Tag: cartels

Biden admin working to effectively ban cigarettes in 11th hour proposal a ‘gift’ to cartels, expert says

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is moving forward with a regulatory rule in the final days of the Biden administration that would effectively ban cigarettes currently on the market in favor of products with lower nicotine levels, which could end up boosting business for cartels operating on the black market, an expert tells Fox News Digital.

“Biden’s ban is a gift with a bow and balloons to organized crime cartels with it, whether it’s cartels, Chinese organized crime, or Russian mafia. It’s going to keep America smoking, and it’s going to make the streets more violent,” Rich Marianos, former assistant director of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the current chair of the Tobacco Law Enforcement Network, told Fox News Digital of the proposal. 

The FDA confirmed to Fox Digital on Monday that as of Jan. 3, the Tobacco Product Standard for Nicotine Level of Certain Tobacco Products had completed a regulatory review, but that the proposed rule has not yet been finalized. 

“The proposed rule, ‘Tobacco Product Standard for Nicotine Level of Certain Tobacco Products,’ is displaying in the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) ROCIS system as having completed regulatory review on January 3,” an FDA spokesman told Fox Digital. “As the FDA has previously said, a proposed product standard to establish a maximum nicotine level to reduce the addictiveness of cigarettes and certain other combusted tobacco products, when finalized, is estimated to be among the most impactful population-level actions in the history of U.S. tobacco product regulation. At this time, the FDA cannot provide any further comment until it is published.”

Fox New Digital reached out to the White House regarding concerns over the proposal if it were to take effect but did not receive a response. 

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Second Border Patrol Agent Blows the Whistle on Border Crisis – “Cartels Are Running the Border”

A second Border Patrol Agent blew the whistle on the border crisis: ‘My Conscience Will Be Clean, That’s Way More Important Than My Pension’

James O’Keefe last Tuesday evening announced his new film on the migrant industrial complex dubbed “Line in the Sand” premieres October 10th on the Tucker Carlson Network.

“Undercover journalist James O’Keefe goes to the front lines of the migrant industrial complex using hidden cameras and raw testimonials. O’Keefe reveals the shocking reality of the U.S. border crisis like never before: Mexican freight trains, cartel tunnels, and U.S. funded child detention camps. Watch this gripping exposé of a corrupted system that demands change,” O’Keefe Media Group said.

A second Border Patrol agent told James O’Keefe that the cartels are running the border in Arizona.

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US Border Agents Find RPGs & IEDs Near Southern Border Amid “Internal Alert” Of “Drastic Escalation” In Weaponry Used By Cartels

An alarming battle between rival factions of the Sinaloa drug cartel has unfolded in northwestern Mexico, near the Biden-Harris administration’s open southern border. The risk of spillover continues to increase as US Border Patrol agents recently discovered a weapons cache of shoulder-fired rocket launchers and improvised explosive devices just across from the Arizona border. 

“4 RPGs and 8 IEDs along with a large amount of ammo discovered in a scout site in Mexico just across the Arizona border which butts up against the Ajo area of operation within the Tucson Sector,” NewsNation’s border correspondent Ali Bradley wrote on X on Monday afternoon. 

Bradley said, “Border Patrol agents are being warned of the “drastic escalation” in weaponry being used on the south side of the border—According to an internal alert obtained through sources.” 

“The fighting within the Sinaloa cartel, spilling over the border with multiple instances of armed men showing up to the southern border in the same area fleeing into the US for safety,” she added.

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Two Border Patrol Agents Arrested, Accused Of Working With Unnamed Drug Cartel

Two officers with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Field Operations have been working with an unnamed drug cartel for a number of years, federal prosecutors have alleged.

According to court documents, the officers allegedly allowed the organization to move large amounts of fentanyl, methamphetamines, cocaine, and heroin through their inspection lanes on the southern border.

Jesse Clark Garcia and Diego Bonillo have been named as the two CBP officers referenced in an indictment filed by the U.S. Southern District of California. The two agents are accused of drug trafficking and drug trafficking conspiracy, and both men have been in custody since May.

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Mexican cartels sending young men in military uniforms across U.S. border via remote parts of Arizona

Residents of remote areas in Arizona are reporting floods of “fighting-age males” equipped with military uniforms making their way from Mexico into the U.S. in areas that aren’t manned by Border Patrol agents.

Judicial Watch recently published a report on the problem, which is being largely ignored by the mainstream media, with photos, diagrams and firsthand accounts of how the residents of rural Arizona towns are being terrorized by the influx and the many dangers it presents.

They explain how Pima and Santa Cruz counties have been hit with incredible amounts of crime and violence as Mexican cartels cross there and carry out their human and drug smuggling activities. Several cattle farmers there running farms that have been in their families for generations have captured thousands of illegal immigrants making their way through their property on private security cameras.

One law enforcement official told the organization: “Violent activity has drastically increased over the past three years since the border is now perceived to be wide open.”

Arivaca has been particularly hard hit. Situated 11 miles away from Nogales, Mexico, this cattle ranching town is seeing many longtime residents leaving out of fear. Although there is a Border Patrol checkpoint east of the town, the Department of Homeland Security does not plan to send any agents there, despite reports by residents and other law enforcement agents of masses of young men entering the country there in what is clearly an organized operation on the part of Mexican cartels.

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Mexican Town’s First Woman Mayor Killed in Suspected Cartel Attack

A group of suspected cartel gunmen shot and killed the first woman mayor in the town of Cotija, Michoacan, a state suffering from widespread cartel violence. The killing comes just one day after Mexico held its national elections. The victim had survived a separate cartel kidnapping in 2023.

On Monday evening, Mayor Yolanda Sanchez arrived at a local gym with her security detail when a group of gunmen fired at them from a moving vehicle. The gunmen struck Sanchez 19 times, fatally wounding her. She died hours later at a local hospital.

The Michoacan government confirmed the killing through a short social media post and claimed to be carrying out an operation to track down the gunmen.

Sanchez made headlines in 2021 when she became the first female mayor of Cotija. She hailed from the National Action Party (PAN), an opposition group to Mexico’s ruling party, MORENA. Sanchez was not running for reelection, but a candidate from her party won the June 2 election, just one day before her killing.

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Trump Planning to Send Covert ‘Assassination Squads’ to Mexico to Take Out Cartel Leaders

Donald Trump is reportedly planning to send covert “assassination squads” into Mexico as soon as he takes office in order to take out Mexican drug cartel leaders wreaking havoc on America.

According to a report from Rolling Stone, Trump is mulling the idea if he returns to the White House next year as part of an effort to strike “fear into the hearts” of Mexico’s most notorious drug lords:

The former president has not presented specific details in public about these plans — for example, how many U.S. troops he’d be willing to send into sovereign Mexican territory. But, the three sources tell Rolling Stone, in conversations with close MAGA allies, including at least one Republican lawmaker, Trump has privately endorsed the idea of covertly deploying — with or without the Mexican government’s consent — special-ops units that would be tasked with, among other missions, assassinating the leaders and top enforcers of Mexico’s powerful and most notorious drug cartels. In some of these discussions, Trump has insisted that the U.S. military has “tougher killers than they do” and pondered why these assassination missions haven’t been done before, arguing that eliminating the heads of cartels would go a long way toward hobbling their operations and striking fear into the hearts of “the kingpins.”

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During some of these conversations, Trump has likened these proposals to the 2019 military raid that he ordered that resulted in the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, insisting that the U.S. should approach drug cartel leadership in the same manner. One of the sources, who discussed the issue with Trump earlier this year, recalls the ex-president saying that the U.S. government should have a “kill list of drug lords,” as this source describes Trump’s ideas, of the most powerful and infamous cartel figures that American special forces would be assigned to kill or capture in a potential second Trump administration.

Trump has made no secret of his plans to deal with Mexico’s drug cartels should he get a second term in office. Since Joe Biden seized power in January 2021, drug cartels have expanded their operations across the United States by taking advantage of the open border, flooding the country with fentanyl and a host of other deadly substances.

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Yet Another Drug War Failure

An especially hot news item in 2024 has been the surge of drug-related violence in Ecuador.  Until recent years, Ecuador was hailed as an island of relative stability in the swirling violence of the illegal drug trade in the Western hemisphere.  The situation there contrasted with the level of chaos and violence in neighboring countries such as Peru and Colombia, as well as the central arena of drug trafficking in Mexico and Central America.  American retirees found the country to be an especially appealing destination.

That presumption of stability was always somewhat exaggerated.  In Ecuador violent criminal gangs “have existed for decades,” security analyst David Saucedo notes, “but with the arrival of the Mexican cartels, such as the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), they made local alliances, and in this way, they became their operating arms for drug trafficking.”

The notion of today’s Ecuador as one of Latin America’s safer countries is a tenacious episode of nostalgia.  The murder rate in that country has soared from 6.9 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants in 2019 to 26.7 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants in 2022, and preliminary statistics indicate that the upward trend is continuing.  When voters elected Daniel Noboa president in October 2023, he made it clear that he would take an especially hard line against the drug cartels.  Drug policy experts now talk about Ecuador with similar degrees of concern that they had reserved for Mexico and other central players in the drug trade.

Even members of the political elite in Ecuador are increasingly vulnerable to the violence.  One prominent candidate in the October 2023 presidential election was assassinated just eleven days before the balloting.  Shortly thereafter, Ecuador’s youngest mayor, Brigette Garcia, was kidnapped and murdered in the coastal town of San Vicente.  Following the January 2024 unrest, new President Daniel Noboa declared an “internal armed conflict” and ordered national security forces to neutralize more than 20 armed groups classified as “terrorists.”

Despite such spectacular policy failures, drug warriors in the United States and other countries cling to hard-line strategies and refuse to face an inconvenient economic truth.  Governments are not able to dictate whether people use mind-altering substances.  Such vices have been part of human culture throughout history.  Governments can determine only whether reputable businesses or violent criminal gangs are the suppliers.  A prohibition strategy guarantees that it will be the latter – with all the accompanying violence and corruption.  The ongoing bloody struggles among rival cartels to control the lucrative trafficking routes to the United States merely confirm that historical pattern.

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Cartel Narco Tank With Cope Cage Anti-Drone Armor Emerges

AMexican drug cartel recently employed an improvised armored truck, also commonly referred to as a “Narco Tank,” with what looks to be a metal screen over the front section of the vehicle. This is reminiscent of the so-called “cope cages” that have become a fixture on tanks and other armored vehicles on both sides of the conflict in Ukraine and that have also now emerged on Israeli tanks. These screens are primarily intended to provide extra protection against drones, something that cartels in Mexico are now regularly employing against government security forces and each other.

The Mexican vehicle in question was a modified Dodge Ram truck with a four-door cab that also had a box-like improvised armored structure at the rear with ports through which individuals inside could fire small arms. It was one of three Narco Tanks that took part in an ambush of Mexican military forces in the country’s state of Jalisco just over a week ago. The Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), or Jalisco New Generation Cartel, carried out the attack on November 19, which also reportedly involved the rapid establishment of roadblocks to hamper the arrival of government reinforcements.

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Sheriff’s deputy caught with fentanyl was middleman for Mexican cartel, investigators say

Prosecutors filed two felony charges Monday against a Riverside County sheriff’s deputy accused of carrying more than 100 pounds of fentanyl in his vehicle. They also alleged for the first time that he had likely ties to a Mexican drug cartel.

Jorge Oceguera-Rocha, 25, was charged with one felony count each of possessing fentanyl for sale and transporting narcotics. He’s also accused of being armed with a loaded firearm during a drug offense, which could get him a longer sentence if convicted.

Oceguera-Rocha, who resigned after being pulled over and arrested Sept. 17, appeared in court in Banning on Monday and pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department filed a request to increase his bail to $5 million soon after his arrest, saying he’s a flight risk because of the possible connection to a Mexican drug organization. The Riverside County District Attorney’s Office said Monday that a judge granted that request at the time, but added that it will be reviewed during a court hearing at a future date.

Last week the sheriff’s department said in a news release that it had been investigating a drug ring when it identified one of its own employees, Oceguera-Rocha, as playing a central role in transporting narcotics in the county.

It then opened an investigation into him in September, according to an affidavit filed in court Monday along with the prior bail request. The documents include details about the investigation that had not previously been made public.

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