Tag: cartels

CBP Memo Reveals Cartel Members Are Deploying Weaponized Drones for Potential Use Against CBP Officers

Cartels at the southern border are reportedly escalating violent threats against U.S. border and law enforcement officers, with social media posts encouraging violence and the authorization of weaponized drones for use against border officers.  

Copies of recent memos sent to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers detail the threats on social media, NewsNation reports.

Additionally, officers are warned that the cartels are expected to use drones armed with explosives.

This news comes as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently said, “All options are on the table,” when he was asked if the U.S. will use military force against the cartels in Mexico.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, President Trump also sent a message to “all who would attack Americans” on Saturday, stating, “WE WILL FIND YOU, AND WE WILL KILL YOU!” after announcing precision air strikes against ISIS in Somalia.

“This action further degrades ISIS’s ability to plot and conduct terrorist attacks threatening U.S. citizens, our partners, and innocent civilians and sends a clear signal that the United States always stands ready to find and eliminate terrorists who threaten the United States and our allies, even as we conduct robust border-protection and many other operations under President Trump’s leadership,” Hegseth said following the execution of the airstrikes indicating strikes on the cartels could be considered.

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New York Times Complains Labeling Mexican Cartels Terrorist Organizations Will ‘Hurt The U.S. Economy’

As Donald Trump gets to work on his agenda, left-wing media organizations like The New York Times are already making fools of themselves.

On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order designating Mexican drug cartels as foreign terror organizations.

His order stated:

The Cartels have engaged in a campaign of violence and terror throughout the Western Hemisphere that has not only destabilized countries with significant importance for our national interests but also flooded the United States with deadly drugs, violent criminals, and vicious gangs.

The Cartels functionally control, through a campaign of assassination, terror, rape, and brute force nearly all illegal traffic across the southern border of the United States.

In certain portions of Mexico, they function as quasi-governmental entities, controlling nearly all aspects of society.

The Cartels’ activities threaten the safety of the American people, the security of the United States, and the stability of the international order in the Western Hemisphere.

Their activities, proximity to, and incursions into the physical territory of the United States pose an unacceptable national security risk to the United States.

However, The New York Times is now arguing that this move will damage the U.S. economy because of the risk of businesses in both countries violating sanctions against terrorist groups.

Their article states.

The foreign terrorist designation could lead to severe penalties — including substantial fines, asset seizures and criminal charges — on companies and individuals found to be paying ransom or extortion payments.

U.S. companies could also be ensnared by standard payments made to Mexican companies that a cartel controls without the American companies’ knowledge.

As a result, companies in the risk-averse American financial sector may simply refuse to wire money to a Mexican factory, for example, to facilitate cross-border production and trade, or to wire money between personal accounts.

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If money transfer companies like Western Union also stop transactions to Mexico over worries about properly vetting Mexican clients, it could affect the remittances the country relies on.

That would be devastating for the Mexican economy, which received $63.3 billion in remittances in 2023, nearly 5 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

The Mexican peso has suffered as a result of the designation, as well as the looming threat of tariffs and trade barriers.

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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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