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Woman, 73, Accused of Operating Drug Tunnel Uncovered Under Mexican Border

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Tucked inside one of a string of warehouses, hidden behind boxes of televisions and plastic three-wheel toys, under a concrete slab and down a 70-foot shaft, is a tunnel Mexican drug dealers hoped to use to move hundreds of pounds of marijuana and cocaine into the U.S.

But on Friday, agents for Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Tuesday’s discovery of the tunnel and arrested the woman accused of overseeing its construction, 73-year-old Glennys “Gladys” Rodriguez, of Chula Vista, Calif. Authorities had been watching the warehouse for months.

“Here we are again, foiling cartel plans to sneak millions of dollars of illegal drugs through secret passageways that cost millions of dollars to build,” said U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy. “Going underground is not a good business plan. We have promised to locate these super tunnels and keep powerful drug cartels from taking their business underground and out of sight, and once again, we have delivered on that promise.”

This was the sixth cross-border passageway discovered in the San Diego area in less than four years. A seventh was found Thursday nearby. If laid end-to-end, the seven tunnels would extend a distance of nearly two miles.

Agents from the San Diego Tunnel Task Force uncovered the two sophisticated smuggling tunnels in an area known as Otay Mesa, an industrial park surrounded by rolling hills, desert and several major freeways connecting the U.S. to Tijuana and large manufacturing plants south of the border.

Read more from this story HERE.

Capture of Mexican Drug Lord ‘El Chapo’ Guzman Ignites Fight Over Trial Location

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Photo Credit: Fox News After narrow escapes from the military, law enforcement and rivals over 13 years on the run, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is back in Mexican custody. Now, what is likely to be a lengthy and complicated legal process to decide which country gets to try him first will begin.

In Mexico, Guzman is likely to face a host of charges related to his role as the head of the Sinaloa Cartel, the country’s most powerful drug organization and a key player in the yearslong violence that has claimed tens of thousands of lives since 2006.

Grand juries in at least seven U.S. federal district courts have handed up indictments for Guzman on a variety of charges, ranging from smuggling cocaine and heroin into the United States to participating in an ongoing criminal enterprise involving murder and racketeering.

Mexico convicted the man whose nickname translates to “Shorty” on drug trafficking and murder charges in 1993. Guzman had served less than half of his 20-year prison sentence when he escaped from jail in 2001. The Mexican government is almost certain to levy a host of new charges related not only to his escape but also to his role in running the global drug-empire that the Sinaloa Cartel has become.

Calls for his extradition to the United States started just hours after word spread of his arrest Saturday morning at a condominium in Mazatlan, a beach resort town on Mexico’s Pacific Coast.

Read more this story HERE.

Report: ‘Fast and Furious’ Gun Turns Up at Mexico Shootout Scene

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Photo Credit: AP/Alex Brandon

Photo Credit: AP/Alex Brandon

A gun from the failed U.S. operation known as “Fast and Furious” turned up at the scene of a shootout between Mexican authorities and alleged cartel gunmen last month, according to CNN.

U.S. officials told CNN at least one AK-47-style gun that could be traced back to the failed gun-walking scheme was found at the scene.

The shootout on Dec. 18 left five alleged cartel members dead in Puerto Penasco, a popular tourist site in Mexico.

The now-defunct Fast and Furious program began in 2009 and was run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Agents allowed low-level weapons purchasers to cross the Mexican border in an attempt to expose trafficking routes used by Mexican cartels. But the agency ultimately lost track of some weapons, including two found at the scene of the killing of a border patrol agent in 2010.

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Judge: Obama’s DHS Facilitating Drug Cartels’ Human Trafficking

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Photo Credit: AFP

Photo Credit: AFP

By Matthew Boyle.

A United States federal judge has accused President Barack Obama’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) of being complicit in helping Mexican drug cartels and felons inside America smuggle illegal aliens into the country.

In a court order he signed on Dec. 13, 2013, U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Texas wrote that four times in the last four weeks he has heard troubling cases involving the DHS’s complicity in helping smuggle people across the border to their final destination.

This particular court opinion involved a case where Mirtha Veronica Nava-Martinez attempted to smuggle a ten-year old El Salvadorean female, whom Judge Hanen referred to only by her initials Y.P.S. to protect the minor’s identity, into the country. Nava-Martinez pled guilty and has been sentenced; Judge Hanen wrote after the case:

On May 18, 2013, Nava-Martinez, an admitted human trafficker, was caught at the Brownsville & Matamoras Bridge checkpoint. She was trying to smuggle Y.P.S. into the United States using a birth certificate that belonged to one of her daughters. Nava-Martinez had no prior relationship with Y.P.S. and was hired by persons unknown solely to smuggle her into the United States. Nava-Martinez is a resident alien and this was her second felony offense in three years, having committed a food stamp fraud offense in 2011. She was to be paid for smuggling Y.P.S. from Matamoras to Brownsville, although the identity of her immediate payor and the amount are unknown. The details as to how Y.P.S. got to Matamoros, Mexico from El Salvador, and how she was to get from Brownsville to Virginia, were also not disclosed to the Court.

Hanen noted that the “conspiracy” began when Y.P.S.’s mother, Patricia Elizabeth Salmeron Santos, “solicited human traffickers to smuggle” her daughter from their home country of El Salvador into the United States and onward to her residence in Virginia.

Read more from this story HERE.

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DHS Helps Drug Cartels Get Rich Off Human Trafficking Of Children

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY.

Border: A federal judge finds that the Department of Homeland Security, instead of arresting cartel members and the clients who pay them to smuggle children into the U.S., helps the drug lords complete the transactions.

Read more from this story HERE.

Highly Radioactive Cargo Stolen in Mexico, Could be Used for Dirty Bomb (+video)

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A truck carrying “extremely dangerous” material used in medical treatment has been stolen in Mexico, officials said.

The truck was transporting cobalt-60 from a hospital in the northern city of Tijuana to a radioactive waste storage facility when it was stolen in Tepojaco near Mexico City Monday, the International Atomic

Energy Agency said in a statement. Cobalt-60 is a radioactive isotope and was being used in radiotherapy.

Mexican authorities are conducting a search for the material and have issued a statement to alert the public, the IAEA said.

Read more about this dirty bomb risk HERE.

Report: How the US Gave Guns to Mexican Cartels

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Matt York

In September 2009, John Dodson, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, was assigned to the ATF’s Phoenix office. What he found there shocked him. The bureau was encouraging gun dealers to sell weapons in bulk to known straw buyers, who would funnel those guns to Mexican drug cartels. Known as Operation Fast and Furious, it ended with the death of at least one American law enforcement officer. Dodson became a congressional whistleblower, and the investigation into the operation is ongoing. In this exclusive excerpt from his new book, “The Unarmed Truth,” Dodson explains how tragically inept Fast and Furious was.

‘It’s like the underwear gnomes,” my ATF colleague Lee Casa told me one time as we recounted the latest bizarre goings-on in Phoenix.

“What?” I asked.

“You ever watch ‘South Park’? There’s this episode where all the boys get their underwear stolen by these underwear gnomes. They track them down to get it back and one of them asks why they are stealing everyone’s underwear. The gnomes break out this PowerPoint and reveal their master plan: Phase One: Collect underpants . . . Phase Two: ? . . . Phase Three: Profit.”

“We’re doing the same thing,” he explained. “We know Phase One is ‘Walk guns’ and Phase Three is ‘Take down a big cartel!’ ” Both of us were laughing now; a more fitting and appropriate allegory could never be found. Casa concluded, “Just nobody can figure out what the f–k Phase Two is!”

What was happening did at times almost seem like a spoof. Letting guns “walk” was a tactic that I had never before seen or even contemplated. It simply wasn’t done.

Read more from this story HERE.

Fresh Leak on US Spying: NSA Accessed Mexican President’s Email

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Photo Credit: SpiegelThe NSA has been systematically eavesdropping on the Mexican government for years. It hacked into the president’s public email account and gained deep insight into policymaking and the political system. The news is likely to hurt ties between the US and Mexico.

The National Security Agency (NSA) has a division for particularly difficult missions. Called “Tailored Access Operations” (TAO), this department devises special methods for special targets.

That category includes surveillance of neighboring Mexico, and in May 2010, the division reported its mission accomplished. A report classified as “top secret” said: “TAO successfully exploited a key mail server in the Mexican Presidencia domain within the Mexican Presidential network to gain first-ever access to President Felipe Calderon’s public email account.”

According to the NSA, this email domain was also used by cabinet members, and contained “diplomatic, economic and leadership communications which continue to provide insight into Mexico’s political system and internal stability.” The president’s office, the NSA reported, was now “a lucrative source.”

This operation, dubbed “Flatliquid,” is described in a document leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden, which SPIEGEL has now had the opportunity to analyze. The case is likely to cause further strain on relations between Mexico and the United States, which have been tense since Brazilian television network TV Globo revealed in September that the NSA monitored then-presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto and others around him in the summer of 2012. Peña Nieto, now Mexico’s president, summoned the US ambassador in the wake of that news, but confined his reaction to demanding an investigation into the matter.

Read more from this story HERE.

Gunman in Clown Suit Kills Senior Mexican Drug Cartel Member

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Photo Credit: Steve SnodgrassA gunman in a clown costume shot and killed the oldest brother of one of Mexico’s most notorious drug trafficking families in the resort of Los Cabos, authorities said on Saturday.

Francisco Rafael Arellano Felix, 63, a former leader of the Tijuana Cartel, was shot in the head late on Friday at a family gathering in the southern tip of the state of Baja California Sur, a spokesman for state prosecutors said.

“A person dressed as a clown took his life,” he said.

Local media reported that the killer had two accomplices, but this was not yet clear, the spokesman said. The gunman fled the scene.

Read more from this story HERE.

Mexican Consulate Plans Saturday, Oct. 19, Asheville Visit to Aid Immigrants

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Photo Credit: mountainxMore than 24,000 Mexicans live in Western North Carolina, according to the Consulate General of Mexico’s Raleigh, N.C., office. Nearly 9,000 of them live in Buncombe County, and about 8,500 in Henderson County. For the past three years, the Consulate has brought its office to Asheville so that these legal immigrants can get help with a variety of needs.

“Without the proper identification, people who have immigrated to this country from Mexico cannot even get a library card, let alone utilities or a bank account,” says Carolina McCready, co-director of the nonprofit El Centro of Henderson County. To overcome such barriers and help meet vital identification needs in the local Mexican community, El Centro is hosting a visit from the Mexican Consulate on Saturday, Oct. 19, from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. at the WNC AG Center in the Expo Building.

Usually, in order to process the paperwork needed to obtain/renew passports, Mexican ID cards or power of attorney, WNC immigrants have to go to the Mexican Consulate’s office in Raleigh, which requires taking time off of work and taking children away from school. In addition to eight hours of driving, most visits require many hours at the Consulate office and an overnight stay. These logistics present an insurmountable challenge for many Mexicans living in this area, say organizers of the October event.

Read more from this story HERE.

U.S. to Teach Mexicans to Game American System

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

It’s an expenditure of only $100,000 – mere pocket change in the vast labyrinth of federal spending – but the funds are for the creation of a manual to teach people how to get more money from the U.S. government.

And the recipients aren’t even citizens of the United States.

The U.S. Trade & Development Agency, an independent White House agency, is laying the foundation for the government of Mexico to infuse hundreds of billions of dollars into modernizing its roads, bridges and other critical infrastructure.

While it remains to be seen how much direct financial assistance the U.S. will provide, even the looming threat of a government shutdown has failed to curb President Obama’s plan to cut U.S. Treasury checks for the Mexican endeavor.

The industry-crafted report likewise will serve as a corporate-welfare roadmap for U.S. businesses seeking future contracts awarded under the massive project, according to a USTDA planning document that WND located via routine database research.

Read more from this story HERE.