tagged w/ drug smugglers
-
20 tons of pot seized, eight arrested in San Diego and Tijuana.
Reporting from San Diego —
Federal authorities have unearthed another cross-border tunnel in a San Diego warehouse district, the second major tunnel discovery and multi-ton seizure of marijuana believed to be from Mexico's most powerful drug cartel in a month.
The tunnel, which started in a residence in Tijuana, stretched nearly half a mile and split into two passageways, with the branches emerging at separate warehouses nearly 800 feet apart.
The tunnel was within a block of a subterranean passage found three weeks ago, where authorities seized more than 25 tons of marijuana, the second-largest marijuana seizure in U.S. history.
With Thursday's haul of 20 more tons, authorities said they had dealt a significant double blow to Mexican organized crime groups. The amount seized was the equivalent of about 17 million marijuana joints, said Ralph Partridge, the special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration office in San Diego.
"This has a huge impact," Partridge said.
Authorities believe the drugs found in the tunnels this month belonged to separate cells of the Sinaloa drug cartel, which has long used northern Baja California as staging ground for smuggling drugs into California. The discovery on Thursday morning came after U.S. agents stopped a tractor-trailer loaded with marijuana bales that had just left a warehouse on Marconi Drive.
Inside the empty warehouse space where a "For Rent" sign hung out front, agents found an opening cut into the concrete floor. They traversed the tunnel to the second opening in a warehouse a few blocks away on Via de la Amistad.
To find the opening on the Tijuana side, Mexican Army soldiers traversed the entire 2,200-foot passage, which featured lighting and ventilation systems. They surfaced in the kitchen of the residence where a family lived. Authorities said six people were arrested in Mexico.
"They were very surprised," said Tim Durst, an assistant special agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement who heads the multi-agency San Diego Tunnel Task Force. The bust culminated an eight-month investigation, built largely on tips from informants.
Authorities seized four tons of marijuana in the Tijuana residence and another location in Mexico; three tons in the tunnel; and about 13 tons in the tractor trailer. Two men were arrested in California, including the driver of the tractor-trailer.
The tunnel was one of the longest ever discovered and had several unique features that highlighted traffickers' evolving approach to ferrying drugs under the border. The floor of the passageway was lined with tongue-and-groove wooden boards that served as a level surface for the cart and rail system. There was an underground room, roughly 10 by 20 feet, where smugglers off-loaded the marijuana bales from the cart before hoisting them to the surface.
The most unusual feature was the construction of two tunnel branches, which authorities speculate allowed smugglers alternate exit points in case of surveillance.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-tunnel-20101127,0,416000.story20 tons of pot seized, eight arrested in San Diego and Tijuana.
Reporting from San... more
-
-
The United States is under attack by narco terrorists invading from the failed state of Mexico and Obama and the federal government are doing nothing about it.
In June, the Mexican drug mafia forced the closure of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona. Authorities in Arizona admit that criminals now control a drug and human smuggling corridor that stretches from the border into metro Phoenix. Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu explained in June that the Mexican Mafia controls three counties in his state.
Now drug smugglers are repeating the pattern in Texas.
On Saturday, the Cypress Times, an online newspaper in Cypress, Texas, reported that the murderous Los Zetas has crossed into the United States and taken over at least two ranches in the Laredo, Texas area. The owners of the farms have evacuated and were not harmed.
“I can personally vouch that this info came in late last night from a reliable police source inside the Laredo PD,” Jeff Schwilk, founder of the San Diego Minutemen, told the online newspaper. “There is currently a standoff between the unknown size Zeta forces and U.S. Border Patrol and local law enforcement on two ranches on our side of the Rio Grande.”
Kimberly Dvorak, writing for the Albuquerque Examiner, reports that two sources inside the Laredo Police Department have confirmed the incident. “We consider this an act of war,” said one police officer on the ground near the scene. There is a news blackout of this incident at this time and the sources inside Laredo PD spoke on the condition of anonymity, writes Dvorak.
The DBKP blog contacted the the Laredo Police Department on Saturday. “We have been advised to say nothing. The Webb County Sheriff is taking the lead on this and they’re advising that they can’t confirm anything either,” a spokesperson told the blog.
On March 30, 2008, the Dallas Morning News reported Mexican drug cartels operated military-style training camps in at least six such locations in northern Tamaulipas and Nuevo León states, some within a few miles of the Texas border, according to U.S. and Mexican authorities and the printed testimony of five protected witnesses who were trained in the camps.
“Traffickers go to great lengths to prepare themselves for battle,” a senior U.S. anti-narcotics official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the newspaper. “Part of that preparation is live firing ranges and combat training courses…. And that’s not something that we have seen before.” In the state of Tamaulipas, Los Zetas train with other mercenaries, including the Kaibiles from Guatemala, the officials said.
The Justice Department warned local police in Arizona and California about Los Zetas violence along the border. “The violence will spill over the Mexican border into the United States and law enforcement agencies in Texas, Arizona and Southern California can expect to encounter Los Zetas in the coming months,” warned an intelligence bulletin issued by the feds. The Justice Department and Homeland Security consider the Mexican drug cartels as the greatest organized crime threat to the United States.
Los Zetas was founded by an elite force of assassins from Mexican Army deserters and is now integrated by corrupt ex-federal, state, and local police officers. Los Zetas was first hired as a private mercenary army for Mexico’s Gulf Cartel, but since February of this year have gone independent and are now enemies of its former partner.
In the first eleven months of 2008, Los Zetas killers were directly responsible for the deaths of 5,300 people, including soldiers, their own operatives, civilians, journalists, and rival drug traffickers.
In 2006, Mexican president Felipe Calderon supposedly declared war on the drug cartels. Since Calderon’s declaration, more than 25,000 people have been killed in Mexico due to drug violence. In June of this year alone hundreds of people in Mexico died from drug-related violence.
Last week CBS News said Mexico’s drug Mafia had adopted “al-Qaeda tactics” after a car bomb exploded across the border from El Paso, Texas, in Ciudad Juárez, killing two federal officers and a musician and injuring 11 people, including several bystanders. In late June, the El Paso City Hall was struck by gunfire from a deadly narco terrorist attack across the border in Juárez.
In May, Obama announced that 1,200 troops would be sent to the border to crack down on smuggling and drug cartel violence. Critics have called it political posturing in the run-up to November congressional elections and a response to Arizona’s recently passed immigration law.
Republicans in Texas consider the deployment of 250 troops in their state an insult. “The National Guard troops are not an adequate or long-term solution — they’re only a Band-Aid,” a spokeswoman for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill White told the Star-Telegram. “Maybe Texas should sue the federal government for not doing its job,” added U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Lewisville.
Senator Kyl of Arizona said in June that Obama is refusing to secure the border until Congress passes so-called immigration reform. “The problem is, he said, if we secure the border, then you all won’t have any reason to support comprehensive immigration reform,” Kyl said at a town hall organized by a local Arizona Tea Party.
In June, the banksters admitted they fund the Mexican drug Mafia. Wachovia and Bank of America have moved money for Mexican drug smugglers.
“The admission came in an agreement that Charlotte, North Carolina-based Wachovia struck with federal prosecutors in March, and it sheds light on the largely undocumented role of U.S. banks in contributing to the violent drug trade that has convulsed Mexico for the past four years,” Bloomberg reported. “Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations,” Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor who handled the case, told Bloomberg.
Bankster participation has also financed the Mexican Mafia’s expansion into Texas and Arizona.The United States is under attack by narco terrorists invading from the failed state... more
-
-
Michael Smith
Bloomberg
June 30, 2010
Just before sunset on April 10, 2006, a DC-9 jet landed at the international airport in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, 500 miles east of Mexico City. As soldiers on the ground approached the plane, the crew tried to shoo them away, saying there was a dangerous oil leak. So the troops grew suspicious and searched the jet.
They found 128 black suitcases, packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100 million. The stash was supposed to have been delivered from Caracas to drug traffickers in Toluca, near Mexico City, Mexican prosecutors later found. Law enforcement officials also discovered something else.
The smugglers had bought the DC-9 with laundered funds they transferred through two of the biggest banks in the U.S.: Wachovia Corp. and Bank of America Corp., Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its August 2010 issue.
This was no isolated incident. Wachovia, it turns out, had made a habit of helping move money for Mexican drug smugglers. Wells Fargo & Co., which bought Wachovia in 2008, has admitted in court that its unit failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics traffickers — including the cash used to buy four planes that shipped a total of 22 tons of cocaine.
Full Article Here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-29/banks-financing-mexico-s-drug-cartels-admitted-in-wells-fargo-s-u-s-deal.htmlMichael Smith
Bloomberg
June 30, 2010
Just before sunset on April 10, 2006, a... more
-
-
Over 300 miles of fencing on the U.S.-Mexican border that was supposed to prevent illegal immigrations and smugglers from crossing was stripped by Congress from a Department of Homeland security bill.
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) had offered an amendment for the installation of 700 miles along the border but it did not remain in the bill. DeMint's provision was that 300 miles of low-rise vehicle barriers and vitual fencing, using cameras and sensors, could not count towards the 700 miles the U.S. government had promised to build.Over 300 miles of fencing on the U.S.-Mexican border that was supposed to prevent... more
-
-
Glenn Beck refuses to deny that he beats his wife, or confirm that he's stopped beating his wife. We don't know if Glenn Beck has stopped beating his wife or not, but Glenn refuses to comment. So why won't Glenn Beck discuss this allegation? If Glenn Beck is still beating his wife, people should know about it. We encourage people to call in to his radio show and ask Glenn if he's stopped beating his wife, and set the record straight.Glenn Beck refuses to deny that he beats his wife, or confirm that he's stopped... more
-
-
JAKARTA, Indonesia: Indonesia executed two Nigerians convicted of smuggling illegal drugs, with officials saying Friday that the executions were timed to mark the U.N. anti-drugs day.
Samuel Okoye, 37, and Hansen Nwaolisa, 40, were arrested at Jakarta's international airport in 2001, each carrying more than 6.5 pounds (three kilograms) of heroin. They had been held at a high-security prison on Nusakambangan island since their conviction.
"We have carried out the sentence, according to the court's decision," said local prosecutor Muhamad Yamin.
The executions by firing squad took place overnight, marking the international anti-drugs day on Thursday, Indonesia's anti-narcotics agency said.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,How to spice a UN action day.JAKARTA, Indonesia: Indonesia executed two Nigerians convicted of smuggling illegal... more
-
-
Purdey
-
added this
-
3 years ago
- |
