By Daily Caller. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador flatly rejected President Donald Trump’s offer to “wage war” on drug cartels following the massacre of a U.S.-Mexican family along the border.
During a Tuesday press conference, López Obrador rejected Trump’s public offer to send U.S. military forces to Mexico and help his government combat organized crime. The leftist president — reiterating a position he’s long held — argued that war with the drug cartels was not the best approach.
“We have to act independently and according to our constitution, and in line with our tradition of independence and sovereignty,” López Obrador said Tuesday. “War is irrational. We are for peace. It is a characteristic of this new government.”
The statements came a day after at least nine members of Mormon family, all of whom were dual U.S.-Mexican citizens, were killed in a gruesome ambush while traveling near the border.
Members of the LeBaron family were traveling in three separate vehicles between the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora Monday when they were shot at by individuals suspecting of belonging to a drug cartel. Surviving members recounted a horrific scene: victims burning alive in a flaming vehicle and one child gunned down while trying to run away. Of the nine who were killed, three were women, four were children and two were infants. (Read more from “Mexican President Rejects Trump’s Offer for War Against Drug Cartels” HERE)
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Nine Members of Mormon Family, Dual U.S.-Mexican Citizens, Killed in Attack in Northern Mexico; Trump Offers Support
By Washington Post. Assailants killed at least nine members of a fundamentalist Mormon community in Northern Mexico, authorities said Tuesday, shooting and incinerating women and children in a brutal assault that highlighted the increasing grip of organized crime on parts of the country.
Mexican Public Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo said three women and six children of the extended LeBaron family were killed in attacks on three vehicles Monday in the northern state of Sonora. The victims were part of a community of U.S.-Mexican dual citizens who have lived in Mexico for decades. . .
President Trump offered to help Mexico strike back at the traffickers. “This is the time for Mexico, with the help of the United States, to wage WAR on the drug cartels and wipe them off the face of the earth,” he tweeted. He called López Obrador on Tuesday afternoon to offer support. (Read more from “Nine Members of Mormon Family, Dual U.S.-Mexican Citizens, Killed in Attack in Northern Mexico; Trump Offers Support” HERE)
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Slain U.S. Citizens Were Part of Mormon Offshoot with Sordid History
By NBC News. The nine U.S. citizens who were killed in a brutal ambush by drug cartel gunmen Monday while traveling in Mexico belonged to a Mormon offshoot group that has been touched by cartel violence before.
The group was part of the extended LeBaron family, Mormon fundamentalists who first came to Mexico nearly a century ago — when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City started cracking down on members who were still practicing polygamy.
To escape persecution in the U.S., Alma Dayer LeBaron brought his wives and children across the border to Mexico in 1924 and founded the LeBaron colony in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. It was there in 2009 that drug cartels took another member of the family, anti-crime activist Benjamin LeBaron, for ransom, and murdered him. . .
The family has had a sordid history, Bowman said. Its founder’s sons fell victim to infighting. One, Ervil LeBaron, formed his own church that took on a cult following, said Anna LeBaron, who was one of Ervil’s 51 children with 13 wives. She was born at the LeBaron colony and escaped her father’s cult when she was 13; she detailed her experience in a 2017 book, “The Polygamist’s Daughter.” . . .
“My father would order mob-style hits and those would be carried out by his cult members if they stopped believing in him or his practice or religion and left, or sometimes it was rival cult leaders that were blood-atoned for being false prophets,” she said, adding that media outlets dubbed him the “Mormon Manson.” (Read more from “Slain U.S. Citizens Were Part of Mormon Offshoot with Sordid History” HERE)
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