2009 at 09:03 AM
Well said BAJAHOWODD, I agree 100%. 
BajaGringo - 2-10-2009 at 09:38 AM
They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over, but expecting a different result. You would think that the US would get a clue the
results of the current policy in not going to change...