Anonymous - 8-4-2003 at 06:56 PM
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/20030804-1724-mexi...
ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 4, 2003
TIJUANA, Mexico ? Some 650 federal agents arrived to this rough border city on Monday, with orders to crackdown on drug and migrant trafficking and
help stamp out corruption within the local police department.
Dressed in gray uniforms, the members of Mexico's federal police force arrived aboard a trio of government 747s.
Their commander, Miguel Angel de la Torres, said in an interview that the federal government didn't intend to use the men for a special operation,
insisting that they were ordered to come here to make it tougher on smuggling gangs who move cocaine and marijuana through Tijuana, across the border
with San Diego.
But pundits and academics who study and track Tijuana's drug trade speculated on local radio stations that the agents actually arrived as part of a
special effort to capture top drug dealers and smugglers working for kingpin Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada.
Zambada is widely believed to have ordered the February 2000 slaying of Alfredo de la Torre, a Tijuana police chief who was shot and killed by gunmen
who fired nearly 100 rounds at his Chevy Suburban.
The agents arriving in Tijuana may be targeting suspects wanted in la Torre's slaying, experts said.
Originally from the Pacific state of Sinaloa, Zambada is believed to head a group of violent, freelance smugglers in Mazatlan, a beachfront community
popular with tourists from around the world.
But anti-drug authorities in the United States and Mexico say Zambada also has close ties to key leaders of the Juarez Cartel, based in the city of
the same name across the border from El Paso, Texas.
Federal investigators in this country have speculated that Zambada is in charge of running the Juarez's Cartel's operations in Sinaloa.
Monday's police build up in Tijuana comes five days after U.S. and Mexican officials announced they had arrested 240 suspects in a 19-month
investigation known as "Operation Trifecta," which targeted top members of Zambada's gang.