Pubdate: Fri, 10 Mar 2006
Source: Washington Times (DC)
Copyright: 2006 News World Communications, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.washingtontimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/492
Author: Jerry Seper
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Nuevo+Laredo

TASK FORCE TARGETS CROSS-BORDER VIOLENCE

Federal, state and local law-enforcement agents have teamed up along 
the Texas-Mexico border to target rising violence spreading into the 
United States from a deadly turf war between drug cartels in Nuevo Laredo.

Since January, the Border Enforcement and Security Task Force (BEST) 
has arrested 31 cartel members; seized dynamite, grenades and bombs 
in Laredo, Texas; and taken possession of weapons, drugs and $1 
million in cash.

"The BEST task force concept incorporates personnel from existing 
intelligence groups -- involved in both collection and analysis -- to 
help identify and disseminate information relating to violent 
smuggling organizations," said Dean Boyd, a spokesman for U.S. 
Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Team members include agents from ICE; U.S. Customs and Border 
Protection; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; 
the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration; the FBI, the U.S. Marshals 
Service; the U.S. attorney's office; and key state and local 
law-enforcement agencies.

Drug-related violence on the Texas-Mexico border has surged during 
the past year, the result of intense competition between the Gulf 
cartel, led by Osiel Cardenas-Guillen, and the Sinaloa cartel, also 
known as the "Federation," run by Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman Loera and 
Arturo Beltran Leyva.

Both gangs seek to control long-established drug-smuggling corridors 
into Texas. Authorities estimate that more than $14 billion in 
illicit narcotics pass annually through the Laredo area.

The bombs and other paraphernalia are thought to belong to or be 
destined for the drug cartels in Nuevo Laredo, where a brutal war 
over control of drug and alien smuggling routes rages. More than 200 
people, including the police chief, a city council member and 13 
police officers, have been killed in Nuevo Laredo in the past year as 
part of the drug war.

Nuevo Laredo, across the Rio Grande from Laredo, is the most active 
port of entry on the Mexican border, with 6,000 trucks crossing daily 
into Texas carrying 40 percent of Mexico's exports.

The war since has spread to many parts of the Southwest, led, in 
part, by a rogue band of Mexican military deserters known as the 
"Zetas." Trained in the United States as an elite corps of anti-drug 
soldiers, the Zetas have since signed on as Gulf cartel mercenaries.

In July, the Justice Department warned law-enforcement authorities in 
Arizona and California to be on the lookout for Zeta members.

Members of Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, a violent Salvadoran gang that 
has spread into the United States, serve in a similar capacity for 
the Federation, authorities said. The gang helped the Federation take 
control of drug-smuggling routes into San Diego and El Paso, Texas.

The Federation was founded in the early 1970s by smugglers based in 
Sinaloa state and is considered the most powerful drug threat along the border. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake