300 Suspects Are Held in Nationwide Raids on La Familia, a Brutal and Fast-Growing Drug Gang From Mexico. Drug agents swept through Los Angeles and dozens of other locations Wednesday and Thursday, arresting more than 300 people and seizing large quantities of drugs, weapons and money in the biggest U.S. crackdown against a Mexican drug cartel. The months-long offensive, the fruit of dozens of federal investigations over the last 3 1/2 years, will put a significant dent in the U.S. operations of La Familia Michoacana, one of Mexico's fastest-growing and deadliest cartels, authorities said. [continues 865 words]
Federal Authorities Are Told Not to Prosecute Users and Suppliers Following State Laws, a Reversal of Bush Policy. The Obama administration on Monday told federal authorities not to arrest or prosecute medical marijuana users and suppliers who aren't violating local laws, paving the way for some states to allow dispensaries to provide the drug as relief for some maladies. The Justice Department's guidelines ended months of uncertainty over how far the Obama White House planned to go in reversing the Bush administration's position, which was that federal drug laws should be enforced even in states like California, with medical marijuana laws on the books. [continues 612 words]
U.S. Shifts Its Drug Focus From Eradicating Poppy to Targeting Trafficking, Seen As Aiding the Taliban. The U.S. government is deploying dozens of Drug Enforcement Administration agents to Afghanistan in a new kind of "surge," targeting trafficking networks that officials say are increasingly fueling the Taliban insurgency and corrupting the Afghan government. The move to dramatically expand a second front is seen as the latest acknowledgment in Washington that security in Afghanistan cannot be won with military force alone. [continues 1514 words]
A Republican Lawmaker Takes Exception to the Conclusion That U.S. Weapons Fuel a Rise in Mexico Drug Violence. A government audit of U.S. efforts to stop arms trafficking to Mexico was criticized Friday by a Republican lawmaker who said its conclusion that smuggled weapons from America were fueling the rise of violent Mexican drug cartels was based on incomplete data. The report, released Thursday by the Government Accountability Office, said that the United States lacked a coordinated strategy to stem the flow of smuggled weapons. [continues 463 words]
An Agreement Is Reached to Limit Drug Trafficking at the U.S.-Mexico Border, a Move Intended to End the Turf War Between the Drug Enforcement Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In an effort to plug a hole in U.S.-Mexico drug enforcement, the U.S. departments of Justice and Homeland Security announced an agreement Thursday that will give designated immigration agents expanded powers to pursue drug investigations. A key goal is to end the long-standing turf battles between the Justice Department's Drug Enforcement Administration and Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement that many critics believe have hampered investigations. [continues 558 words]
Wire transfers keep crime cartels and human smugglers in the money, officials say. Arizona's attorney general wants Western Union to cooperate more fully with investigations. The bleeding body of Mexican immigrant Javier Resendiz Martinez was the first thing police noticed when they raided the bungalow on North 63rd Avenue here four years ago after reports of gunshots. Soon afterward, however, they found payment logs of more than 100 wire transfers to Western Unions in the border town of Caborca, Mexico -- which state and federal officials cite as evidence that the financial services company and other money transmittersare used by Mexican crime syndicates to help facilitate the smuggling of people into the United States. [continues 1227 words]
As They Expand Their Enterprise From Drugs to Human Smuggling, a Bleak Situation Is Worsening, Experts Say. Mexican drug cartels and their vast network of associates have branched out from their traditional business of narcotics trafficking and are now playing a central role in the multibillion-dollar-a-year business of illegal immigrant smuggling, U.S. law enforcement officials and other experts say. The business of smuggling humans across the Mexican border has always been brisk, with many thousands coming across every year. [continues 1243 words]
730 IN U.S. ARRESTED IN CARTEL PROBE Fifty Arrests in California and Elsewhere Are the Latest Among 730 Targeting the Sinaloa Cartel in a 21-Month Investigation. The Justice Department announced Wednesday that authorities had arrested more than 730 people across the country in a 21-month investigation targeting Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel and its infiltration into U.S. cities. The arrests, including 50 on Wednesday in California, Minnesota, Maryland and the nation's capital, come amid growing concern in Washington that Mexican crime organizations are out of control and threaten the stability of parts of Mexico and the safety of U.S. citizens. [continues 1158 words]
Distrust Sullies Initiative Designed To Battle Drug Cartels Doubts are growing about whether the United States and Mexico's $1.4 billion aid package can successfully combat increasingly violent drug-trafficking cartels. There are mounting questions about whether the so-called Merida Initiative is too little, too late and too compromised by competing and misplaced priorities, according to interviews with current and former officials and outside experts, and a review of government documents. Both nations agree that the Mexican cartels have morphed into transnational organized crime syndicates that pose an urgent threat to national and regional security. But there is little agreement over where the U.S. aid money should go. [continues 728 words]
The U.S. has begun pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into Mexico to help stanch the expansion of drug-fueled violence and corruption that has claimed more than 5,000 lives south of the border this year. The bloodshed has spread to American cities, even to the heartland, and U.S. officials are realizing that their fight against powerful drug cartels responsible for the carnage has come down to this: Either walk away or support Mexican President Felipe Calderon's strategy, even with the risk that counter-narcotics intelligence, equipment and training could end up in the hands of cartel bosses. [continues 1384 words]
Several Lawmakers Say Multinationals That Aid Violent Groups in Return for Protection Are Not Being Prosecuted. WASHINGTON -- For more than a decade, leftist guerrilla and right-wing paramilitary groups in Colombia have kidnapped or killed civilians, trade union leaders, police and soldiers by the hundreds and profited by shipping cocaine and heroin to the United States. In that time, several American multinational corporations have been accused of essentially underwriting those criminal activities -- in violation of U.S. law -- by providing cash, vehicles and other financial assistance as insurance against attacks on their employees and facilities in the South American nation. [continues 2730 words]
WASHINGTON - Stretched thin from fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military has sharply reduced its role in the war on drugs, leaving significant gaps in U.S. narcotics interdiction efforts. Since 1989, Congress has directed the Pentagon to be the lead federal agency in detecting and monitoring, by air and sea, illegal narcotics shipments headed to the United States, and in supporting Coast Guard efforts to intercept them. In the early 1990s, at the height of the drug war, U.S. military planes and boats filled the Southern skies and waters in search of cocaine-laden drug vessels coming from Colombia and elsewhere in South America. [continues 253 words]
Military Had Been Key In Finding Traffickers Stretched thin from fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military has sharply reduced its role in the war on drugs, leaving significant gaps in U.S. anti-narcotics efforts. Since 1989, Congress has directed the Pentagon to lead the detection by air and sea of illegal drugs headed to the United States and to support the Coast Guard in catching them. But since 2002, the military has withdrawn many of those assets, according to more than a dozen current and former counter-narcotics officials, as well as a review of congressional, military and Homeland Security documents. [continues 402 words]
Air And Sea Patrolling Is Slashed On Southern Smuggling Routes WASHINGTON - Stretched thin from fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military has sharply reduced its role in the war on drugs, leaving significant gaps in the nation's narcotics interdiction efforts. Since 1989, Congress has directed the Pentagon to be the lead federal agency in detecting and monitoring illegal narcotics shipments headed to the United States by air and sea and in supporting Coast Guard efforts to intercept them. In the early 1990s, at the height of the drug war, U.S. military planes and boats filled the southern skies and waters in search of cocaine-laden vessels coming from Colombia and elsewhere in South America. [continues 1884 words]
Military Finally Responds to Complaints From Capitol Hill Washington -- The Pentagon, which has resisted appeals from federal drug agents to play a bigger role in the campaign to curb Afghanistan's flourishing opium trade, has pledged more support for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's counter-narcotics efforts. While the $2.3 billion profit from opium trafficking has helped to arm the Taliban and al Qaeda insurgents in Afghanistan, the Pentagon has long maintained that drug interdiction is primarily a law enforcement responsibility, one that belongs to Afghan authorities and the British troops in the NATO operation. [continues 739 words]
The DEA Wants the Military to Take a Larger Role in Stopping the Drug Trade, Which Experts Say Finances the Insurgency. WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon, engaged in a difficult fight to defeat a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan, has resisted entreaties from U.S. anti-narcotics officials to play an aggressive role in the faltering campaign to curb the country's opium trade. Military units in Afghanistan largely overlook drug bazaars, rebuff some requests to take U.S. drug agents on raids and do little to counter the organized crime syndicates shipping the drug to Europe, Asia and, increasingly, the United States, according to officials and documents. [continues 1334 words]
Crime: Federal Data Offer 'Shocking' Insight into Links between Two Threats, Ashcroft Says. WASHINGTON -- The United States has determined that about one-third of foreign terrorist organizations are trafficking in narcotics on a large scale, providing authorities with "shocking" insight into how two of the nation's most serious threats are connected, U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said Tuesday. "Law enforcement has been aware for some time of significant linkages between terrorism and drug trafficking. But we have not had the tools to quantify the drugs-terrorism nexus until now," Ashcroft said in a speech before the annual conference of the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force. [continues 576 words]
Extent Of Connections Called `Shocking' WASHINGTON - The United States has determined that about one-third of foreign terrorist organizations are trafficking in narcotics on a large scale, providing authorities with "shocking" insight into how two of the nation's most serious threats are connected, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said Tuesday. "Law enforcement has been aware for some time of significant linkages between terrorism and drug trafficking. But we have not had the tools to quantify the drugs-terrorism nexus until now," Ashcroft said in a speech at the annual conference of the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force. [continues 199 words]
WASHINGTON -- Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft on Tuesday directed U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents to go after Oregon doctors in assisted-suicide cases, saying it is against federal law to dispense or use controlled medications to help a terminally ill patient die. The move by Ashcroft, a strident critic of assisted suicide, was aimed at overruling an Oregon law that allows doctors to help patients who want to hasten their deaths. Ashcroft's memo specifically allows for the revocation of drug prescription licenses of doctors who participate in an assisted suicide using federally controlled substances. His directive did not authorize criminal prosecution of those doctors. In a memo to DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson, Ashcroft said that assisted suicide is not a "legitimate medical purpose" for prescribing, dispensing or administering federally controlled substances. He said that the use of such drugs by physicians to manage patients' pain is medically valid. [continues 930 words]
Courts: The Panel Can't Reach A Verdict Against A Man Who Allegedly Helped Smuggle Millions Of Pills Into The U.S. A federal judge in Los Angeles declared a mistrial Thursday in the case of a man accused of helping smuggle millions of Ecstasy pills into the United States. Jurors in the case of Aaron Cain McKnight deliberated five days before telling U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper that they were unable to reach a unanimous decision on his innocence or guilt. [continues 382 words]
