In the early dawn’s orange glow, a Texas Rangers commander briefs a heavily armed invasion force.
They’re preparing to seize a remote, 170-acre Mexican cartel-controlled island in the middle of the Rio Grande River overlooked by sniper nests and potentially booby-trapped.
Some of the dozens of assembled men shift from one foot to another or reposition their M-4 rifles as they listen to their commanders’ instructions.
The cartel responsible for the slaughter of six innocent teenagers in Mexico filmed them being led to their deaths and sent the footage to their parents, according to local reports.
The video shows an armed cartel member in a skull mask leading the teens — ages 14 to 18 — who are dressed with black hoods over their faces obscuring their view and their hands tied behind their backs.
Organised crime groups in Mexico have about 175,000 members – making them the fifth-biggest employer in the country, according to new research published in the journal Science.
Using a decade of data on homicides, missing persons and incarcerations, as well as information about interactions between rival factions, the paper published on Thursday mathematically modeled overall cartel membership, and how levels of violence would respond to a range of policies.
The authors argue that the best way to reduce the bloodshed would be to cut cartel recruitment – whereas locking up more members would actually increase the murder rate.
Newly released data shows that nine Mexican cities rank among the 10 deadliest in the globe in 2022, according to World of Statistics.
The report listed the western Mexico municipality of Colima as the murder capital in the world with 181.9 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.
The city is the second largest in the state of Colima and placed first in the list in 2021 with 196.6 murders per 100,000 inhabitants.
Overrun: How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in U.S. History, by Todd Bensman, Bombardier Books, 432 pages
By the end of four years in power, the Biden administration will almost surely have admitted over 10 million illegal immigrants. Todd Bensman’s Overrun: How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in U.S. History is an essential book for understanding this migrant maelstrom. Reading his analysis of the unfolding border catastrophe can be wrenching, even infuriating, but conservatives need to grapple with a historic disaster, and the valuable material presented in this important book.
Overrun is a fire-bell ringing in the night. A White House that erases national borders, ignores federal laws, and refuses to expel illegal arrivals is on a mission to fundamentally change the country. While the country’s situation is dire, even desperate, Overrun also offers crucial policy fixes, most notably the need to “tear down and rebuild the American asylum system.”
h/t Kiki9
Please remember to donate to Blazingcatfur’s fundraiser.
Former attorney general Bill Barr believes the United States should use the lessons it learned from the War on Terror in the fight against Mexican drug cartels.
“There were 80,000 ISIS [militants] controlling a large territory in the Middle East, and we had a couple thousand special forces as well as local supporting groups such as the Kurds,” Barr told National Review in an interview. “Over time, we were able to destroy them. Now, a lot of that included bombing targets, and I’m not suggesting we do that here, but the ability to use special operations and precision operations against what are paramilitary forces will allow us to reduce them in pretty short order.”
At least the next forever war will be closer to home.
Since the day he came into office, Biden has opened America’s southern border, an illegal act that should see him not only impeached but indicted and imprisoned. But that’s not the world in which we live. We live in a world in which millions of illegal aliens stream into America, a substantial number of whom are Mexican cartel foot soldiers. That’s why you should know about the horrible deaths that five childhood friends suffered at the hands of the cartel in Jalisco, Mexico.
Why would what failed to work in Colombia and Afghanistan succeed in Mexico?
Responding to a voter during a campaign stop this week, Florida governor and 2024 presidential candidate Ron DeSantis endorsed a once fringe idea that is becoming increasingly mainstream in
Republican policy circles: that the United States has the right, indeed obligation, to use military force in Mexico to protect the American people from drug cartels.
And yes, that includes the use of US drones, a revolutionary military technology the US military and CIA have deployed repeatedly to target terrorists in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Somalia (among others).
Mexico has a very popular socialist president whose leftist party is heading for re-election, and there’s precious little reporting on why that may be the case.
But the pieces start to pop together with a long, interesting Financial Times piece that explains what’s going on in Mexico and why Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is popular.
The short answer? AMLO’s turning his country over to the military. The Times begins its piece by focusing on how Mexico City’s main airport has become a military operation.
Mexican cartels are quietly expanding their global criminal empires to include mass theft operations targeting big-box stores, luxury retail brands, and small businesses, then selling the stolen goods online and laundering the profits through Chinese brokers.
The same transnational criminal organizations, known as cartels, that have facilitated the greatest-ever human smuggling operation across the U.S.-Mexico border over the past two years and simultaneously caused the fentanyl epidemic in America now have a hand in organized retail crime.
Assailants have thrown explosives at a police station in Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas, as a massive search continued on Wednesday for 14 police employees abducted at gunpoint on a local highway.
The attacks highlight a new turf battle between cartels for control of drug and immigrant trafficking in the state, which borders Guatemala.
Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, confirmed the kidnappings were part of a battle between two gangs, saying “nowadays that is the most common thing, that the groups clash”.
Our friend and trading partner.
Mexican police have discovered dozens of bags with human remains, during a search operation for seven young workers of a call center who went missing a week ago, Mexican prosecution said on Thursday.
Forty-five bags containing dismembered bodies were discovered in the Mirador del Bosque, in the suburbs of the western city of Guadalajara. The city is considered the cradle of the powerful cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG).
The Jalisco state prosecutor’s office said it was not yet clear whether the remains belonged to the seven missing workers but declared that the search for them was ongoing.
Mexico will be America’s next war. So say the jungle drums.
An armed cartel member can be seen gunning down attendees of a car race in Ensenada, Baja California in horrifying video posted on Twitter.
The video shows several men wielding guns and shooting at cars about 2:18 pm Saturday.
Rounds of automatic weapon fire can be heard firing nonstop in the footage posted by Mexican journalist Alfredo Alvarez.
#BreakingNews At least 10 people killed, nine injured in shootout in northern Mexico#MexicoCity #Mexico #shooting#americagunculture #Baja #California #BajaCalifornia
Video ⚠️ pic.twitter.com/g6Av3VUcq7— Shekhar Pujari (@ShekharPujari2) May 21, 2023
María Zapata Escamilla woke to the sound of shattering glass. Armed men in military fatigues had burst into her home: they dragged her disabled husband outside, along with her 14-year-old son, still in his pyjamas. Then they drove away into the night.
Two weeks later, her husband’s brutalized body turned up, along with nine others. But after more than a year, her son remains missing.
“I was left navigating alone,” she said through tears. “If they told me, ‘Give up your life in exchange for your son,’ I would give it.”
Straining under the pressure of thousands of migrants flooding into the US, Border Patrol agents were ordered to begin releasing swaths of people from overwhelmed holding facilities Wednesday.
Agents were ordered Wednesday to release migrants from any border sector that reached 125% capacity. They are being released without having a court date and with no way the US can track them, but given instructions to appear at an immigration office within 60 days, according to NBC.
“We’re already breaking and we haven’t hit the starting line,” one DHS official told the network.
You can see Mexican immigration leading this group to the river today as part of their secret WhatsApp coordination with Biden’s DHS as I reported @CIS_org yesterday, but texas screwed this up by having a national guard tactical team block them on the bank.Vid by @jwbr77 pic.twitter.com/ZegYj3heIq
— Todd Bensman (@BensmanTodd) May 11, 2023
