Alamo Texas 956 lbs of Pot found in Drug House

Authorities found 956 pounds of marijuana at an Alamo home on Tuesday.
Hidalgo County District Attorney’s HIDTA Task Force and DEA agents found the drugs at a home on the 300 block of Jackie St.
The two agencies conducted a joint investigation and executed a search and seizure warrant at the home.
Fifty-six bundles were found inside the home.
Two men were arrested and charged with possession of marijuana.
They are expected to go before a judge on Wednesday afternoon.
The case is still under investigation.

Mexican Workers, the People who sell their wares

The ghetto families on 10p an hour making party gifts for Kate's mum's £30million business empire

• The Middleton's business Party Pieces is among companies who sell pinatas made by workers who are paid as little as 10p an hour
• The business said they would urgently investigate the conditions
• Monica Villegas works 10 hours a day, seven days a week and gets her daughter, 5, and son, 18 to help her

Darkness has descended on the murderous Mexican border city of Tijuana, and the drug cartels and people traffickers are furtively plying their trade.
And in a hillside ghetto, a five-year-old girl toils with her mother in another, more subtly exploitative industry.
Stumbling through the pot-holed front yard of their wooden hovel in Tijuana, I find Monica Villegas and her daughter Stephanie in a dimly-lit kitchen crammed with all manner of craft materials: boxes of tinsel and coloured tissue paper, star-shaped cartons, saucepans filled with white sticky paste.

Ghetto families: Stephanie Villegas, aged five, holds a pinata bought on the Middleton's Party Pieces website. She helps her mother Monica who must work ten hours a day, seven days a week to meet her quota

 

Stephanie works in a dimly-lit kitchen crammed with all manner of craft materials: boxes of tinsel and coloured tissue paper, star-shaped cartons, saucepans filled with white sticky paste

Mother and daughter are making pinatas — those colourful cardboard figures filled with sweets which cascade out when their cardboard casing is broken with a stick. They have become a popular source of amusement at middle-class birthday parties, weddings and other celebratory events in Britain.
Among the companies that sell them in sizeable quantities is Party Pieces, the Berkshire-based business run by the Duchess of Cambridge’s family, which offers more than 40 types on its website, in all manner of designs, from lions and castles to Minnie Mouse.
Since Carole and Michael Middleton have never been slow to cash in on their royal connection (last year they launched a range of regally-themed trinkets to coincide with the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee), they now include giant pinatas in party packs called Little Prince and Little Princess: blue for a boy, pink for a girl.

Monica Villegas with her daughter Stephanie Villegas, holding a pinata bought on the Party Pieces website

Monica Villegas with her daughter Stephanie Villegas and son Jonathan, holding a pinata star, which is the design they're making for Amscan at the moment, pictured in front of their tiny home

General views of the very poor neighbourhoods in Tijuana where the pinata production takes place

Can it be pure coincidence that their daughter is expecting her own little prince or princess?

 

Such matters are of small concern to 38-year-old Monica Villegas and her daughter. Each week, she must make a set number of pinatas, which varies according to how big they are and how intricate the design.
They are among the many thousands shipped to Britain via a chain of distributors and sold to retailers including Party Pieces.
To meet her target, Monica invariably works ten hours a day, seven days a week — and even then she needs the help of her 18-year-old son, Jonathan, and little Stephanie, who assists her after nursery school by sticking on the bar-codes and labels.
While the Middletons sell their pinatas for £12.99 each, Monica sometimes earns as little as 10p an hour.

Buy in sizeable quantities: Carole and Michael Middleton run Party Pieces, which sells their pinatas for £12.99 each. Monica sometimes earns as little as 10p an hour

Omar, 4, stands by his mother Maria Villegas as she makes pinatas

Maria Villegas and son Omar, 4, on the roof of their home overlooking the slums of Tijuana

Like many Mexicans, this careworn mother excitedly watched the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on her grainy TV, never for a moment imagining that the bride’s parents run a lucrative business selling the very product made by her family and hundreds more in the slums of Tijuana.
Yet, as I have discovered during a lengthy investigation, the Middletons — whose company is estimated to be worth more than £30 million — are, albeit inadvertently, profiting from the labours of poor, overseas workers such as these.
‘We are nothing more than slaves!’ Monica exclaimed when she learned how much Party Pieces charges for the pinatas she churns out from her shambolic kitchen.
‘It is so unfair! So much work, so little money!’
When I show her the pink Little Princess pinata, which I purchased online from Party Pieces and have brought with me from London, she sighs, recalling how she earned just 95p for each one, even though the fiddly design took hours to complete.
Why, then, did she make pinatas?
‘I need any money I can earn,’ she tells me. ‘My husband is a building labourer and there isn’t much work. Anyway, if I complain they will just find someone else.’ 
Before marrying Prince William, Kate Middleton was employed as a part-time buyer for Party Pieces — a job that in some companies entails travelling to meet suppliers and checking their factories.
However, she and her parents surely cannot have been aware of the pinata makers’ abysmal pay and conditions; otherwise they would have been moved to take action.
Indeed, when I told the company of the poignant scenes I had witnessed, they promised an urgent inquiry.
‘As a responsible retailer, we take the allegations made by the Daily Mail very seriously, and we will work with our suppliers to carry out investigations into these claims,’ said a spokesman.

Making millions: Kate with mother Carole Middleton, whose company is estimated to be worth more than £30 million and, albeit inadvertently, is profiting from the labours of poor, overseas workers

The story behind Party Pieces has attracted considerable interest since Kate and William’s romance began, not least because the company is registered as a private partnership, meaning it is not required to file its accounts at Companies House, where they would be open to public scrutiny.
Party Pieces was founded in 1981 by Carole Middleton, then aged 26, who was unable to continue working as a British Airways stewardess because she was heavily pregnant with Kate.
She built up the firm with her husband, Michael, and financial analysts have been surprised by its phenomenal success.
Party Pieces now employs more than 30 people (including daughter Pippa, who edits its online magazine The Party Times) and has made the family fabulously wealthy.
Their three children were educated at Marlborough College, where fees are £27,000 a year. Before Kate was married, her parents bought her a £780,000 flat in Chelsea; and their regular holiday haunt is the paradise island of Mustique, from which they and Prince William have just returned.
In many ways, their amazing ascent of the social ladder is to be admired — the reward for Carole Middleton’s enterprise and endeavour.

'It is unfair! So much work, so little money!'

Yet as with so many companies competing in today’s global market, they must trade with goods manufactured in countries where working conditions fall well below acceptable Western standards.
And with its cheap trinkets, plastic and paper tableware, and assorted novelties, the party supplies industry relies heavily on factories in poorer parts of Asia and the Americas.
Among the dozens of items I purchased from Party Pieces, the majority were supplied by the giant American party goods company Amscan, and many were made cheaply in China.

They included ‘fun wigs’, plastic serving bowls and cutlery, a baby’s high-chair decorating kit, paper lanterns, ‘Woolly Zoo’ animals, paper flags, and — ironically — a Mexican fancy dress outfit.

Despite extensive inquiries, it has proved impossible to trace the precise factories where these items were produced, but according to one Chinese labour-watch organisation, the working environments — and certainly the rates of pay — will inevitably compare unfavourably with those in Britain.

In Mexico, as I saw this week, they are quite simply shocking.

Amscan’s labels carry a folksy message playing on the pinata’s 400-year history in Mexico, and evoking images of sombrero-clad villagers perpetuating the ‘authentic’ handicraft of their ‘artisan’ forebears.

The truth is very different. The joyless workers I met cared little for tradition, and were clearly in thrall to the burly, long-haired Mexican who runs the entire operation, Javier Perez Quintero, locally known as the ‘Pinata King’.

Quintero told me he is an Amscan executive and uses the company’s email address — but the hundreds of home-based craftsmen and women are supplied with materials by a Tijuana firm he runs, called Baja Pacific Paper. It is not clear whether this is an Amscan subsidiary or an independent outfit.

Cashing in: The Middletons have never been slow to cash in on their royal connection - last year they launched a range of regally-themed trinkets to coincide with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee including a Union Jack headband (left) and party cups (right)

At all events, Quintero, who boasts of controlling ‘virtually all’ the pinata industry in Tijuana (and threatened that ‘things could get tricky’ for me when he learned I was inquiring into his business) is a tough task-master.
As the pinata makers are freelance, they are not subject to Mexico’s minimum wage laws, which would require them to be paid at least 49p an hour. Worse, their meagre earnings are further diminished because he deducts a fee — amounting to about £10 a week — for their craft materials.
The pinatas supplied to Party Pieces (and its British competitors, including supermarkets such as Tesco) arrive via the American company’s depot in Milton Keynes.
When I asked Quintero whether he knew they were sold by members of the extended British Royal Family, he shrugged, saying: ‘I have many important clients around the world.’
He also claimed to have pioneered an ingenious production system, which he said he could not let me see for fear it would be copied, though in truth it seems that he simply profits from the toil of his army of ghetto workers.
Amscan vice-president Joseph Zepf told us that the company ‘endeavours to comply with all laws and regulations, especially those relating to wage requirements and working conditions, and categorically denies any inference or allegation to the contrary’.
In its annual report in 2011, the company acknowledged that many of its products were made outside America, ‘which may increase the risk that the labour, manufacturing, safety and other practices followed by the manufacturers of these products may differ from those generally accepted in the U.S.’.
While the report expressed fears that public exposure of these standards could ‘damage our brand image’ and cause products to lose their licence or be boycotted by consumers, it did not state how the company proposed to address these concerns.
The only step referred to in its report is getting manufacturers to confirm that accepted labour practices are adhered to.
Monica Villegas would dearly like to know. So, too, would her next-door neighbour Maria Villegas (no relation), who makes pinatas so she can feed her children, aged four and one.
She lives with eight family members, and though they all help her, the daily grind is never-ending. Each week, she explains, her local company representative drops off a batch of cardboard shapes and a template for the required design.
When I called, it was a 3ft-high rocket decorated with red and blue stars — just the sort of thing that would go down a storm at a smart children’s birthday party in the Home Counties.

Will investigate: Party Pieces, which employs more than 30 people (including Carole Middleton's daughter Pippa, who edits its online magazine The Party Times), promised an urgent inquiry when told of the working conditions

Maria and her family then smooth the card and stick it with glue made from flour paste to make a hollow carton, before covering it with coloured tissue paper and tinsel, cut to fit the pattern.
It might sound easy enough, but watching them work, one sees how much patience and skill it takes. It is physically arduous, too.
‘Look, I no longer have any identity!’ says Maria’s father, Julio Avarez, 67, holding up his hands to show how his fingerprints have been worn away by years of pressing and folding thick cardboard. His daughter complains that the work is ‘exhausting and repetitive’, and fetches an invoice slip to show how little they earn.
Last week, because pinata rockets are so big and difficult to make, she and her relatives worked for 12 hours every day but completed just ten of them — earning a gross income of £25.80: or just £2.58 for each one.

'I hope the Princess of England may do something for us'

But they had to pay the company rep £4.86 for the cardboard and spent a similar amount on coloured paper — leaving them with £15.88 for their 84 hours’ toil.
That is just under 19p an hour between them. And to think the Middletons’ daughter has recently been staying in a villa which costs 100,000 times as much as that figure to rent for a single week.
Moreover, as Maria reminds me, because they are self-employed, Mr Quintero doesn’t have to pay them when they fall sick.
Still, she says sardonically, at least he provided prizes for the annual Christmas draw — just two turkeys, raffled among some 500 workers.
The families who helped me with this investigation are only too aware of the risks they face for crossing the ‘pinata king’, but they bravely went public because they desperately want to end this exploitation.
‘I hope you can speak to the Princess of England so she might do something for us,’ said Monica.
Her plea was poignantly naïve, yet perhaps — just perhaps — the Duchess of Cambridge and her family might hear it, and use their influence to improve the plight of the Mexican ‘slave’ workers who are helping to make them rich.

Is Joaquin El Chapo Guzmán Dead

GUATEMALA CITY –  Authorities in Guatemala are scouring a remote, rural area where local residents reported that  Mexico's most-wanted drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán, was among those killed in a gun battle between warring drug gangs.

However, as of late Thursday, law enforcement officials clarified that they had not yet found any bodies or even confirmed a shootout happened.

Interior Minister Mauricio Lopez Bonilla told The Associated Press that police and soldiers would begin searching on foot and in the air at first light Friday, looking for the scene of the reported gunfight in the Peten province, near Guatemala’s border with Mexico.

Authorities initially said Thursday night that they were investigating whether Guzmán was one of at least two men killed in the remote area, but hours later backtracked and said they had only received reports of a battle from local people.

Guatemalan government spokesman Francisco Cuevas first told Guatevision Television that two drug gangs had clashed in Peten, an area that has seen an increase in drug violence and that at least two men had died in the shootout.

"We have to wait for all the technical information in order to determine if, in fact, one of the dead is of Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzmán," Cuevas said.

Later, Cuevas told Mexico's Televisa network that authorities hadn't yet found a body or the scene where reports said a shootout took place.

He never said what led officials to think that one of the dead men might be Guzmán .

But Interior Department spokeswoman Carla Herrera said that one of the victims physically resembled the drug lord. She said officials had asked the Mexican government to send Guzmán's fingerprints to compare them to the man found inside a vehicle and to send them to investigators.

However, Herrera's boss, Lopez Bonilla, told the AP that it was residents of the town of San Francisco who had told officials of a gun battle and reported that one of the people killed looked like Guzmán .

"The fact is we don't have any of this information confirmed," Lopez Bonilla said.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said late Thursday that he had no information on the case.

"I don't have any information that can confirm that," he told reporters.

Peten province is an isolated area of jungle and ranches where 27 ranch workers were massacred in 2011 by the Zetas drug gang, a top rival for Guzmán's Sinaloa drug cartel.

Guzmán, who has been in hiding since escaping from a Mexican prison in a laundry cart in 2001, is one of the world's most dangerous and most wanted fugitives.

Just last week, authorities in Chicago named Guzmán the city's Public Enemy No. 1 — a label first given to gangster Al Capone and one that hasn't been used since Prohibition.

Quinoa health food Hurting Bolivians

The growing global demand for quinoa by health food enthusiasts isn't just raising prices for the Andean super grain quinoa by health food enthusiasts grain" and living standards among Bolivian farmers. Quinoa fever is running up against physical limits.

The scramble to grow more is prompting Bolivian farmers to abandon traditional land management practices, endangering the fragile ecosystem of the arid highlands, agronomists say.

Quinoa currently fetches as much as $3,200 a ton, up nearly threefold from five years ago — a surge fed by "foodies" making quinoa a hot health-food product based on its high content of protein and amino acids. It's also gluten free. Though used like a grain, quinoa is actually an edible seed.

The United Nations has designated 2013 as the International Year of Quinoa, and Bolivian President Evo Morales planned to be at a special session of the world body in New York on Wednesday along with Peru's first lady, Nadine Heredia, to celebrate. Their countries are the world's two biggest producers.

Quinoa has been cultivated in the Andean highlands since at least 3000 B.C., growing natively from Chile north to Colombia. It grows best at high altitudes in climates with cool days and even cooler nights.

In December, Morales mounted a tractor and plowed furrows into the soil of his highlands hometown, Orinoca, to promote quinoa as sowing season got under way. Townspeople sacrificed a llama to ask Pachamama, or Mother Earth, for a good harvest.

But last week, Morales was out chastising farmers for having planted quinoa in pastures where llamas traditionally graze. Without the llamas' manure, little would grow in the arid highlands more than two miles (three kilometers) high where the most prized variety of quinoa originates.

"Quinoa goes hand in hand with the natural fertilizer that llamas produce and there must be a nutritional crossing between the two," said Rossmary Jaldin, an expert in the crop.

Bolivia's deputy minister of rural development, Victor Hugo Vasquez, said 30 percent of his country's 70,000 quinoa producers are now children of peasants who left the farm but have been drawn back by high quinoa prices.

He and the president of Bolivia's National Association of Quinoa Producers, Juan Crispin, say many of the growers don't follow traditional farming methods and are depleting soils because they don't rotate crops.

"We're not going to work with them," said Vasquez. "We are not going to help them."

Morales' government declared quinoa a strategic priority two years ago and has since disbursed $10 million in credits for increasing yields to cash in on the boom.

The country's quinoa crop expanded from 240 square miles (63,000 hectares) in 2009 to 400 square miles (104,000 hectares) last year, when it produced a total of 58,000 metric tons, according to the Rural Development Ministry. That is more than 40 times the production in 2000.

The United States imports 52 percent of Bolivian quinoa while 24 percent goes to Europe, where France and the Netherlands are big buyers.

Peru, meantime, raised its production to 43,640 metric tons last year from 29,640 tons in 2009 and exported $30 million worth, up 20 percent from the previous year.

Their gains have caught the attention of potential competitors. Farmers are beginning to plant quinoa in other countries, including Canada, Australia, China, India and Paraguay. A few thousand acres are harvested in a highland valley of the U.S. state of Colorado and also in Minnesota.

Bolivian farmers are complaining to their government that they need harvesting machinery since most of their quinoa is harvested by hand. Morales' administration has invited South Korean engineers to design the desired machines.

Duane Johnson, a former Colorado state agronomist who helped introduce quinoa to the United States three decades ago, said quinoa can be commercially planted and harvested just like grain.

"It's just the size of millet," said Johnson, who now lives in Bigfork, Montana. "I think the problem you get into in South America is getting enough land to justify a combine."

When he was growing quinoa in the late 1980s, the United States accounted for 37 percent of the world's quinoa crop, Johnson said. Today, it has about 2 percent, he said.

Environmental concerns about the expansion of quinoa in Bolivia aren't the only problems that experts see.

Near Lake Titicaca, in some of the highlands' most fertile soils, quinoa is now showing up where it hadn't before been planted, replacing potatoes, beans and oats in some fields.

Experts fear that trend could harm food stocks in this poor nation where one in five children suffers from chronic malnutrition.

And with quinoa now costing three times as much as rice in La Paz markets, it isn't eaten much by Bolivians. Its consumption averages a little more than a kilogram, (2.2 pounds) per year for each Bolivian.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization hopes to promote more use of quinoa at home by promoting the serving of quinoa in subsidized school breakfasts.

Max Factor heir wants prison sentence reduced

Andrew Luster, a convicted rapist and heir to the Max Factor fortune, is seeking to have his 124-year prison sentence reduced and his conviction set aside.

The Ventura County Star reports a hearing was held Tuesday where Luster's attorney Jay Leiderman claims his client was denied effective counsel as well as other legal and constitutional violations. Leiderman argued previous defense attorneys should have encouraged Luster to seriously consider a plea bargain from prosecutors.
However, prosecutors said there was never a formal plea bargain offered to Luster.
Luster, the great-grandson of cosmetics giant Max Factor, was on the lam when he was convicted in 2003 of drugging and raping three women. He was captured in Mexico that same year by the bounty hunter Duane "Dog" Chapman.

Santa Rosa Texas

Two people are behind bars after authorities found more than 15 pounds of a cocaine inside a home in downtown Santa Rosa.
It all happened at a home on the southeast corner of Highway 107 and South 1st Street around 4 p.m. Tuesday.
Santa Rosa police and Cameron County Sheriff's Department deputies were among the law enforcement officials at the scene.
Investigators told Action 4 News that they arrested two people after authorities found seven kilograms of cocaine inside the home.
Seven kilograms is about 15.4 pounds.

Mexico Border City Police Chief Missing

 

Tamaulipas state prosecutors say they have opened an investigation into the whereabouts of Roberto Balmori Garza, police chief of the city across the border from Laredo, Texas.
Tamaulipas prosecutors said in a statement Monday that state officials in Nuevo Laredo will be in charge of the investigation.
Local media reported that 2 of Balmori Garza's brothers were found shot dead Sunday inside the trunk of a car in the neighboring state of Nuevo Leon.
Tamaulipas prosecutors' spokesman Ruben Dario said Balmori Garza disappeared over the weekend. He said he couldn't give any other information on the case.

Cuban musicians on tour Castro defect Mex.

 

 

Reports coming out of Veracruz, Mexico, indicate that fifteen Cuban artists
 part of the Guaracheros de Regla musical troupe checked out of their hotel
 rooms but never showed up to catch their flight back to Cuba. It is suspected
 that the artists have defected and due to the close proximity to the American
 border, they will eventually make their way into the U.S.
The musical troupe is part of the dozens of artistic propaganda operations
 run by the Castro dictatorship that tour the world promoting the dictatorship
 in Cuba while at the same time earning the Castro regime hard currency.

promote border economic development

Message from Mayor Schmidt

At the present time there is a movement along the border to establish an alliance group to promote economic development. To date, there has been three meetings involving Mayors from Southeastern Arizona and Sonoran Mexico, as well as representatives from Cochise County, Tucson, the Mexican Consulate of Douglas, the American Consulate of Nogales, and the Deputy Secretary of Employment and Productivity for the Labor Department of Mexico.
The apparent founders of this movement have come from the Douglas area in Mayor Danny Ortega of Douglas and Mayor Irma Villalobos de Teran of Agua Prieta. Due to the economic downturn along the border, collaboration was formed to try and increase development along the Northeastern Sonoran Desert Border. The first meeting was held in Agua Prieta and the two following meetings were held in Douglas. The next meeting is tentatively scheduled to be held in Cannea Mexico.
The second meeting on December 7th was the first one that I attended with Councilman Villa and the topics were pretty wide spread involving everything from Agriculture, Mining, Geography, Industrial Parks, Railroads, and a new Port of Entry in Douglas. The majority of the discussions were carried out by the Mayors, and the Secretary of Employment from Mexico in which they stated their desire to increase relationships in the region along the Border.
Tourism became one of the major topics at this meeting, which sparked the interest of both Adriana Badal, the Mayor of Bisbee and myself. On the Mexican side their interest in tourism seems to be in the area of medical along the border and rural further south. Adriana Badal pretty much took over the meeting being that she is fluent in Spanish and her family is originally from Nacozari Mexico. There was a press conference afterward and I was asked what I thought of the meeting. I stated that I did not know what to expect before the meeting, but thought that the results were constructive, and would attend the next meeting, which was scheduled for January 25th in Bisbee.
On December 27th in Bisbee we had a meeting with Mayor Ortega of Douglas, Mayor Mueller of Sierra Vista, Mayor Badal of Bisbee, Councilman Villa of Tombstone, and myself. The purpose of this meeting was to try and narrow down the topics of discussion for the next meeting on January 25th. The topics discussed were characteristic of Bisbee, Tombstone, Sierra Vista, and Douglas that could be focused on to attract tourist and increase business and economic opportunities in the region. There were four points that came out of this meeting.
1. That Mayor Ortega would present a copy of the City of Douglas� marketing and border safety brochure and suggest that the border mayors� create a brochure similar for the use in other border communities.
2. Bisbee, Sierra Vista, Tombstone, and Douglas should consider promoting historical tourism in Tombstone and Bisbee, sporting events in Douglas, and retail amenities in Sierra Vista.
3. The border communities in the regional development project should promote resources on both sides of the border such as medical facilities in Mexico, and retail opportunities in Cochise County.
4. The group investigate �Vamos a Cochise County� gift card that would be available to employees in Sonora. Money could be added to the gift card through payroll deductions and be used in retail establishment in Cochise County.
The meeting was constructive, and the topic of tourism kept surfacing throughout the meeting. I decide that at the next meeting which the location was changed from Bisbee to Douglas I would invite Susan Wallace Director of the Tombstone Chamber of Commerce to participate.
At the meeting on January 25th in Douglas topics were narrowed down into area of importance for which to concentrate development. It was decided that a brand name should be created to include the Northern Mexico and Southeastern Arizona Region. There should be a Regional Brochure to inform tourist about the laws governing both sides of the border. A Web Site should be created for the new coalition for which we have yet to decide on a name of. Create a plan for marketing the region.
The major areas of action would be in Tourism, Employment, Infrastructure, and Border Security. It was decided that tourism is best handled through marketing. I believe that Susan Wallace came away with some very good ideas in this area. Employment is covered by the increase of business in the region. Infrastructure is basically making the region easier to access from both sides of the borders. Border Security is always an issue. It was noted that the region is the safest along the U.S. and Mexico border.
The next meeting will be held March 8th in Cannea Mexico and I believe it will be a very productive meeting since the areas of action has been narrowed to just a few topics. The alliance has a lot of potential and I hope it keeps moving forward.

One Drug Tunnel Every Month and a Half

The U.S. federal government has dismantled 26 drug-smuggling tunnels in this town on the border with Mexico over the past three years, the most recent of which was discovered this week.
Federal authorities on Wednesday found a cross-border tunnel that had just been completed on the Arizona side, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a press release.
Officers with a multi-agency tunnel task force were conducting surveillance in Nogales around noon when they observed a van that was parked approximately 200 yards from a pedestrian port of entry.
After noticing suspicious activity, they approached the vehicle and found that it was loaded with more than a score of marijuana bundles.
Two men near the van tried to escape on foot but were apprehended near the tunnel, which begins in the front yard of a home in Nogales, Mexico, runs under the international boundary and exits on an embankment at the south end of Nelson Ave. in Nogales, Arizona.
The passageway is approximately 68 feet long and has an average width of two feet.
A combined total of more than 50 bundles of marijuana weighing 1,210 pounds were found inside the van and the tunnel.
Investigators suspect the passageway was completed on the same day it was discovered. Authorities had dismantled another cross-border, drug-smuggling tunnel in the same location in March 2012.

How does U.S. know 11 million Illegal immigrants

Politicians seem to give the same ballpark estimate of how many people are living in the U.S. illegally, 11 million, but how exactly do they get to this number in the first place?

It's not like people who are living in the U.S. illegally are jumping up and down to volunteer that kind of information.

Bring on the statisticians!

Number-crunchers dive deep into census data and other government surveys, make a bunch of educated assumptions and adjustments for people who may be left out, mix in some population information from Mexico and elsewhere and tend to arrive at similar figures.

The Homeland Security Department, for example, estimates there were 11.5 million unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. in January 2011. The Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research organization, estimates there were 11.1 million living in the U.S. in March 2011. Other estimates are in the same neighborhood.

The demographers rely on what's called the "residual" method to tease out the data.

That is, they take estimates of the legal foreign-born population and subtract that number from the total foreign-born population. The remainder – or residual – represents those who are living in the country without legal permission.

It's a fairly simple concept, but there are lots of complex assumptions that go into the calculations: How much to adjust for an undercount of foreign-born residents in the census that's done once every 10 years? How many foreign-born residents are migrating out of the U.S.? How many die in the U.S.? And so on.

"All of these things tweak the numbers on the margins, but they don't change the story very much," says Randy Capps, a senior policy analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. "There's a pretty good consensus, and I think the numbers are generally accepted on all sides of the debate."

Pew demographer Jeffrey Passel, who's been calculating illegal immigration estimates for decades, says the underlying method isn't all that complicated, but there's a lot of number-crunching to be done to reach a solid estimate.

"I wouldn't argue that it's good to the last hundred thousand, but I think most people think it's within a half a million," says Passel.

He tries to clearly lay out how he gets his numbers to a point.

"My colleagues give me a hard time," he says, "because when I write a report the methodology section is longer than the report."

Agent Smuggler uses CBP Vehicle

A U.S. Border Patrol agent accused of using an official vehicle from the enforcement agency to smuggle drugs while on duty in southwest Arizona is scheduled to appear in court on drug charges.

Aaron Anaya was on patrol Sunday evening when he stopped along the international border, then loaded up several bundles of marijuana that had been dropped over the fence from Mexico, according to the complaint filed this week in federal court in Arizona.

Agents assigned to the Southwest Border Corruption Task Force had been conducting aerial surveillance in the area between Yuma and Wellton, about 185 miles southwest of Phoenix, when they spotted Anaya stop along the fence and retrieve the bundles, the complaint states. It does not say whether Anaya was the target of the initial surveillance or merely observed during the overall operation.

Authorities say the task force continued to track Anaya for several hours as he appeared to return to normal patrol duties.

The complaint says the agent was later arrested with nearly 147 pounds of marijuana found in three black duffel bags in his Border Patrol vehicle.

He is charged with possession with intent to distribute marijuana and carrying a firearm — his service weapons — while committing the crime.

Asked if he was willing to speak to investigators, Anaya responded with an expletive, then said, "You guys got me on video," before asking for an attorney, according to the complaint.

Anaya's federal public defender didn't immediately return a telephone message Tuesday. His telephone number wasn't listed. Union representatives for the Border Patrol's Yuma sector didn't respond to emails.

The FBI, which was part of the task force, declined to discuss the case.

Yuma Sector Chief Border Patrol Agent Stephen S. Martin said the agency will fully cooperate with investigators.

"While I am sorely disappointed by the alleged conduct of one of our own, I appreciate the efforts by our law enforcement partners and our own agents to uncover those that violate their oath of office, and hold them accountable for their actions," Martin said in a statement Tuesday.

CBP Boats

Border Patrol on High Speed Boats Ask for Public Help in Stopping Smugglers

  

• Two CBP Marine unit Midnight Express boats patrol the waters off of U.S. shores. (CBP)
  

The "Midnight Express" can't do it all.
The aforementioned 39-foot-high speed boats are a favorite of the U.S. border patrol, which they contend is the fastest law enforcement boat in the world, with its 1,200 horsepower.
But for border patrol agents in Southern California, horsepower isn't enough and they are asking local residents to join the hunt for smugglers along the coast of Del Mar, which is just 36 miles north of Tijuana, Mexico.
"We are actively pursuing this and we are asking for the public's help because we can't be everywhere," agent Edward Cleary said during a Del Mar City Council meeting on Jan. 14, according to The Coast News.
The border patrol is asking residents to remain vigilant and report suspicious activity that could hint to drug smuggling or human smuggling, like "a whole bunch of people running through your neighborhood at 2 or 3 in the morning into a van."
He described well-planned out plots in which smugglers use panga boats, or fishing boats, to drop off their drugs or in some cases, people. Spotters drive around the coast looking for areas without police enforcement and using radios communicate with the pangas about where to land.
"Everyone jumps out and runs to a van or pickup truck," he said to the newspaper. "Normally, they are close to a major road with freeway access.
Cleary said maritime landings from smugglers are becoming more of a problem as land security increases. Unlike on land, the ocean is a wide expanse free of multi-million dollar fences, cameras, and drones making it difficult to stop smugglers.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, there were 228 watercrafts ready to be deployed in 2011 compare to the 26,875 vehicles used on land.
The CBP's Coastal Border Enforcement Team isn't alone in patrolling the waterways, they work in conjunction with local police, the U.S. Coast Guard, and now - local residents.
Last week, police seized $7 million worth of marijuana at a commercial truck cross point on the Arizona/Mexico border town of Nogales.

Adopted 16 year Daughter may of killed Mother

An American woman living in Mexico was murdered and her adopted daughter, now missing, may be implicated in her death. The woman's body was found at her home in the central Mexico city of San Miguel de Allende.

The U.S. Embassy in Mexico lists the woman as Joyous Heart, but gives no information on her hometown.

Asked about the case, the prosecutors' office in northern Guanajuato said Thursday that the woman was found stabbed to death in her home on Feb. 1. Her throat was slashed.

The prosecutors' statement did not name the victim, but gave a case file number that matched descriptions in local press reports of Heart's killing.

San Miguel de Allende is a colonial city located in Guanajuato state and is popular with American tourists and expats.

According to the newspaper Correo’s website, the woman, whose body was found last Friday night, had 40 stab wounds. They added that the adopted daughter of the woman is missing.

Neighbors said the two fought often.

The woman was the owner of the house and rented spaces to two other people.

The renters said there had been an altercation between Heart and her daughter. The daughter had not been seen since she left the property, which the renters said was odd.

The paper also says the daughter was not at the site and was adopted four years ago, when she was 14, and is diagnosed with severe schizophrenia.

Poncitlan Jalisco Mexico Chief of Police Killed

A police chief in the western Mexican state of Jalisco was killed in an attack by suspected members of an organized crime gang, officials said.
According to police spokespersons, the police chief of the town of Poncitlan, Bernardo Garcia, was killed Friday by a group of assailants who arrived on the scene in a van.
The gunmen got out of the vehicle and attacked the police chief outside his home in Zapopan, a city that is part of the Guadalajara metropolitan area.
Garcia died at the scene, while a man accompanying him at the time was unharmed in the attack.
Forensic experts collected spent cartridges from AK-47 automatic rifles at the scene. No arrests have yet been made.
Poncitlan is located near a region where a turf battle has been raging between the Jalisco Nueva Generacion and Los Caballeros Templarios gangs, according to the Jalisco state Attorney General’s Office.
That struggle has left at least 30 dead in the first few weeks of 2013 and prompted Jalisco state police and Mexican army troops to begin patrolling roads in that area of the country.

Tornillo Guadalupe Port Entry over Rio Grande

US progress at Tornillo dwarfs Mexico's

Construction continues on the U.S. side of the Tornillo-Guadalupe Port of Entry in the Lower Valley. The bridge currently extends just over the Rio Grande and is expected to be completed by late June or early July. Concrete pouring is scheduled for this week. Construction on the Mexican side of the bridge is expected to begin in May. (Ruben R. Ramirez / El Paso tImes)

As county officials are pushing the federal government to make the completion of the Tornillo-Guadalupe Port of Entry a priority, Mexican officials say they hope to start their part of the project in May.
Eighteen months have passed since the construction of the $133 million, six-lane international bridge started in the Lower Valley.
Most of the bridge structure has gone up since then. Construction crews are ready to pour the concrete on it next week, while electricians and plumbers are working on the foundation of four tollbooths.
Almost 60 percent of the inspection facilities has been completed, according to the U.S. General Services Administration.
However, Mexico has not started its part yet.
Engineer Oscar Garcia Malo, vice president of public works for the national Department of Communications and Transport in Chihuahua, said construction of the Tornillo port of entry has been delayed due to funding allocation issues and changes in the federal administration.
Garcia Malo said because Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto succeeded Felipe Calderón in December, new directors have been appointed to the department. He expects to begin construction sometime in May or June.
Construction of the Mexican side of the port of entry and an access road will cost about $200 million pesos, or $15.7 million, Garcia Malo said. The cost of the bridge alone will be about $90 million pesos, or $7 million.
El Paso County Commissioner Vince Perez has been meeting with county lobbyists and U.S. federal officials in an effort to bring awareness of the importance of the finalization of the bridge.
Perez said while the county has met its deadlines, Mexico has not complied. The county is in charge of building the bridge and the tollbooths.
"My job as commissioner is to do all the work that I can to make our federal representatives aware that this is a priority," Perez said. "I'm confident Mexico will fulfill its obligation, I just hope everybody is on the same page in terms of conveying that message to Mexico."
The fact that the federal government has invested more than $92 million in the project gives people some reassurance that the project won't die, Perez added.
Rebecca Acuña, a spokeswoman for Congressman Pete Gallego, said he is working on scheduling a meeting with the Department of State to have a better idea of what is happening on the Mexican side.
"We continue to work with them through various bilateral forums on this important binational project," Tina Jaegerman, a spokeswoman for the General Services Administration, said in a written statement.
Jaegerman said the GSA plans on finishing the non-commercial inspection facility, which includes pedestrians, passenger vehicles, small vans and pickup trucks, in September and the commercial inspection facility in December.
Garcia Malo said he understands the concerns of U.S. officials and acknowledged Mexico is behind schedule. But he said Mexico will study all options to speed up the completion of the project.
"We are committed to finish the work," Garcia Malo said.
In addition to the bridge, Mexico plans to build a roadway network to facilitate traffic on its side.
Engineer Everardo Medina, vice secretary of communications and public works for the state of Chihuahua, said the idea is to build a road from the Chihuahua-Juárez highway to the new port of entry without having commercial traffic go through the city. It will be similar to the road that connects the Chihuahua-Juárez highway to the Santa Teresa Port of Entry.
The project will be built by the state with federal funds, he said.
"We know that we will resume the plans," Medina said. "This has to continue because as government of the state, we are very interested."
On the U.S. side, County Road and Bridge Director Ernie Carrizal said the county is working on a roadway to connect the port of entry to Interstate 10.
The first phase of the road, from the port of entry to Alameda Avenue, is almost completed, while an environmental study has to be done to apply for funds to complete the second phase of the roadway from Alameda to I-10.

Mexico City murder with ties to Chicago

The murder of Guillermo “Montes” Jiminez-Flores happened thousands of miles away in Mexico City, but prosecutors say it was driven by the much less well understood multi-million dollar racket in fake IDs, right here on Chicago’s Southwest side.

Even as Illinois officials prepare to issue the state’s first legitimate drivers’ licenses to illegal immigrants, thanks to a new law that may render the lucrative black market in fake IDs obsolete, jurors in federal court were this week walked through dramatic wiretapped conversations leading up to Montes’ murder.

“Let’s do it once and for all,” alleged hit-man Gerardo Salazar-Rodriguez told Julio Leija-Sanchez as he hid outside the victim’s home armed with a 9mm handgun, watching his wife and kids on the night of March 31, 2007.

“Well yeah, once and for all,” Leija-Sanchez replied on his cell phone in Chicago. “Why the **** just you’re there messing around; and honestly, you guys have taken too long, man.”

5 Mexico newspaper employees kidnapped, released

 

Five non-editorial employees of a newspaper in northern Mexico were kidnapped but released within a few hours, the company said in an editorial posted on its website Friday. It complained there is a lack of security for news workers in the violence-plagued region around the city of Torreon.

The newspaper Siglo de Torreon, in the state of Coahuila, said abductors took two people who operated its online services, two employees of the advertising department and one administrative employee. It said the workers were released early Friday, but that for security reasons, it would not give any further details on the incident.

Mexican newspapers and journalists have been subject to frequent attacks in areas where drug cartels are battling for control of key regions and seek to dictate news coverage. Torreon is a city where authorities say increasing violence is a product of a turf war between the Zetas and Sinaloa cartels.

An official at the Coahuila state prosecutor's office, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said authorities were investigating the kidnapping of Siglo de Torreon's workers but had no suspects. He said the five employees apparently were taken from different locations.

Siglo de Torreon's offices have been attacked by gunmen twice since 2009. No one was hurt in either incident, but the newspaper decided after the first shooting to stop identifying drug gangs in their stories and to end investigative journalism.

A press freedom group said the abduction of non-journalists was a new and worrisome trend and drug cartels seemed to be behind it.

Juan Carlos Romero, officer for freedom of expression in Mexico's chapter of the London-based Article 19 group, said it had received reports from news companies that drug-trafficking groups are looking to spread their threat by targeting all media employees. He said the news companies had chosen not to make the threats public.

"Before, you would kidnap a reporter of the crime beat, (or) an editor, and you would tell them what to publish," Romero said. "Nowadays, it's not necessary to take reporters. You target employees outside the editorial section, like in this case, and you can still dictate what to write to a news organization."

Siglo de Torreon acknowledged in its editorial that it was frightening to learn that not only journalists are in danger now, but anyone working for a media company.

"What happened Thursday night is alarming because it exposes a new threat for the media, because those kidnapped were not editorial employees," the newspaper said.

Mexico's vigilantes 11 suspects detained

 

         

           

   

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 Mexican farmers who took up arms against drug-gang violence and other crime in the mountains of southern Mexico have turned over to authorities 11 of 53 people that the vigilantes have put in improvised jails over the last month as suspected criminals.

Bruno Placido, leader of the self-styled "self-defense" movement, described the 11 as the detainees accused by local residents of the most serious crimes, such as murder, kidnapping and extortion. He said they were turned over to state and federal officials.

The authorities will presumably weigh bringing charges against the detainees, but given that the suspects were taken and held with no legal authority, in some cases for weeks, any prosecution might prove difficult.

The government of the Pacific coast state of Guerrero, where the vigilante movement sprang up after a series of kidnappings in early January, said that Placido's group had agreed to turn over "the first 20" detainees, implying that more would eventually follow.

But Placido said an assembly of residents in the township of Ayutla would determine the next step.

The movement has spread to about a dozen towns, with farmers wearing ski masks and bearing old hunting rifles and shotguns setting up roadside checkpoints to ask passing motorists for identification. The IDs are checked against handwritten lists of "bad guys" that the movement wanted to detain.

At an assembly of townspeople last week, the 53 detainees were paraded before local residents and plans were announced to bring charges against them and try them before a similar town assembly, with no clear provisions for what kind of defense they would be allowed to mount.

That drew sharp criticism from human rights officials and activists, who said the farmers movement was taking the law into its own hands and could ride roughshod over the rights of the accused.

The situation grew more complicated when local media said the vigilantes might be trying to detain activists from other political groups, and tensions rose between the vigilantes and the more established "community police" that operates in dozens of Guerrero towns. The community police are better regulated and partially recognized under state law.

State and federal authorities have so far tolerated the movement, despite the fact that its members have turned back government human rights officials seeking to check on the detainees condition.

On Friday, Interior Secretary Miguel Osorio Chong told the Milenio TV network that the government will seek to "regularize their situation so that they can continue to assist authorities."

The vigilantes have been demanding uniforms, salaries and official ID cards to continue their work, while authorities have been trying to get them to stop wearing masks and turn checkpoint duties over to police or soldiers.

The sight of a dozen or so masked, armed men stopping cars on rural roads can be intimidating, and a pair of tourists from Mexico City visiting a local beach were shot at and slightly wounded when they failed to stop at one such checkpoint last week.

Despite such problems, authorities have been loath to crack down on the vigilantes, given the government's own inability to bring security to Guerrero state, which is home to the troubled beach resort of Acapulco, where six Spanish tourists were raped by a gang of armed men Monday. Guerrero Gov. Angel Aguirre said authorities "are very close" to making arrests in that case.

The vigilantes say drug gangs from Acapulco have been coming up into the hills around Ayutla to kidnap people and demand "protection" payments.

Prosecutor’s 3 Boydguards Killed by Police

MEXICO: Odd Confrontation

             

Three bodyguards were killed Friday when police attacked the motorcade of the attorney general of the central Mexican state of Morelos, the state’s governor said.

Ten state police officers were taken into custody after the incident, Gov. Graco Ramirez told Radio Formula.
The assault occurred after midnight Thursday in Cuernavaca, the state capital, as Attorney General Rodrigo Dorantes Salgado was en route to his home, the governor said.
The “absurd confrontation” - as the Morelos government called it in a statement - erupted when state police officers in several patrol cars overtook the AG’s motorcade, isolated Dorantes’ vehicle from those of his bodyguards and began shooting.
Asked whether the cops were trying to kill Dorantes, who escaped unhurt, Gov. Ramirez said the hypothesis of a deliberate attack is as valid as that suggesting confusion on the part of the police
“The confusion should not have existed,” the governor said, noting that the attorney general travels in a clearly marked vehicle which is known to the state police.
It appears the shooting continued until around 1:00 a.m., when state Public Safety Secretary Alicia Vazquez Luna arrived at the scene to find three of Dorantes’ bodyguards dead.

Mexican City air pollution Crushing traffic jams, carsharing and carpooling initiatives

Two of the most popular new initiatives of this kind are Aventones and Carrot, small companies founded by young recent university graduates.

Aventones takes its name from “aventón”, the Spanish word for hitching a lift. The company’s creation was spurred by “the excess of traffic and the inefficient use of cars,” in the Mexican capital, said Ignacio Cordero, a 28-year-old industrial engineer and graduate of the Universidad Iberoamericana (UIA), a Jesuit university in Mexico City.

“The idea is to promote a culture of shared car use,” he told IPS, which in this case is achieved through carpooling.

Cordero joined forces with Cristina Palacios, a business administration graduate from UIA, and Alberto Padilla, an industrial engineer trained at the Monterrey Institute of Technology, to create the company in 2010.

Their services are offered to “communities of trust” – companies, universities and government institutions – with an average of 200 or 250 people, who are matched up through an online system that searches for compatible routes, travel times and empty seats in cars. The service’s users not only share a vehicle – they also share the ride together.

The client organisation is charged a fee of 8,000 dollars a year, which includes training courses.

The software used was created by the company’s founders. It is currently utilised by 5,752 users and 27 clients – 23 in Mexico and four in Chile, where the company began operating in January.

Carpooling has become well established in countries like Germany, Spain, Canada and the United States, but is just beginning to catch on in Latin America. Similar services are being developed in Argentina, Chile and Brazil.

Carsharing is another means of multi-user car transport, popular in Germany, Spain, Canada and the United States and now offered by Carrot in Mexico, Zazcar in Brazil and SigoCar in Costa Rica.

“There is a growing trend of providing more options for getting around. This has a significant positive impact on the environment and fosters multi-modal transportation,” said industrial engineer Jimena Pardo, 28, a UIA graduate, who co-founded Carrot in 2012 with Diego Solórzano, a graduate in actuarial science from the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico.

The company, which is affiliated with the international CarSharing Association, offers its clients 40 vehicles, including three electric cars, and has already attracted 1,600 users.[related_articles]

Clients register through a website and pay a fee in accordance with how frequently they need the use of a car, Pardo told IPS. Occasional users pay around 23 dollars annually and seven dollars an hour, plus 23 cents of a dollar for each kilometre travelled.

A frequent driver pays around eight dollars a month, five dollars an hour, and 23 cents per kilometre. Users can pick up a car at one station and leave it at another when they are finished.

According to Carrot, each one of its shared vehicles keeps 20 private cars off the roads.

These new means of transportation are one of the most visible forms of “collaborative consumption”, a movement aimed at increasing the use and shelf life of consumer goods and resources by promoting their use by numerous different people, reducing the time that they sit unused but continue to generate expenses.

These solutions are more than welcome in a city like the Mexican capital and its metropolitan area, which have a combined population of 20.4 million. According to the Centre for Sustainable Transport, the inhabitants of this megacity carry out a total of 49 million trips daily, 53 percent on public transport and 17 percent in private vehicles.

The Transportation Sustainability Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley estimated that as of October 2012, carsharing was operating in 27 countries and five continents, with an estimated 1,788,000 members sharing over 43,550 vehicles, and was planned in seven additional countries worldwide.

The “Propuesta de sistema de vehículos compartidos basado en un sistema de información geográfica” (Proposal for a carsharing system based on a geographic information system), co-authored in 2011 by Luis Guadarrama, Daniel Santiesteban and Javier García at the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico, states that “the expected benefits of a carsharing system include a reduction in the use of individual vehicles and the number of these vehicles in circulation.”

“Our goal is for carsharing to become a habit, and for our service to be a social experience in every way,” said Cordero.

Aventones states that it has prevented the emission of 115 tons of carbon dioxide and saved 750,015 kilometres and 10,586 hours in car travel and 71,430 litres of gasoline.

Carsharing systems “can be replicated in medium-sized and large cities that have urban transportation, a high population density and a mix of residential and office areas,” said Pardo, whose company employs nine people and operates stations in the largest Mexico City neighbourhoods.

Both initiatives are self-financed and have ambitious plans for the future.

Aventones, which employs a staff of 10, hopes to begin operations this year in Bogotá and attract 25,000 new users, thanks to financing provided by its new partner, Venture Institute. Its software team is developing an open application based on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Carrot, which has also partnered up with Venture Institute, plans to begin operations in Toluca and Puebla, cities near the Mexican capital, raise its membership to between 3,000 and 5,000 users, expand its fleet to 100 vehicles, and open up more stations in different neighbourhoods of the city.

Both organisations also hope to forge closer ties with the leftist local government of Mexico City, which is promoting the Metrobús (a bus rapid transit system using dedicated lanes), a public bike sharing system, and an electric taxi programme in the city’s historic centre.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the World Bank.

Autopsy Mexican teen shot 7 times US CBP

                    

             

PHOENIX - A Mexican teenager killed when the U.S. Border Patrol opened fire on a group of rock throwers in Mexico last year was shot at least seven times from behind, an autopsy by Mexican authorities showed.

Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, 16, was shot as agents fired into Nogales, Mexico, after responding to reports of drug trafficking on Oct 10.

An attorney acting for the Elena Rodriguez family, Luis F. Parra, released a copy of the Mexican medical examiner's report on Thursday.

  

               

Houston escapee captured in Mexico

 

Juan Salaz, 37, was captured in Mexico last week, 16 years after he escaped from the South Texas prison where he was serving his sentence for trying to murder a Houston officer in 1995.

HUNTSVILLE, TX (KTRK) -- A man convicted in a 1995 attempted murder case involving an HPD officer was captured in Mexico 16 years after he escaped from a Texas prison.

Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials say 37-year-old Juan Salaz was caught last week by authorities in Mexico and is awaiting extradition to the U.S. He is an American citizen and has been sought by authorities on both sides of the border.
Salaz escaped in March 1997 from the Garza East prison in Beeville by climbing over three 16-foot razor wire topped security fences. He was serving three concurrent 35-year sentences out of Houston for two counts of attempted capital murder of a police officer and aggravated kidnapping with a deadly weapon.
Prison records show on April 2, 1995, Salaz and another man, Geronimo Soto Alvarado, abducted a man at gunpoint and demanded a ransom. Houston police undercover officers involved in the case arranged for the exchange. After the abducted man was freed, they identified themselves as police and Salaz and Alvarado opened fire on them. A police sergeant avoided serious injury when he was saved by his body armor. Another officer suffered a hand wound.
Salaz was seriously wounded when police returned fire. He recovered from his injuries and subsequently pleaded guilty.
Alvarado, now 45, also was arrested and is serving a life sentence for two convictions of aggravated assault and another for aggravated kidnapping.
Prison officials said sources for years had told them Salaz was hiding out in Mexico but he managed to evade police. The hunt for him involved the U.S. Marshals Service, the Texas prison system's Office of Inspector General and Mexican law enforcement agencies.
"Salaz thought that he had eluded authorities by starting a new life in Mexico," Department of Criminal Justice Inspector General Bruce Toney said Wednesday. "He was wrong."
Salaz is to be returned to Texas custody once the Mexican government approves his extradition.
Salaz's capture leaves Jose Fernando Bustos-Diaz, 24, as the lone Texas prison fugitive. He fled in April 2010 from the Brisco Unit in Dilley, near San Antonio. The prison houses medium- and minimum-security inmates. He also is believed to have fled to Mexico.
"(Salaz's) arrest should be a reminder to those who think they can outrun justice. We will never stop looking for you," Toney said.
Bustos-Diaz was serving 35 years for a 2005 murder in Harris County.

Western Countries Homegrown Terrorists

They are called "homegrown terrorists," citizens of Western countries highly prized by Islamist militant groups because they can move across borders and carry out attacks easier than people from Middle East and South Asian co
They are called "homegrown terrorists," citizens of Western countries highly prized by Islamist militant groups because they can move across borders and carry out attacks easier than people from Middle East and South Asian countries closely identified with terrorism.

Two such people -- one Canadian and one Australian -- are believed to have been involved in the July bus bombing in Bulgaria that killed five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian driver, according to Bulgarian investigators. Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov said the two were members of the Lebanese Shiite Muslim militant group Hezbollah, which is in turn linked to Iran.

Here are some examples of Western citizens who have been linked to terrorism both in their home countries or abroad in recent years:
   LONDON SUBWAY BOMBING
   Four young Britons -- three of Pakistani and one of Jamaican origin -- carried out a series of suicide attacks July 7, 2005, on the London public transport that killed 56 people. More than 700 people were injured. All four had lived normal lives under the police radar and had no criminal records. They carried home-made bombs in backpacks. Al-Qaida released video testimonies of two of the bombers who denounced the West and declared their allegiance to Osama bin Laden.
   SHOE BOMBER
   Richard Reid was a British citizen who converted to Islam in prison. After his release he traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where authorities say he trained with al-Qaida. More than three months after Sept. 11 attacks, Reid boarded an American Airlines flight in Paris bound for Miami and tried to detonate a bomb in his shoes. He was subdued by passengers and crew members, and the plane landed safely in Boston. In 2002 Reid was sentenced to life without parole after pleading guilty to eight counts of terrorism and attempting to destroy a commercial airliner.
   DAVID COLEMAN HEADLEY
   Headley, a Pakistani-American, used his U.S. passport to travel frequently to India, where he allegedly scouted out venues for terror attacks on behalf of the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist organization. The al-Qaida-affiliated group used the information to plan and carry out the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, in which more than 160 people died. Last month Headley was sentenced by a U.S. federal court in Chicago to 35 years in prison for his role in the Mumbai attacks.
   TIMES SQUARE FAILED BOMBING
   On May 1, 2010, two street vendors alerted police to smoke coming out of a vehicle parked on New York's Time Square -- an area teeming with tourists. Police found the vehicle was rigged with a bomb that failed to explode. Two days later, federal agents in New York arrested Faisal Shahzad, 30, a Pakistan-born U.S. citizen who lived in Bridgeport, Connecticut, after he had boarded a flight bound for Dubai in the Persian Gulf. Shahzad confessed to the attempted car bombing and said he had trained at a Pakistani terror training camp. Shahzad was sentenced to life imprisonment in October 2010.
   ANWAR AL-AWLAKI
   Al-Awlaki was born in 1971 in New Mexico, where his father was studying agriculture as a Fulbright scholar. The son was educated in the United States but left in 2002, eventually returning to Yemen where he became a key figure in the local al-Qaida branch, which U.S. authorities believed was the most dangerous of the al-Qaida franchises. Al-Awlaki's fluent English and articulate speaking style won him a huge following among disaffected young Muslims in the West. He and another American, Samir Khan, who edited al-Qaida's Internet magazine, were killed in a U.S. drone attack in Yemen on Sept. 30, 2011.
   MAJ. NIDAL MALIK HASAN
   Born in Arlington, Virginia, to Palestinian parents, Hasan joined the U.S. Army in college and became a military psychiatrist. Colleagues said that during an assignment at Walter Reed Medical Center, he was deeply affected by dealing with young soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. FBI investigators alleged that he corresponded by email with al-Awlaki. Hasan was wounded and captured by police on Nov. 5, 2009, after he allegedly opened fire on soldiers in Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13 and wounding more than two dozen. Hasan, who was paralyzed from the waist down in the shooting, was charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder. A trial date has not been set, and he could face the death penalty if convicted.
   ADAM GADAHN
   Born Adam Pearlman in Oregon, Gadahn converted to Islam in 1995 and moved to Pakistan, where he joined al-Qaida as a propagandist. Using the name "Azzam the American," he appeared in numerous al-Qaida videos, denouncing U.S. moves in Afghanistan and elsewhere and threatening attacks on Western interests abroad. U.S. authorities filed treason charges against him in 2006 and have offered a $1 million reward for information leading to his arrest or conviction. Despite rumors he had been killed or captured, Gadahn appeared in a video last September marking the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
   GLASGOW AIRPORT ATTACK
   On June 30, 2007, a jeep loaded with propane canisters slammed into the terminal of the Glasgow International Airport in Scotland, setting the building on fire. Five bystanders were injured. Both occupants of the vehicle were arrested. Police identified them as Bilal Abdulla, a British-born, Muslim doctor of Iraqi descent and Kafeel Ahmed, the driver. Anti-terrorism officials said Abdulla became radicalized due to the Iraq war. Ahmed, an Indian engineering student, died of his burns. Abdulla was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and was sentenced to 32 years in prison.
   AHMAD OMAR SAEED SHEIKH
   Following his education in Britain, the British-born Sheikh traveled to South Asia, where he joined Islamic militant groups. He was sent to prison for kidnapping Western tourists in India in 1994, but was released to Pakistan five years later in an exchange of prisoners following the hijacking of an Indian airliner to Afghanistan. In 2002 he was convicted of kidnapping and murder in the death of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and sentenced to death. His appeal is still pending in a Pakistani court.        untries closely identified with terrorism.

Two such people -- one Canadian and one Australian -- are believed to have been involved in the July bus bombing in Bulgaria that killed five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian driver, according to Bulgarian investigators. Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov said the two were members of the Lebanese Shiite Muslim militant group Hezbollah, which is in turn linked to Iran.

Here are some examples of Western citizens who have been linked to terrorism both in their home countries or abroad in recent years:
   LONDON SUBWAY BOMBING
   Four young Britons -- three of Pakistani and one of Jamaican origin -- carried out a series of suicide attacks July 7, 2005, on the London public transport that killed 56 people. More than 700 people were injured. All four had lived normal lives under the police radar and had no criminal records. They carried home-made bombs in backpacks. Al-Qaida released video testimonies of two of the bombers who denounced the West and declared their allegiance to Osama bin Laden.
   SHOE BOMBER
   Richard Reid was a British citizen who converted to Islam in prison. After his release he traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where authorities say he trained with al-Qaida. More than three months after Sept. 11 attacks, Reid boarded an American Airlines flight in Paris bound for Miami and tried to detonate a bomb in his shoes. He was subdued by passengers and crew members, and the plane landed safely in Boston. In 2002 Reid was sentenced to life without parole after pleading guilty to eight counts of terrorism and attempting to destroy a commercial airliner.
   DAVID COLEMAN HEADLEY
   Headley, a Pakistani-American, used his U.S. passport to travel frequently to India, where he allegedly scouted out venues for terror attacks on behalf of the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist organization. The al-Qaida-affiliated group used the information to plan and carry out the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, in which more than 160 people died. Last month Headley was sentenced by a U.S. federal court in Chicago to 35 years in prison for his role in the Mumbai attacks.
   TIMES SQUARE FAILED BOMBING
   On May 1, 2010, two street vendors alerted police to smoke coming out of a vehicle parked on New York's Time Square -- an area teeming with tourists. Police found the vehicle was rigged with a bomb that failed to explode. Two days later, federal agents in New York arrested Faisal Shahzad, 30, a Pakistan-born U.S. citizen who lived in Bridgeport, Connecticut, after he had boarded a flight bound for Dubai in the Persian Gulf. Shahzad confessed to the attempted car bombing and said he had trained at a Pakistani terror training camp. Shahzad was sentenced to life imprisonment in October 2010.
   ANWAR AL-AWLAKI
   Al-Awlaki was born in 1971 in New Mexico, where his father was studying agriculture as a Fulbright scholar. The son was educated in the United States but left in 2002, eventually returning to Yemen where he became a key figure in the local al-Qaida branch, which U.S. authorities believed was the most dangerous of the al-Qaida franchises. Al-Awlaki's fluent English and articulate speaking style won him a huge following among disaffected young Muslims in the West. He and another American, Samir Khan, who edited al-Qaida's Internet magazine, were killed in a U.S. drone attack in Yemen on Sept. 30, 2011.
   MAJ. NIDAL MALIK HASAN
   Born in Arlington, Virginia, to Palestinian parents, Hasan joined the U.S. Army in college and became a military psychiatrist. Colleagues said that during an assignment at Walter Reed Medical Center, he was deeply affected by dealing with young soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. FBI investigators alleged that he corresponded by email with al-Awlaki. Hasan was wounded and captured by police on Nov. 5, 2009, after he allegedly opened fire on soldiers in Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13 and wounding more than two dozen. Hasan, who was paralyzed from the waist down in the shooting, was charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder. A trial date has not been set, and he could face the death penalty if convicted.
   ADAM GADAHN
   Born Adam Pearlman in Oregon, Gadahn converted to Islam in 1995 and moved to Pakistan, where he joined al-Qaida as a propagandist. Using the name "Azzam the American," he appeared in numerous al-Qaida videos, denouncing U.S. moves in Afghanistan and elsewhere and threatening attacks on Western interests abroad. U.S. authorities filed treason charges against him in 2006 and have offered a $1 million reward for information leading to his arrest or conviction. Despite rumors he had been killed or captured, Gadahn appeared in a video last September marking the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
   GLASGOW AIRPORT ATTACK
   On June 30, 2007, a jeep loaded with propane canisters slammed into the terminal of the Glasgow International Airport in Scotland, setting the building on fire. Five bystanders were injured. Both occupants of the vehicle were arrested. Police identified them as Bilal Abdulla, a British-born, Muslim doctor of Iraqi descent and Kafeel Ahmed, the driver. Anti-terrorism officials said Abdulla became radicalized due to the Iraq war. Ahmed, an Indian engineering student, died of his burns. Abdulla was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and was sentenced to 32 years in prison.
   AHMAD OMAR SAEED SHEIKH
   Following his education in Britain, the British-born Sheikh traveled to South Asia, where he joined Islamic militant groups. He was sent to prison for kidnapping Western tourists in India in 1994, but was released to Pakistan five years later in an exchange of prisoners following the hijacking of an Indian airliner to Afghanistan. In 2002 he was convicted of kidnapping and murder in the death of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and sentenced to death. His appeal is still pending in a Pakistani court.

Mexico man on US kingpin list

The U.S. Treasury Department says it is levying financial sanctions against a Mexican businessman who allegedly launders money for the Zetas drug cartel.
The department's Office of Foreign Assets Control says in a statement Tuesday that it is acting against Filemon Garcia Ayala under the U.S. Kingpin Act. A listing bars U.S. citizens from having business transactions with the person and allows authorities to freeze their assets in the United States.
The department says it is also acting against two of Garcia Ayala's companies in Zacatecas, Mexico, Prodira Casa de Cambio S.A. de C.V. and Trastreva S.A. de C.V. It has also blocked three of his companies in the United States.
It says Mexican authorities tried to arrest Garcia Ayala in June on money laundering charges, but he fled and remains a fugitive.

Armed gang rapes 6 Spanish tourists in Mexico

 

ACAPULCO, Mexico: Six Spanish tourists were raped by a gang of armed, masked men in the Mexican resort of Acapulco, the latest chapter of violence that has tarnished the once-glamorous Pacific coast resort.

The attackers burst into a house the Spaniards had rented on the outskirts of Acapulco, in a low-key beachside area, and held 12 Spanish men and women and one Mexican woman at gunpoint before dawn on Monday.
They tied up the six men with phone cords and bathing suit straps and then raped the six Spanish women, said Acapulco Mayor Luis Walton at a press conference later Monday.
"This is a regrettable situation, and of course it is going to damage Acapulco," said Walton. The once-glittering resort that attracted movie stars and celebrities in the 1950s and 60s has already been battered by years of drug gang killings and extortions, but except for a very few incidents, the violence largely has not touched tourists.
Walton said he believed, but wasn't sure, that the assailants in Monday's attack didn't belong to a drug gang.
"From what the attorney general has told me, I don't think this was organized crime, but that will have to be investigated, we don't know," Walton said.
Mexico's Foreign Relations Department issued a statement saying it regretted the attack, and suggesting it was not drug-cartel related.
"This is a common crime, and thus up to now, the investigations are being carried out by local authorities and they will be the ones to provide information," the statement said.
In Mexico, federal authorities investigate drug-related crimes.
Security and drug analyst Jorge Chabat said that, after years of drug gang activity in Acapulco, the distinction may be merely semantic.
"At this point, the line between common and organized crime is very tenuous, there are a lot of these gangs that take advantage of the unsafe situation that currently exists, they know the government can't keep up," Chabat said. "Everything points to this being organized crime, because several gangs have operated there for years ... it's probably not the big cartels, but there are smaller groups that carry out crimes on a permanent basis."
The Spanish Embassy in Mexico City said the victims were receiving consular assistance.
The attackers gained access to the house because two of the Spaniards were in the yard and apparently were forced to open the door, Walton said. The house is on a more isolated stretch of beach east of the city.
The victims were "psychologically affected" by the attack and received treatment, the mayor said. The lone Mexican woman in the group was not raped.
Guerrero state Attorney General Martha Garzon Guzman said witness descriptions of the attackers were more difficult to obtain because they wore masks.
Spain's Foreign Ministry had already issued a travelers advisory on its website for Acapulco before the Monday attack, listing the resort as one of Mexico's "risk zone," though not the worst.
"In Acapulco, organized crime gangs have carried out violence, though up to now that has not affected tourists or the areas they visit," the advisory states. "At any rate, heightened caution is advised."
The attack came just three days after a pair of Mexican tourists returning from a beach east of Acapulco were shot at and slightly wounded by members of a masked rural self-defense squad that has set up roadblocks in areas north of Acapulco, to defend their communities against drug gang violence.
The vigilantes say the Mexican tourists failed to stop at their improvised roadblock.
Walton said the city was already contemplating ways to revive the city's image.
"We have to look at an advertising campaign to say that not everything in Acapulco is like that," Walton said. "This happens everywhere in the world, not just in Acapulco or in Mexico."

US military expands its drug war in Latin America

The crew members aboard the USS Underwood could see through their night goggles what was happening on the fleeing go-fast boat: Someone was dumping bales.

When the Navy guided-missile frigate later dropped anchor in Panamanian waters on that sunny August morning, Ensign Clarissa Carpio, a 23-year-old from San Francisco, climbed into the inflatable dinghy with four unarmed sailors and two Coast Guard officers like herself, carrying light submachine guns. It was her first deployment, but Carpio was ready for combat.
Fighting drug traffickers was precisely what she'd trained for.
In the most expensive initiative in Latin America since the Cold War, the U.S. has militarized the battle against the traffickers, spending more than $20 billion in the past decade. U.S. Army troops, Air Force pilots and Navy ships outfitted with Coast Guard counternarcotics teams are routinely deployed to chase, track and capture drug smugglers.
The sophistication and violence of the traffickers is so great that the U.S. military is training not only law enforcement agents in Latin American nations, but their militaries as well, building a network of expensive hardware, radar, airplanes, ships, runways and refueling stations to stem the tide of illegal drugs from South America to the U.S.
According to State Department and Pentagon officials, stopping drug-trafficking organizations has become a matter of national security because they spread corruption, undermine fledgling democracies and can potentially finance terrorists.
U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske, pointing to dramatic declines in violence and cocaine production in Colombia, says the strategy works.
"The results are historic and have tremendous implications, not just for the United States and the Western Hemisphere, but for the world," he said at a conference on drug policy last year.
The Associated Press examined U.S. arms export authorizations, defense contracts, military aid, and exercises in the region, tracking a drug war strategy that began in Colombia, moved to Mexico and is now finding fresh focus in Central America, where brutal cartels mark an enemy motivated not by ideology but by cash.
The U.S. authorized the sale of a record $2.8 billion worth of guns, satellites, radar equipment and tear gas to Western Hemisphere nations in 2011, four times the authorized sales 10 years ago, according to the latest State Department reports.
Over the same decade, defense contracts jumped from $119 million to $629 million, supporting everything from Kevlar helmets for the Mexican army to airport runways in Aruba, according to federal contract data.
Last year $830 million, almost $9 out of every $10 of U.S. law enforcement and military aid spent in the region, went toward countering narcotics, up 30 percent in the past decade.
Many in the military and other law enforcement agencies - the Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, FBI - applaud the U.S. strategy, but critics say militarizing the drug war in a region fraught with tender democracies and long-corrupt institutions can stir political instability while barely touching what the U.N. estimates is a $320 billion global illicit drug market.
Congressman Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), who chaired the U.S. House Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere for the past four years, says the U.S.-supported crackdown on Mexican cartels only left them "stronger and more violent." He intends to reintroduce a proposal for a Western Hemisphere Drug Policy Commission to evaluate antinarcotics efforts.
"Billions upon billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars have been spent over the years to combat the drug trade in Latin America and the Caribbean," he said. "In spite of our efforts, the positive results are few and far between."
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At any given moment, 4,000 U.S. troops are deployed in Latin America and as many as four U.S. Navy ships are plying the Caribbean and Pacific coastlines of Central America. U.S. pilots clocked more than 46,400 hours in 2011 flying anti-drug missions, and U.S. agents from at least 10 law enforcement agencies spread across the continent.
The U.S. trains thousands of Latin American troops, and employs its multibillion dollar radar equipment to gather intelligence to intercept traffickers and arrest cartel members.
These work in organized-crime networks that boast an estimated 11,000 flights annually and hundreds of boats and submersibles. They smuggle cocaine from the only place it's produced, South America, to the land where it is most coveted, the United States.
One persistent problem is that in many of the partner nations, police are so institutionally weak or corrupt that governments have turned to their militaries to fight drug traffickers, often with violent results. Militaries are trained for combat, while police are trained to enforce laws.
"It is unfortunate that militaries have to be involved in what are essentially law enforcement engagements," said Frank Mora, the outgoing deputy assistant secretary of defense for Western Hemisphere affairs. But he argues that many governments have little choice.
"We are not going to turn our backs on these governments or these institutions because they've found themselves in such a situation that they have to use their militaries in this way," Mora said.
Mora said the effort is not tantamount to militarizing the war on drugs. He said the Defense Department's role is limited, by law, to monitoring and detection. Law enforcement agents, from the U.S. Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection or other agencies are in charge of some of the busts, he said.
But the U.S. is deploying its own military. Not only is the Fourth Fleet in the Caribbean, the Pacific and the Atlantic, but the Marines were sent to Guatemala last year and the National Guard is in Honduras.
The Obama Administration sees these deployments as important missions with a worthy payoff. Hundreds of thousands of kilograms (pounds) of cocaine are seized en route to the U.S. every year, and the Defense Department estimates about 850 metric tons of cocaine departed South America last year toward the U.S., down 20 percent in just a year. The most recent U.S. survey found cocaine use fell significantly, from 2.4 million people in 2006 to 1.4 million in 2011.
Aboard the Underwood, the crew of 260 was clear on the mission. The ship's bridge wings bear 16 cocaine "snowflakes" and two marijuana "leaves," awarded to the Underwood by the Coast Guard command to be "proudly displayed" for its successful interdictions.
Standing on the bridge, Carpio's team spotted its first bale of cocaine. And then, after 2 1/2 weeks plying the Caribbean in search of drug traffickers, they spotted another, and then many more.
"In all we found 49 bales," Carpio said in an interview aboard the ship. "It was very impressive to see the bales popping along the water in a row."
Wrapped in black and white tarp, they were so heavy she could barely pull one out of the water. Later, officials said they'd collected $27 million worth of cocaine.
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The current U.S. strategy began in Colombia in 2000, with an eight-year effort that cost more than $7 billion to stop the flow from the world's top cocaine producer. During Plan Colombia, the national police force, working closely with dozens of DEA agents, successfully locked up top drug traffickers.
But then came "the balloon effect."
As a result of Plan Colombia's pressure, traffickers were forced to find new coca-growing lands in Peru and Bolivia, and trafficking routes shifted as well from Florida to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Thus a $1.6 billion, 4-year Merida Initiative was launched in 2008. Once more, drug kingpins were caught or killed, and as cartels fought to control trafficking routes, increasingly gruesome killings topped 70,000 in six years.
Mexican cartel bosses, feeling the squeeze, turned to Central America as the first stop for South American cocaine, attracted by weaker governments and corrupt authorities.
"Now, all of a sudden, the tide has turned," said Brick Scoggins, who manages the Defense Department's counter-narcotics programs in most of Latin America and the Caribbean. "I'd say northern tier countries of El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Belize have become a key focus area."
The latest iteration is the $165 million Central America Regional Security Initiative, which includes Operation Martillo (Hammer), a year-old U.S.-led mission. The operation has no end date and is focused on the seas off Central America's beach-lined coasts, key shipping routes for 90 percent of the estimated 850 metric tons of cocaine headed to the U.S.
As part of Operation Martillo, 200 U.S. Marines began patrolling Guatemala's western coast in August, their helicopters soaring above villages at night as they headed out to sea to find "narco-submarines" and shiploads of drugs. The troops also brought millions of dollars' worth of computers and intelligence-gathering technology to analyze communications between suspected drug dealers.
Assistant Secretary of State William Brownfield, head of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, predicts the balloon effect will play out in Central America before moving to the Caribbean.
The goal, he said, is to make it so hard for traffickers to move drugs to the U.S. that they will eventually opt out of North America, where cocaine use is falling. Traffickers would likely look for easier, more expanding markets, shifting sales to a growing customer base in Europe, Africa and elsewhere in the world.
Brownfield said almost all Peruvian and Bolivian cocaine goes east through Brazil and Argentina and then to Western Europe. Cocaine that reaches North America mostly comes from Colombia, he said, with U.S. figures showing production falling sharply, from 700 metric tons in 2001 to 195 metric tons today - though estimates vary widely.
When the drug war turns bloody, he said, the strategy is working.
"The bloodshed tends to occur and increase when these trafficking organizations, which are large, powerful, rich, extremely violent and potentially bloody, ... come under some degree of pressure," he said.
Yet the strategy has often backfired when foreign partners proved too inexperienced to fight drug traffickers or so corrupt they switched sides.
In Mexico, for example, the U.S. focused on improving the professionalism of the federal police. But the effort's success was openly questioned after federal police at Mexico City's Benito Juarez International Airport opened fire at each other, killing three.
In August critics were even more concerned when two CIA officers riding in a U.S. Embassy SUV were ambushed by Mexican federal police allegedly working for an organized crime group. The police riddled the armored SUV with 152 bullets, wounding both officers.
The new strategy in Honduras has had its own fits and starts.
Last year, the U.S. Defense Department spent a record $67.4 million on military contracts in Honduras, triple the 2002 defense contracts there well above the $45.6 million spent in neighboring Guatemala in 2012. The U.S. also spent about $2 million training more than 300 Honduran military personnel in 2011, and $89 million in annual spending to maintain Joint Task Force Bravo, a 600-member U.S. unit based at Soto Cano Air Base.
Further, neither the State Department nor the Pentagon could provide details explaining a 2011 $1.3 billion authorization for exports of military electronics to Honduras - although that would amount to almost half of all U.S. arms exports for the entire Western Hemisphere.
In May, on the other side of the country, Honduran national police rappelled from U.S. helicopters to bust drug traffickers near the remote village of Ahuas, killing four allegedly innocent civilians and scattering locals who were loading some 450 kilograms (close to 1,000 pounds) of cocaine into a boat.
The incident drew international attention and demands for an investigation when the DEA confirmed it had agents aboard the helicopters advising their Honduran counterparts. Villagers spoke of English-speaking commandos kicking in doors and handcuffing locals just after the shooting, searching for drug traffickers.
Six weeks later, townspeople watched in shock as laborers exhumed the first of four muddy graves. At each burial site, workers pulled out the decomposing bodies of two women and two young men, and laid them on tarps.
Forensic scientists conducted their graveside autopsies in the open air, probing for bullet wounds and searching for signs the women had been pregnant, as villagers had claimed.
Government investigators concluded there was no wrongdoing in the raid. In the subsequent months, DEA agents shot and killed suspects they said threatened them in two separate incidents, and the U.S. temporarily suspended the sharing of radar intelligence because the Central American nation's air force shot down two suspected drug planes, a violation of rules of engagement. Support was also withheld for the national police after it was learned that its new director had been tied to death squads.
As the new year begins, Congress is still withholding an estimated $30 million in aid to Honduras, about a third of all the U.S. aid slotted for this year.
But there are no plans to rethink the strategy.
Scoggins, the Defense Department's counter-narcotics manager, said operations in Central America are expected to grow for the next five years.
"It's not for me to say if it's the correct strategy. It's the strategy we are using," said Scoggins. "I don't know what the alternative is."