[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 113 (Friday, July 24, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8074-S8078]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SOUTHERN BORDER VIOLENCE
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about
the violence that continues to plague our southern border region by
Mexico's well-armed, well-financed, and very determined drug cartels.
Last weekend, I went to Yuma, AZ, and met with Border Patrol and
Customs and other law enforcement agents who do such an outstanding job
for our country.
By the way, the temperature was approximately 115 degrees, and our
men and women, who are serving so well, were out there trying to secure
our border and keep our country safe.
Despite the increased efforts of President Calderon to stamp out
these bloodthirsty and vicious drug cartels, violence has increased
dramatically, claiming over 6,000 lives in Mexico last year alone. The
murderers carrying out these crimes are as violent and dangerous as any
in the world. Many have extensive military training and carry out their
illegal activities with sophisticated tactical weapons and no regard
for human life.
Last week, the Washington Post reported that 12 Mexican Federal
agents were murdered and left alongside a mountain road in retaliation
for the arrest of the leader of the country's most violent drug cartel,
La Familia. According to the article, this act represents ``the highest
one-day death toll for Federal forces in the 3-year-old drug war.'' The
article provides the deadly details of the violent attack, reporting:
The attacks began at dawn on Saturday . . . shortly after
the arrest of the right-hand man of La Familia founder
Nazario Moreno Gonzalez. After La Familia gunmen were
repelled in their attempt to free (the leader), they went
on what police described as a shooting rampage to
``avenge'' his capture. The attacks, in which convoys of
gunmen mounted surprise assaults on government positions
in eight cities, went on for 10 hours Saturday and
continued sporadically Sunday.
The bodies of these brave law enforcement officers were accompanied
by a note promising future violence from La Familia if the Federal
Government continues its law enforcement efforts. I remind my
colleagues that this is the same drug cartel that, according to the
Washington Post, ``announced its presence 2 years ago by rolling five
decapitated heads into a dance hall.''
Earlier this month, two American citizens with dual citizenship were
dragged out of their homes and shot several times in the head in the
Mexican state of Chihuahua. The reason was that the victims, according
to the Associated Press:
helped lead the town's approximately 2,000 inhabitants in
protest against a May 2 kidnapping. The residents refused to
pay the $1 million ransom kidnappers requested and
demonstrated in the Chihuahua state capital to demand
justice. Even after (the kidnapped victim) was released
unharmed a week later, the (town's) people continued to lead
marches demanding more law enforcement in the rural, isolated
corner of Chihuahua state. They also set up a committee to
report any suspicious activities in town to police, quickly
becoming an example for other Chihuahua communities.
Yesterday's Washington Post front-page story about these events
states:
Chihuahua today is the emblem of a failed state, run by
incompetent authorities who have little ability to protect
the citizens.
The violence that has terrorized Mexican citizens continues to seep
across the border, devastating families and crippling communities. In
my hometown of Phoenix, there have been over 700 reported kidnappings
in the past year. This has led to Phoenix being declared the
``kidnapping capital of the United States,'' second only to Mexico City
in the world. In many cases, kidnap victims are intertwined with
criminal elements of society, involved with illegal cross-border
smuggling operations.
The police chief of Phoenix testified in April before the Senate's
Homeland Security Committee that Phoenix is a transshipment point for
illegal drugs and smuggled humans, both coming to Phoenix before being
shipped to other points throughout the United States.
[[Page S8075]]
Immigrants illegally crossing the border with paid ``coyotes'' are
treated like expendable cargo to be bought, sold, traded, or stolen. In
many cases, the immigrants' families are ransomed for additional funds
by bajadores, or takedown crews, to guarantee safe delivery of their
loved ones.
As detailed in a Newsweek article from earlier this year:
Kidnap victims have been found bound and gagged, their
fingers smashed and their foreheads spattered with blood from
pistol whippings. When the bajadores abduct illegal
immigrants--hoping to extort more money from relatives--they
will sometimes kill someone off immediately to scare the
others. There was a case last year where they duct-taped the
mouth and nose of one individual and had the others watch
while he asphyxiated and defecated on himself.
These are not pleasant things. They are not pleasant things to
describe. But they are going on right now as we speak.
Aside from the horrible toll these cartels extract from their victims
and the victims' families, they also severely tax the resources of law
enforcement agencies of border communities. The police chief of Phoenix
also testified that the Phoenix police receive a kidnapping report
almost every night, which can require the efforts of up to 60 officers
to find, rescue, and protect kidnap victims.
Lest you believe these activities are limited to border communities,
last year the bodies of five Mexican men were discovered bound, gagged,
and electrocuted in Birmingham, AL, in an apparent hit by a Mexican
cartel. In recent years, arrests of Mexican cartel members have
occurred across the South, including Tennessee, North Carolina, and
Georgia.
There is no sign that the number of these drug-related arrests will
abate in the near future, which is why I support efforts to complete
the proposed 700 miles of double-layer fence. But, as we have seen,
fencing alone fails to take into account the realities of the southern
border and should not be treated as a panacea. These criminal smuggling
enterprises are very sophisticated and are not easily deterred, which
is why we must work to truly secure our border, not merely fence it.
This past weekend, as I mentioned, I visited the border in Yuma, AZ,
and witnessed the extraordinary lengths these cartels go to smuggle
their goods across the border. One cartel spent upwards of $1 million
using sophisticated GPS-directed drilling equipment to develop their
tunnel far below the surface to move goods underneath fencing and out
of sight of law enforcement agencies.
In Nogales, AZ, drug traffickers have used the city's sewer system to
channel drugs across the border. Every other month tunnels are
discovered underneath the border. Since 1990, 110 cross-border tunnels
have been discovered. Twenty-four tunnels were discovered in 2008
alone.
Not to be deterred, our outstanding law enforcement officials have
developed investigative strategies and tunnel detection equipment to
locate and identify subterranean cross-border tunnels.
The latest, by the way, on the part of the drug cartels, is the use
of ultralights. Ultralights now are being flown at extremely low
altitude, loaded with drugs, across the Mexico-Arizona border and all
across the border.
We must also increase personnel on the border to put an end to
illegal immigration and protect our citizens from the drug cartel
violence occurring in Mexico. For this reason, I was disappointed that
the administration rejected Arizona Governor Brewer's request--and the
requests of the Governors of California, New Mexico, and Texas--who
also requested National Guard troops to bolster the Joint Counter-
Narcotics Terrorism Task Force. But, as we know, the coyotes are
aggressive and creative despite our efforts to secure the border with
more personnel, more fencing, and more surveillance technology.
The United States must keep its focus on securing our southern border
and doing all it can to assist President Calderon in his efforts
against these violent drug cartels. The prosperity and success of
Mexico is essential to the prosperity and success of our own country.
We share a border, our economies are intertwined, and we are major
trading partners with each other. The United States must show its
support for our neighbor to the south and support the Mexican people
and the Calderon administration in this fundamental struggle against
lawlessness and corruption.
We have a big problem. We have a big problem with these drug cartels.
The Mexican Government now has a problem. They just lost an election
because the people of Mexico, many of them, believe these drugs are
just going through Mexico, intended for the United States of America.
Violence is at an incredibly high level not only on the border but
throughout the country of Mexico and, tragically, corruption reaches to
very high levels in the government. We have the Merida Initiative. We
are working with the Mexican Government. But there is no time like the
present, in my view, because we need to not only enforce and increase
our efforts on our side of the border but also work as closely as
possible with the Mexican Government and people.
It is horrific what is taking place: beheadings of people, bodies
hung from overpasses. These are amongst the most cruel and terrible
people who inhabit this Earth. It is a lot about drugs. It is a lot
about a $16-billion-a-year business, of drugs coming into the United
States of America. That is how they can afford to spend easily $1
million to build a tunnel underneath the border between Yuma, AZ, and
Mexico.
I know we have a lot of issues that are affecting the future of our
country, including two wars, including relations with countries,
including the Iranian situation, but I hope we can focus a lot of our
attention on the problems that are bred on our border by the drug
cartels and the human smuggling and the terrible mistreatment of people
on both sides of the border as a result of that.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the articles in the Washington
Post and Newsweek be printed in the Record, and I yield the floor.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Washington Post, July 23, 2009]
Ambushed by a Drug War
(By William Booth)
Colonia Lebaron, Mexico--Mormon pioneer Alma Dayer LeBaron
had a vision when he moved his breakaway sect of polygamists
to this valley 60 years ago: His many children would live in
peace and prosperity among the pretty pecan orchards they
would plant in the desert.
Prosperity has come, but the peace has been shattered.
In the past three months, American Mormon communities in
Mexico have been sucked into a dust devil of violence
sweeping the borderlands. Their relative wealth has made them
targets: Their telephones ring with threats of extortion.
Their children and elders are taken by kidnappers. They have
been drawn into the government's war with the drug cartels.
This month, a leader of their colony was abducted by
heavily armed men dressed as police, then beaten and shot
dead 10 minutes from town. Benjamin LeBaron, 31, whom
everyone called Benji, had dared to denounce the criminals,
while refusing to pay a $1 million ransom demanded by
kidnappers who had grabbed his teenage brother from a family
ranch in May.
Amid the blood and mesquite at the site of his last breath,
Benjamin LeBaron's killers posted a sign that read: ``This is
for the leaders of LeBaron who didn't believe and who still
don't believe.''
``We're living in a war zone, but it's a war zone with
little kids running all around in the yard,'' said Julian
LeBaron, a brother of the slain leader. Like most members of
the Mormon enclave, he has dual Mexican-American citizenship
and speaks Spanish and English fluently.
These Mormons, some who swear and drink beer, are the
latest collateral damage in the Mexican government's U.S.-
backed war against criminal organizations.
Here in Chihuahua, the border state south of Texas and New
Mexico, conditions are rapidly deteriorating. The violence
has left more than 1,000 dead in Ciudad Juarez this year,
even though the government has sent 10,000 troops and police
officers into the city.
Increasingly the violence is moving from the big cities
into the small, usually placid farm towns of the rugged
desert mountains. Criminal bands have ambushed the governor's
convoy along the highway, and they have assassinated local
police at stop lights and political leaders at will. Gunmen
executed the mayor of Namiquipa last week.
``The northeast of Chihuahua is now a zone of
devastation,'' said Victor Quintana, a state lawmaker, who
reports an exodus of business people fleeing kidnappers and
farmers refusing to plant their crops because of extortion.
The columnist Alberto Aziz Nassif wrote in El Universal
newspaper, ``Chihuahua today is the emblem of a failed state,
run by incompetent authorities who have little ability to
protect the citizens.''
[[Page S8076]]
Many of the Mormons have fled north to the United States,
and Julian LeBaron said he fears for his life. He has reason.
In Ciudad Juarez, a three-hour drive to the north, hand-
painted banners were hung from overpasses last week
threatening the extended clan.
``All we want to do is live in peace. We want nothing to do
with the drug cartels. They can't be stopped. What we want is
just to protect ourselves from being kidnapped and killed,''
said Marco LeBaron, a college student who came home for the
funeral of his brother, the slain anti-crime activist. Marco
LeBaron is one of 70 Mormons who have volunteered to join a
rural police force to protect the town. The Mexican
government has given them permission to arm themselves.
Dragged Into Drug Fight
For all the violence swirling around them, the Mormons have
mostly stayed out of the fight. Their ancestors first settled
in Mexico in the 1880s, during the reign of dictator Porfirio
Diaz, who offered the religious outcasts refuge from the
harassment and prosecution they faced in the United States
for their polygamist lifestyles. Some men in Colonia LeBaron
and surrounding towns continue to follow what early Mormon
prophets called ``the Principle,'' marrying multiple wives
and having dozens of children, though the custom here is
fading. Polygamy was banned by the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-Day Saints, the official Mormon Church, in 1890.
The Mormon community based in Colonia LeBaron, numbering
about 1,000, has one motel, two grocery stores and lots of
schools. There are no ATMs and no liquor sales. Many Mormons
are conspicuous not only for their straw-colored hair and
pale skin, but also for their new pickup trucks, large
suburban-style homes with green front lawns, and big tracts
of land for their pecans and cattle. They are wealthy, by the
standards of their poor Mexican neighbors. Most of the Mormon
men make their money working construction jobs in the United
States; a young Mormon might work 10 years hanging drywall in
Las Vegas before he has enough money to buy a plot of land to
start his own pecan orchard here.
The Mormons were dragged into the drug fight on May 2, when
16-year-old Eric LeBaron and a younger brother were hauling a
load of fence posts in their truck to their father's ranch in
the Sierra Madre. According to the family's account, five
armed men seized Eric and told his brother to run home and
tell his father to answer the telephone. When the kidnappers
called, they told Joel LeBaron that if he ever wanted to see
Eric again, he must pay them $1 million.
The next day, 150 men gathered at the church house in
Colonia LeBaron to debate what to do. They had no confidence
in the local police. One of their members, Ariel Ray, the
mayor of nearby Galeana, reminded them that someone had put
an empty coffin in the bed of his pickup. Some men argued
that they should hire professional bounty hunters from the
United States to get Eric back. Others wanted to form a
posse.
``But we knew the last thing we could do was give them the
money, or we would be invaded by this scum,'' Julian LeBaron
said.
Another brother, Craig LeBaron, told the Deseret News in
Salt Lake City: ``If you give them a cookie, they'll want a
glass of milk. If we don't make a stand here, it's only a
matter of time before it's my kid.''
A caravan of hundreds of the LeBaron Mormons, along with
Mennonites and others, went to the state capital to protest
the crime. This kind of public advocacy is almost unheard of
among the Mexican Mormons, who keep to themselves. Led by
Benjamin LeBaron, the protesters met with the governor and
state attorney general, who quickly dispatched
helicopters, police and soldiers to the area. The
government forces erected roadblocks and searched the
countryside.
Eric LeBaron was freed eight days after his abduction. His
kidnappers simply told him to go home. But soon after,
another member of the community, Meredith Romney, a 72-year-
old bishop related to former Republican presidential
candidate Mitt Romney, was taken captive. The state governor
sent Colombian security consultants to LeBaron. The Mormons,
led by an increasingly public and outspoken Benjamin LeBaron,
formed a group called SOS Chihuahua to organize citizens to
defend themselves, report crimes and demand results from
authorities. LeBaron was featured prominently in the local
media. He gave a speech to a graduating class of police
cadets. He staged rallies. He got noticed.
Attack on Family Home
Early on July 7, four trucks loaded with men passed through
a highway tollbooth, where they were recorded on videotape
outside Galeana, where Benjamin LeBaron lived in a sprawling,
new stucco home with his wife and five young children. Two
trucks stopped at the cemetery outside town and waited. Two
pickup trucks filled with 15 to 20 heavily armed men, wearing
helmets, bulletproof vests and blue uniforms, came for
LeBaron.
They smashed in his home's windows and shouted for him to
open the door, as his terrified children cried inside,
according to an account given by his brothers. LeBaron's
brother-in-law Luis Widmar, 29, who lived across the street,
heard the commotion and ran to his aid. Both men were beaten
by the gunmen, who threatened to rape LeBaron's wife in front
of her children unless the men revealed where LeBaron kept
his arsenal of weapons.
``But he didn't have any, because I promise you, if he did,
he would have used them to protect his family,'' Julian
LeBaron said.
LeBaron and Widmar were shot in the head outside town. A
banner was hung beside their bodies that blamed them for the
arrest of 25 gunmen who were seized in June after terrorizing
the town of Nicolas Bravo, where they burned down buildings
and extorted from business owners. According to Mexican law
enforcement officials, the gunmen are members of the Sinaloa
drug cartel, which is fighting the Juarez cartel for billion-
dollar cocaine-smuggling routes into El Paso.
After the men killed LeBaron and Widmar, a video camera
captured their departure at the highway tollbooth--the make,
model and year of their vehicles and the license numbers,
according to family members. There have been no arrests.
Who killed Benji LeBaron--and why? These questions are
difficult to answer in Mexico's drug war, and the unknowns
fuel the fear of those left in Colonia LeBaron.
The state attorney general, Patricia Gonzalez, blamed the
group La Linea, the Line, the armed enforcement wing of
former police officers and gunmen that works for the Juarez
cartel. A few months ago, Gonzalez said La Linea was an
exhausted remnant of dead-enders whose ranks had been
decimated by infighting and arrests.
After Gonzalez said the Juarez cartel was responsible for
the killings, banners appeared in Ciudad Juarez that read:
``Mrs. Prosecutor, avoid problems for yourself, and don't
blame La Linea.'' The message stated that the LeBaron
killings were the work of the Sinaloa cartel. On Wednesday,
another banner was hung from an overpass, suggesting that
Benji LeBaron was a thief: ``Ask yourself where did all his
properties come from?''
At the LeBaron funeral, attended by more than 2,000 people,
including the Chihuahua state governor and attorney general,
Benji's uncle Adrian LeBaron said, ``The men who murdered
them have no children, no parents, no mother. They are the
spawn of evil.''
____
[From Newsweek, Mar. 14, 2009]
The Enemy Within
(By Eve Conant and Arian Campo-Flores)
As Manuel exited the Radio Shack in Phoenix with his family
one afternoon last month, a group of Hispanic men standing in
the parking lot watched him closely. ``Do it now, do it
now,'' one said to another in Spanish, according to a
witness. One of the men approached Manuel, pointed a revolver
at his head and tried to force him into a Ford Expedition
parked close by. ``Please, I'll get into the car, just don't
touch me,'' Manuel pleaded as he entered the vehicle, his
wife told police. Nearby, she said, another man in a Chrysler
sedan aimed a rifle or shotgun out the driver's side window.
At some point, shots were fired, said witnesses, although
apparently no one was hit. Then the vehicles tore off with a
screech of tires.
Later that evening, the phone rang. When Manuel's wife
picked up, a male voice said in Spanish, ``Don't call the
police,'' and then played a recording of Manuel saying,
``Tell the kids I'm OK.'' The man said he'd call again, then
hung up. Despite the warning, Manuel's wife contacted the
cops. In subsequent calls, the kidnappers told her Manuel
owed money for drugs, and they demanded $1 million and his
Cadillac Escalade as ransom.
When two men later retrieved the Escalade and drove off,
the cops chased them and forced them off the road. Both men,
illegal immigrants from Mexico, said they'd been paid by a
man (who authorities believe has high-level drug connections)
to drive the vehicle to Tucson. So far, police say, Manuel
hasn't reappeared, and his family has been reluctant to
cooperate further with law enforcement. ``He's a drug dealer,
and he lost a load,'' says Lt. Lauri Burgett of the Phoenix
Police Department's recently created kidnapping squad. ``He
was probably brought to Mexico to answer for that.''
Surprising as it may seem, Phoenix has become America's
kidnapping capital. Last year 368 abductions were reported,
compared with 117 in 2000. Police say the real number is
likely much higher, since many go unreported. Though in the
past most of the nabbings stemmed from domestic-violence
incidents, now the majority are linked to drug-trafficking
and human-smuggling operations that pervade the Arizona
corridor. It's still unclear to what extent the snatchings
are being directly ordered by Mexican cartels, but
authorities say they're undoubtedly a byproduct of the drug-
fueled mayhem south of the border. ``The tactics are moving
north,'' says assistant police chief Andy Anderson. ``We
don't have the violence they have in Mexico yet--the killing
of police officers and the beheadings--but in terms of
kidnappings and home invasions, it has come.''
That raises an unnerving prospect: that the turmoil in
Mexico--where drug violence claimed more than 6,000 lives
last year--is finally seeping across the border. According to
a December report by the Justice Department's National Drug
Intelligence Center, Mexican drug-trafficking organizations
have established a presence in 230 U.S. cities, including
such remote places as Anchorage, Alaska, and Sheboygan, Wis.
The issue is preoccupying American officials. ``This is
getting the highest level of attention,'' including the
president's, says Homeland Security Secretary Janet
Napolitano. She tells NEWSWEEK that the
[[Page S8077]]
administration is dispatching additional Customs and Border
Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel
to the border, and it's reviewing requests from the governors
of Arizona and Texas for help from National Guard troops.
Earlier this month, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, visited Mexico to discuss assistance and to
share potentially relevant lessons that the United States has
learned in Iraq and Afghanistan, says a senior Pentagon
official familiar with details of the trip who wasn't
authorized to speak on the record.
All the attention has stoked public debate on a
particularly fraught question--whether Mexico is a failing
state. A U.S. Joint Forces Command study released last
November floated that scenario, grouping the country with
Pakistan as a potential candidate for ``sudden and rapid
collapse.'' Such a comparison is excessive, says Eric Olson
of the Woodrow Wilson Center's Mexico Institute in
Washington, D.C., though the Mexican government confronts
``real problems of sovereignty in certain areas'' of the
country. Administration officials are striving to tone down
the rhetoric and focus on ways to help. Among the priorities,
says Olson: to cut American demand for drugs, to provide
additional training and equipment to law-enforcement and
military personnel in Mexico, and to clamp down on drug
cash--an estimated $23 billion per year--and assault weapons
flowing into the country from the United States.
As the violence continues to spiral in Mexico, reports of
cartel-related activity are on the rise in American cities
far removed from the border. Last August the bodies of five
Mexican men were discovered bound, gagged and electrocuted in
Birmingham, Ala., in what was believed to be a hit ordered by
Mexican narcotraffickers. A few months later, 33 people with
cartel ties were indicted in Greeneville, Tenn., for
distributing 24,000 pounds of marijuana. In neighboring North
Carolina, ``there are cartel cells . . . that are a direct
extension from Mexico,'' says John Emerson, the Drug
Enforcement Administration's special agent in charge in the
state.
Law enforcement in Atlanta, where a maze of interstates
provides distribution routes throughout the Southeast, has
dubbed the city ``the new Southwest border.'' ``All those
trends are coming here,'' says Fred Stephens of the Georgia
Bureau of Investigations. ``We are seeing alarming patterns,
the same violence.'' He ticks off a spate of cartel-linked
crimes in the state--assaults, abductions, executions. Last
May authorities in Gwinnett County found a kidnap victim,
along with 11 kilos of cocaine and $7.65 million in shrink-
wrapped bundles, in a house rented by an alleged Gulf cartel
cell leader. A few months later, a suspected drug dealer in
Lawrenceville was abducted by six men, dressed commando-style
in black, and held for a $2 million ransom (he escaped).
Nothing rivals the rash of kidnappings in Phoenix, however.
As border enforcement has tightened the screws on the
California and Texas crossings, Arizona has become a prime
gateway for illicit trafficking--in both directions. ``The
drugs and people come north, the guns go south,'' says
Elizabeth Kempshall, the DEA's special agent in charge of the
Phoenix division. Arizona is mostly dominated by the Sinaloa
cartel, which authorities say is trying to assert greater
control over the U.S. drug trade. Yet analysts believe the
organization has fractured--most notably last summer, when
the Beltran Leyva brothers reportedly split from leader
Joaquin (El Chapo) Guzman.
That internecine conflict, along with cartel encroachment
north of the border, has created something of a free-for-all
in Phoenix's criminal underworld. Among the groups that have
stepped into the breach: roving Mexican gangsters called
bajadores, or ``takedown'' crews, who are responsible for
many of the city's kidnappings. Often operating in packs
of five, they typically cross the border to commit crimes,
then retreat south, say police. Some work as enforcers for
the cartels, collecting payment from dealers who have
stiffed the capos or lost their loads. Others function as
freelancers, stealing shipments of drugs or illegal
immigrants from traffickers. ``We've seen an uptick in the
bajadores since last summer,'' says Al Richard, a Phoenix
police detective. ``We are seeing a lot more professionals
coming up here now.''
Bajadores are renowned for their ruthlessness. Kidnap
victims have been found bound and gagged, their fingers
smashed and their foreheads spattered with blood from pistol-
whippings. When the crews abduct illegal immigrants--hoping
to extort more money from relatives--''they will sometimes
kill someone off immediately to scare the others,'' says
Richard. ``There was a case last year where they duct-taped
the mouth and nose of one individual and had the others watch
while he asphyxiated and defecated on himself.'' Some
bajadores have branched out to home invasions. In one
incident last June, a gang broke into a home, outfitted in
Phoenix police gear and Kevlar vests--a hallmark of criminal
enterprises across the border.
To combat the problem, police in Phoenix created the
kidnapping squad--known officially as Home Invasion
Kidnapping Enforcement--last September. Led by Lieutenant
Burgett, the team of 10 lead investigators has already busted
31 crime cells and made more than 220 arrests. But ``it never
stops,'' she says. ``It's like a Texas ant hill.'' One of the
squad's main objectives: to keep the abductions confined to
the criminal world. ``Most of the time, our victims are as
bad as our suspects,'' says Sgt. Phil Roberts. ``We give them
five to 10 minutes to hug their wife, and then they are off
to jail themselves.'' If average citizens begin to get
ensnared, the result could be widespread panic. ``We don't
want what happens in Mexico to happen here, where they are
kidnapping bank presidents,'' he says. ``We don't want the
president of Wells Fargo to need a bodyguard.''
Last Tuesday afternoon, the squad was working a case
involving a suspected marijuana middleman. As police later
learned, a few days earlier, he'd allegedly brokered a deal
between a group of sellers and two buyers for 150 pounds of
pot. But when the parties gathered at a suburban house, the
two buyers held up the others and made off with $40,000 worth
of dope and cash. The man tried to escape, but a woman at the
house pulled a gun on him. ``You're not leaving,'' she said,
according to the middleman's subsequent account to police.
``You set up this deal.'' The stolen goods were now his debt.
Eventually released, he scrambled to cobble together $40,000
worth of possessions--three vehicles, 10 pounds of pot, some
cash--while a man who called himself ``Chuco'' rang him every
hour. But it wasn't enough. On Tuesday morning, Chuco arrived
at the man's house. ``I've got to go,'' the man told his
girlfriend, according to her statements to police. ``If I
don't pay, they're going to hurt me.'' His abductors, he
said, worked for El Chapo (an unconfirmed allegation).
Later that day, the man's girlfriend arrived at the police
station. Sleepless and frantic, she fielded repeated calls
from her boyfriend, who pleaded for her to raise additional
cash. The cops urged her to remain calm. ``I know you are
stressed, but you need to keep talking,'' said one of the
detectives. ``You are the only one who can do the
negotiating.'' She had already called some family members and
asked them to draw money from an equity line. But it wasn't
arriving quickly enough. ``I don't have it yet, baby,'' she
told her boyfriend on a subsequent call, as he grew more
distressed. ``I'm doing everything I can.''
Unbeknownst to the woman, the kidnapping squad had received
information on her boyfriend's possible location. As cops
approached the suspected house a little after midnight, an
SUV suddenly sped away. Police pursued it and pulled it over.
``Tell us where he is!'' a detective told the passengers.
Just then, a Chevy Impala took off from the house. Another
chase ensued, and eventually the driver was forced to stop.
Inside were four passengers, with the middleman in the rear,
flanked by two men armed with weapons. Back at the station,
detectives questioned the parties; as of late last week,
charges were likely against four abductors, but not the
victim, due to a lack of evidence in the suspected marijuana
deal. But now he's on the cops' radar, says Burgett. ``We do
proactive follow-up on victims as well.''
Though much of Phoenix's kidnapping epidemic stems from
alleged drug deals gone awry, plenty are linked to the human-
smuggling trade. That work used to be dominated by small
``mom and pop'' outfits, but in time, the cartels have
muscled in on it. Any group that wants to use their
trafficking routes has to pay up--about $2,000 per week for
Mexicans and $10,000 per week for ``exotics,'' like Chinese
and Middle Easterners, says Richard, the Phoenix detective.
That added business cost has encouraged some smugglers to try
to extort more money from their human loads--known as pollos,
or ``chickens''--once they've crossed the border. More and
more, pollos may change hands several times among duenos, or
``owners''--a new, more violent breed of smugglers. The drop
houses used to stash immigrants are also becoming more
barbaric.
One recent night, the Human Smuggling Unit of the Maricopa
County sheriffs office received a tip on a drop house in a
middle-class neighborhood in Phoenix. Relatives of an
immigrant being held there had received an extortion call
demanding $3,500. Joined by a SWAT team, the unit made its
move, breaching windows and doors, which were boarded up (a
typical precaution taken by smugglers). A half dozen men
tried to escape but were grabbed, says Lt. Joe Sousa, the
unit commander. Inside were several dozen illegal immigrants,
all shoeless and famished. Authorities confiscated two
pistols, a sawed-off shotgun and a Taser-like device--''used
against people when they're put on the phone, begging their
relatives for cash,'' says Sousa. It was a good bust, he
says, but ``within a week or two, that same organization will
be back up and running.'' Sousa moved to Phoenix because he
thought it was a nice place to raise a family. But the
violence is out of control, he says. ``Soon as I retire, I'm
out of here.''
Many area residents who have had encounters with the
smuggling world share the sentiment. At a takedown of a
suspected drop house a few days earlier in nearby Avondale, a
neighbor became inconsolable describing the terror he
experienced living next door to what locals fear is a home to
ruthless criminals. ``It's been hell,'' said the man, who
refused to be named because he was scared. ``I have five
kids. I've been sleeping with two machine guns under my bed
for two years.'' He's planning to foreclose on his property
and flee with his family as soon as possible. Despite the
bust, the smugglers ``will be back,'' he said. ``Right now,
they are headed to the border, they'll chill out for a month,
and they'll be back.'' As overwrought as he may have been, he
was probably right.
[[Page S8078]]
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[From the Washington Post, July 15, 2009]
12 Federal Agents Are Slain in Mexico
(By William Booth)
Nuevo Casas Grandes, Mexico, July 14.--Mexican authorities
said Tuesday that a super-violent drug cartel called La
Familia was responsible for torturing and killing 12 federal
agents whose bodies were found dumped alongside a mountain
road in the western state of Michoacan late Monday.
The agents, who included one woman, had been investigating
organized crime in Michoacan, where gunmen launched a series
of highly coordinated commando attacks against police
officers and soldiers over the weekend.
The abduction, torture and execution of such a large group
of federal agents marks a steep escalation in President
Felipe Calderon's war with the drug cartels. Though drug
mafias often clash with local police officials they fail to
intimidate or corrupt, a direct counterattack against federal
forces is almost unheard-of. The 12 agents represent the
highest one-day death toll for federal forces in the three-
year-old drug war.
Placed beside the corpses of the agents, who were off-duty
when they were abducted, was a sign threatening police, Monte
Alejandro Rubido, a senior federal security official, said at
a news conference.
Federal officials say they think the attacks by La Familia,
a mini-cartel that announced its presence two years ago by
rolling five decapitated heads into a dance hall, were
carried out in retaliation for the capture of one of the
group's leaders.
The attacks began at dawn Saturday in Michoacan's capital,
Morelia, shortly after the arrest of Arnold Rueda Medina,
reported to be the right-hand man of La Familia founder
Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, known as ``El Mas Loco,'' or the
Craziest One.
After La Familia gunmen were repelled in their attempt to
free Rueda, they went on what police described as a shooting
rampage to ``avenge'' his capture. The attacks, in which
convoys of gunmen mounted surprise assaults on government
positions in eight cities, went on for 10 hours Saturday and
continued sporadically Sunday.
Mexican law enforcement officials say La Familia is a
different kind of cartel, combining a code of extreme
violence with a commitment to protect Michoacan residents
from outsiders--which would include federal agents and army
soldiers.
Members of La Familia are recruited from rural militias and
drug treatment centers. Federal authorities swept into city
halls in Michoacan and arrested 10 mayors in May on suspicion
of colluding with the gang.
La Familia is fighting for control of cocaine-smuggling
routes that lead from the port of Lazaro Cardenas toward the
United States. The group also operates clandestine
methamphetamine labs and marijuana farms in the mountains.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Texas is
recognized.
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