Tag: cartels

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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Mexican cartels are fifth-largest employers in the country, study finds

Organised crime groups in Mexico have about 175,000 members – making them the fifth-biggest employer in the country, according to new research published in the journal Science.

Using a decade of data on homicides, missing persons and incarcerations, as well as information about interactions between rival factions, the paper published on Thursday mathematically modeled overall cartel membership, and how levels of violence would respond to a range of policies.

The authors argue that the best way to reduce the bloodshed would be to cut cartel recruitment – whereas locking up more members would actually increase the murder rate.

“More than 1.7 million people in Latin America are incarcerated, and adding more people to saturated jails will not solve the insecurity problem,” wrote the authors.

The number of homicides in Mexico more than tripled between 2007 and 2021 – when the government reported 34,000 victims, or nearly 27 victims for every 100,000 inhabitants – making it one of the deadliest countries in Latin America.

At a national level, two organised crime groups – the Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco New Generation cartel – battle for domination. But analysts have identified 198 armed groups in Mexico, many of which are subcontractors to bigger players but also undertake local turf disputes.

The paper, titled Reducing cartel recruitment is the only way to lower violence in Mexico, was cautiously welcomed by security analysts in the field. “It is a first of its kind,” said Victoria Dittmar, a researcher for the Insight Crime thinktank, who did not take part in the study. “I haven’t seen any other estimates of how many people we believe are somehow related to criminal groups.”

But Dittmar said the figure would depend on the definition of a cartel and what constitutes membership, since working for a crime faction is very different to being formally employed.

“It can be very difficult to say who is a member of a criminal organisation, and who isn’t,” said Dittmar. “What about a politician that receives money? Or someone who cooperates with the group just once?”

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How Cartels Infiltrate The Border Patrol

Goat Canyon is a dry valley of crystalline rocks in the east of San Diego county named after the desert bighorns that roam. It was the perfect spot, Border Patrol agent Noe Lopez told his contact, to move dope through. “Honestly, the thing is that there aren’t—there aren’t any cameras,” Lopez said. “Nothing, nothing, nothing.”

Lopez went himself to the store and purchased three backpacks for the smugglers to use. On the first night, he collected one at the border fence with a glint of crystal meth inside. He stashed it in his Border Patrol truck, drove to base, switched it to his private car and then handed it to his connect in a parking lot in exchange for three grand in cash.

The second night he grabbed a bag with seven kilo bricks with the markings of cocaine. His source gave him $7,000 but said the smugglers were uneasy about going over the fence. Lopez said there was nothing to worry about. “If I’m saying, ‘cross now,’ that means that I am taking the responsibility for them to cross.”

But Lopez never made it to the third drop. He was arrested and charged with attempted cocaine and meth trafficking. The source, he discovered, was a DEA informant who had him on tape and the drugs were fake. He plead guilty and got seventy months in prison in 2017.

It was no freak case. In 2023, a judge sentenced agent Oberlin Cortez Peña for waving cars of cocaine through a checkpoint north of McAllen, Texas. In 2014, customs agent Lorne “Hammer” Jones got seven years for letting trucks of dope through San Ysidro. And that’s the tip of the iceberg.

Since the Department of Homeland Security was created in 2002, incorporating Customs and Border Protection, well over a hundred agents and officers have been convicted of trafficking dope or running undocumented migrants. This usually means working with cartels and their affiliates who control drug and human smuggling over the border.

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Bipartisan Senators Say Marijuana Legalization Disrupts Cartels In Letter Challenging Proposed Menthol Cigarette Ban

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators are acknowledging that state-level marijuana legalization has disrupted the operations of international drug cartels as they raise concerns with the State Department over plans to ban menthol cigarettes and cap nicotine content.

In a letter sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week, Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA), Bob Casey (D-PA), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Bill Hagerty (R-TN) said that prohibitionist policies for certain tobacco products would benefit the illicit market, which is continually evolving in response to new regulatory policies.

The lawmakers used cannabis as an example of how cartel operations shift depending on whether certain substances are prohibited or regulated. Legalization at the state level, they argued, has reduced demand for illicit marijuana.

“As it has become easier to sell marijuana products in the U.S., Mexican TCOs [transnational criminal organizations] have prioritized trafficking fentanyl and other synthetic drugs that are cheaper to manufacture, easier to transport, and generate more profit,” the senators—none of whom are vocal cannabis legalization advocates—said.

Republican senators, including Cassidy, Rubio and Hagerty, made the same point in a letter to the head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last month, imploring the agency to reconsider its plans to ban menthol cigarettes and cap nicotine content.

“TCOs have expanded their operations to include the production and distribution of cigarettes,” the bipartisan group wrote in the new letter to Blinken. “TCOs more generally have taken advantage of drug smuggling routes to import illegal cigarettes into the U.S., contributing to the significant use of smuggled cigarettes.”

The senators included a list of questions for the secretary of state about how the department is dealing with issues related to illicit tobacco trafficking. They asked about the status of interagency work to combat the problem, how efforts to limit tobacco use could empower traffickers and engagement with international partners to address the problem, for example.

“It is clear that threat actors—from transnational organized crime entities to terrorist organizations—are employing increasingly creative tools to subvert controls imposed by the U.S. and our international partners,” they said. “We appreciate the work that the men and women of the Department of State do in countering these efforts, and urge continued action to address these threats.”

The senators’ point about shifting trends in marijuana trafficking as states legalize is bolstered by a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report that was released last year, showing how demand for illicit cannabis from Mexico has continued to drop as more states open regulated domestic markets.

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Republican Senators Admit Marijuana Legalization Disrupts Cartels As They Urge FDA To Reconsider Menthol Cigarette Ban

A group of four Republican senators who do not support marijuana legalization has admitted that the policy change disrupts illegal sales by cartels. The acknowledgement comes in a letter urging the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to reconsider plans to ban menthol cigarettes and set nicotine content limits, arguing that the prohibition and strict regulations could benefit illicit trafficking operations.

Writing to FDA Commissioner Robert Califf on Monday, Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Ted Budd (R-NC) and Bill Hagerty (R-TN) unwittingly made the case for the legalization and regulation of controlled substances.

The main point of the letter is to express concern FDA’s proposed menthol cigarette ban, which the senators said could “empower” transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) to “exploit black market opportunities that such policies could create.”

The senators aren’t in favor of cannabis legalization, but they did also—apparently inadvertently—make the case for that reform.

“While the primary threat from Mexican TCOs come from trafficking in illicit drugs, these organizations have diversified their activities in response to changing conditions,” they said. “As it has become easier to sell marijuana products in the U.S., Mexican TCOs have prioritized trafficking fentanyl and other synthetic drugs that are cheaper to manufacture, easier to transport, and generate more profit.”

In other words, the GOP senators are acknowledging that as Americans in more states have the opportunity to buy legal cannabis from licensed retailers, the market share for unregulated marijuana trafficked by cartels is shrinking—and as a result they are having to scramble to sell other substances to make up their losses.

That’s also the conclusion of a federal law enforcement agencies, as well as the Congressional Research Service (CRS), which released a report on the trafficking trend last year.

The head of the labor union that represents U.S. Border Patrol agents also acknowledged in 2020 that states that legalize marijuana are disrupting cartel activity.

In light of what’s been observed with marijuana, the senators are cautioning against opening up a new illicit market for menthol cigarettes by enacting a federal ban, tacitly acknowledging the failures and consequences of prohibition.

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Katie Hobbs accused of receiving Sinaloa cartel bribes

A California-based law firm has accused Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, Runbeck Election Services, and a slew of other election officials, mayors, judges, city councilman, and county supervisors in the state of receiving bribes from the Sinaloa cartel.

During a Thursday hearing before the Senate Elections and Municipal Oversight & Elections Joint Committee, the principal investigator for Harris/Thaler Law Corporation, Jacqueline Breger, presented their shocking findings, detailing how a money-laundering investigation in the midwest revealed alleged corruption in Arizona.

“In 2006, the U.S. Attorney’s Offices in Illinois, Indiana and Iowa investigated the laundering of drug cartel monies through a complex series of single-family home purchases in those states,” Breger told the committee. “By 2009, numerous real estate agents, escrow companies and title insurers had been indicted, charged and convicted of racketeering. In 2014, our office was asked to review the case files and to determine whether monies from the sales of the properties had filtered to property purchases in Arizona, specifically in Maricopa and Pima County.”

The Sinaloa cartel is notorious for being led by the infamous “El Chapo,” the Mexican drug lord whose real name is Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, who was widely considered to have been one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the world before his capture in 2016.

According to the investigator, it was concluded that several real estate agents in Iowa “had set up a laundering system in Arizona and thereafter had transferred the proceeds of sales to Panamanian Corporations.”

“In 2018, Mr. Thaler discovered, incidental to another matter, a series of trust deeds evidencing that cash laundering through single family residences in Arizona was pervasive and ongoing,” Breger continued. “With that, a new investigation began with the focus being on money laundering and related racketeering activities in Maricopa County and several other Arizona counties. The Harris/Thaler office currently represents several parties directly damaged by the racketeering activities.”

In the nearly 100-page report, Breger dug into the entire investigation, naming Dawna Rae Chavez, a resident of Mesa, Arizona, and her daughter, Brittany Rae Chavez, as “principal preparers of the documents necessary to effect the racketeering enterprises.”

“To date, more than 10,000 falsified documents have been recorded with the Maricopa County Recorder. We estimate that more than 35,000 warranty deeds/trust deeds evidencing fraudulent transactions exist in the database. 11. The number of falsified notarizations exceeds 15,000.  12. Dawna and Brittany’s participation in racketeering activities also includes facilitation of bribes to public officials, tax evasion, payroll theft, bankruptcy fraud, insurance fraud, and extortion,” Breger said. 

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