Category: Breaking News

Border crossings at historic lows, but up from last month

(BREITBART) — Illegal border crossings along the southwest U.S. border with Mexico are at a six-year low but are up some over last month.

The total apprehensions of illegal aliens crossing the southwest border with Mexico increased 10 percent from May to June, according to a new report obtained by Breitbart Texas from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials. This follows a 31 percent increase from April to May.

In May 2017, border apprehensions increased from a historic 17-year low of 11,126 in April to 14,535 in May, Breitbart Texas reported. Those numbers went up again in June to 16,089, CBP officials detailed.

During the same period in the year before, Border Patrol agents apprehended 38,089 illegal immigrants in April, 40,337 in May, and 34,450 in June.

Year-to-date apprehensions are down substantially when comparing fiscal years 2016 and 2017. During the first three quarters of FY 2016, agents apprehended a total of 366,044 illegal immigrants. In that same period this year, the numbers fell to 240,930, a decrease of 34 percent.

http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2017/07/08/border-crossings-at-historic-lows-up-from-last-month/

19 cartel gunmen killed in firefight near Mexican beach resort town

(BREITBART) — Nineteen cartel gunmen and two others died in a series of fierce firefights near the Mexican beach resort town of Mazatlan, Sinaloa.

The violence began on Friday night in the village of Villa Union located near the famed resort town of Mazatlan, information provided to Breitbart Texas by Mexican Military officials revealed. In that village, a team of gunmen executed two men outside of a house along a road that leads to the nearby town of Mapa.

Local police officers responding to the shooting chased the gunmen setting off a rolling gun battle as authorities and gunmen exchanged gunfire. During that clash, four police officers sustained gunshot injuries and were rushed to emergency rooms in Mazatlan. Officials did not disclose the condition of the officers.

Shortly after the initial execution and the first firefight, a convoy of military vehicles clashed with a team of approximately 19 gunmen riding in 4 SUV’s. The gunmen wore body armor. They also carried machine guns and other military style weapons.

The fierce gun battle went on for several minutes until the military forces were able to kill 19 of the gunmen in the convoy. The bodies of the cartel sicarios were left behind for Sinaloa State authorities to document and investigate.

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7th Mexican journalist murdered in months, killers incinerated corpse

(BREITBART) — by Ildefonso Ortiz and Brandon Darby

MEXICO CITY — MEXICO CITY — Mexican authorities identified the charred remains of an investigative journalist from Michoacán kidnapped a month ago. This is the seventh case of a reporter who covered the government or drug cartels being murdered.

On Monday afternoon, the Michoacan Attorney General’s Office (PGJ) announced the identification Salvador Adame, a journalist who was kidnapped a month prior. Adame’s charred remains were found in Mid-May in an area called Devil’s Creek or Barranca del Diablo not far from a state highway between the rural communities of Nueva Italia and Lombardia. The body was identified after investigators performed DNA testing, Michoacan authorities revealed.

Salvador Adame was the director for a local news station called 6TV in Michoacan, the same state where he was kidnapped by cartel gunmen on May 18 near the rural community of Nueva Italia. For more than one month, the fate of the journalist went unknown. Various colleagues took to social media to express their outrage and even the U.S. Embassy tweeted about his disappearance.

According to information gained from the interrogation of Daniel “El Cabezon” Ruiz, a top enforcer for the Familia Michoacana/Knights Templar, Adame’s kidnapping, murder, and incineration was carried out by Feliciano “Chano Peña” Ledezma. Daniel Ruiz was recently arrested by authorities in the operation where they captured the head of the Nueva Familia, Ignacio “El Cenizo” Andrade Renteria the leader of the Familia Michoacana/Knights Templar.

According to Michoacan law enforcement officials, the late Salvador Adame was a childhood friend of Ruiz–leading to his cooperation in an effort to recover the slain journalist’s body.

As Breitbart Texas reported, 2017 has been a deadly year for media with a total of seven investigative journalists critical of Mexico’s government or drug cartels being killed. Days before Adame was kidnapped, in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, gunmen murdered award-winning journalist Javier Valdez, sparking outrage among local journalists.

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74 killed in weeks-long cartel war near Texas border

(BREITBART) — REYNOSA, Tamaulipas — The raging cartel war for control of this city resulted in at least 74 officially-counted murders. Many more victims have been incinerated just south of the Texas border.

In early May, Breitbart Texas began reporting on rival factions of the Gulf Cartel fighting for control of this border city. The continuing conflicts resulted in convoys of cartel gunmen roaming the streets looking for their rivals.

Overnight, cartel gunmen dumped a bloodied corpse with a posterboard where one cartel factions threatened their rivals. Bodies with warnings had not been seen previously in Reynosa. However, they are commonplace in Ciudad Victoria and in the border state of Nuevo Leon where Breitbart Texas has been reporting Los Zetas and other cartels are also carrying out massacres.

The violence spiked in early May, shortly after Mexican authorities killed former Gulf Cartel boss Juan Manuel “Toro” Loiza Salinas in late April. His death led to a power vacuum where his former allies are trying to fight off the another faction that appears to be favored by other cartel leaders. The ongoing fighting has led to a spike in highway robberies, armed robberies, kidnappings, and extortions as cartel commanders continue to look for ways to fund their ongoing war.

The raging violence by the Gulf Cartel immediately south of the Texas border led to the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) issuing an alert to agents that they represent regarding the cartel war just south of the border, Breitbart Texas reported.

The NBPC warned federal agents about the constant gun battles and the possibility of spillover violence or stray rounds fired in Mexico landing in Texas.

http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2017/06/24/graphic-74-killed-weeks-long-cartel-war-near-texas-border/

Mexican cartel spying on U.S. cops in plot to identify, murder informants in Arizona

(BREITBART) — by Robert Arce

A Mexican transnational criminal group aligned with the Sinaloa Federation (Sinaloa Cartel) is performing a surveillance operation on U.S. soil against U.S. law enforcement personnel. The cartel is attempting to identify U.S. law enforcement agents’ confidential informants so that the sources can be murdered.

The operation is occurring in southern Arizona, according to a warning classified as law enforcement sensitive (Police Sensitive/Unclassified) that was issued by the FBI. The warning, known a situational report or bulletin, was issued on Friday, June 23, 2017. A highly trusted source working in the region provided the information to Breitbart Texas on the condition of anonymity and with the agreement that we would redact certain details in our public report.

This deadly plot is occurring in Douglas, Arizona, or surrounding areas by a special forces group of the Sinaloa Federation based out of Agua Prieta, Mexico. The cartel’s group, specifically a specialized surveillance team, is called “Grupo Delta.”

The FBI-issued report names a specific individual as a known member of the Agua Prieta drug trafficking organization and it asserts that this individual deployed the cartel surveillance team into the U.S. for this effort.

Though the FBI-issued situational report does not specify the name of the specific Mexico-based criminal group, Agua Prieta is controlled by a group known as Los Salazar which operates under the banner of the Sinaloa Federation, thereby making them part of the Sinaloa Cartel.

Agua Prieta is located on the border with Douglas, Arizona, approximately two hours southeast of Tucson, Arizona.

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U.S. border agents warned of ‘open warfare’ with ‘grenades’ in Mexico at Texas border

(BREITBART) — by Brandon Darby & Ildefonso Ortiz

Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley Sector (RGV) of South Texas are being warned about risks posed to them on the border by “open warfare” including grenade attacks occurring on the Mexican side.

The warning echoes Breitbart Texas’s Cartel Chronicles reports on the bloody war occurring at the border between a faction of the Mexican Gulf Cartel and Mexican authorities.

The warning was issued by the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) to agents in the RGV Sector. It reads:

WARNING ADVISORY TO BORDER PATROL AGENTS IN RGV SECTOR

Recent events in Tamaulipas, Mexico, specifically in and around the city of Reynosa, pose a special risk to U.S. Border Patrol agents working in the region.

The Reynosa faction of the Mexican Gulf Cartel recently lost its leader and the group is engaging in open warfare with Mexican authorities and possibly with rival factions or other transnational criminal groups. Open source reports indicate gunbattles and use of grenades and other explosives in the fighting.

Border Patrol agents working the line in any station’s area of operations immediately across the largely open border from Reynosa, Mexico, are advised to employ extra caution in the performance of their duties. Stray rounds from firearms have previously injured U.S. law enforcement personnel on the border.

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Cartel frees teen inmates in Mexican border state

(BREITBART) — CIUDAD VICTORIA, Tamaulipas — A team of cartel gunmen from one of the factions of Los Zetas rescued eight teenagers serving various prison terms at a juvenile center in the town of Guemez, north of this city.

After beating and threatening detention center officers and staff, two teams of cartel gunmen were able to remove the juvenile inmates. Because the facility is meant to hold underage offenders, the security conditions were no match for the team of gunmen.

The breakout caused a massive deployment of military and police forces to detain the escapees. One day later, authorities claimed they captured two of the fugitives.

An intelligence report revealed that the inmates were busted out under orders of a cartel boss known only as Z-28. The juvenile detention center is just a short drive north from Ciudad Victoria along the highway that connects with the border city of Matamoros.

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Coahuila: How a border state government covered up a massacre of hundreds of people

(BREITBART) — PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Coahuila — Four years have passed since state authorities claimed to begin investigating how gunmen with Los Zetas cartel were able to kidnap, murder, and exterminate hundreds of victims from rural communities in this border state between 2011 and 2013. The case became one big cover up.

In early 2016, Breitbart Texas reported on how Los Zetas used ovens and 55-gallon drums to incinerate hundreds of victims from the northern part of the state. The massacre began in 2011 in Allende, Coahuila, but continued for two years throughout the region and in this city. It continued without any state authority making an effort to stop it while local news outlets were muffled. Years later, government officials confirmed that approximately 150 victims were incinerated inside the state prison in Piedras Negras.

At the time, the Coahuila Attorney General’s Office was run by Jesus Torres Chaires, an individual who was singled out in U.S. Court testimony as having received money from Los Zetas. The allegations against Torres Chaires were made by Rodrigo Humberto Uribe Tapia during a high-profile federal trial of a top Zeta associate in Texas.

The testimony pointed to Los Zetas giving millions to the state attorney general who in turn would give some of that money to the former Governor Humberto Moreira. As Breitbart Texas reported, Moreira is just one of various Mexican governors who were linked in U.S courts to Los Zetas. Court documents published by this outlet reveal that the U.S. government considered the entire structure of the Coahuila government to be a surrogate of Los Zetas cartel.

In an interview with Mexico’s Vanguardia, Torres Chaires claimed that the allegations about him taking money from Los Zetas were lies and he was trying to move on from the events of the massacre in Allende, which he described as things that just happened.

At the time of the massacre and in the years after, the top lawmen in the northern region of Coahuila were Santos Vasquez Estrada and Patricia Rivera Barrera, each during their respective term held the position of PGJE Delegate in Piedras Negras and oversaw most of the rural communities where Los Zetas carried out their massacres. Individuals interviewed by Breitbart Texas revealed that neither of the two officials made any effort to investigate, identify, or target any of the real individuals behind the massacres or the masterminds behind the current drug traffickers in the area. Since the massacre, authorities have publicized the charging of various low-level Zeta bosses; however, the real actors behind the various massacres in the state have escaped scrutiny.

While Vasquez left the PGJE and is currently a criminal defense attorney, Rivera Barrera continues to work at the agency. Breitbart Texas was able to confirm that Rivera Barrera lost her top post in the PGJE after she traveled to Mexico City to take an integrity test commonly called “examen de confianza” — she failed. Local news outlets erroneously reported that Rivera Barrera had been fired from her job in early 2016.

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FBI’s suspect in kidnapping of border agent is cartel-connected, deported 3 times prior

(BREITBART) — The FBI is searching for a suspect in the matter of a U.S. Border Patrol agent who was found severely injured on the side of an El Paso Sector roadway after having been kidnapped.

A leaked official document and a variety of sources reveal the name and birth date of the suspect and two images of the man. Sources operating under the umbrella of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reveal the man is believed to have been deported three times prior, each time being allowed to leave the U.S. voluntarily without legal consequences.

The suspect is also believed by sources to have connections with the Juarez Cartel, or its enforcement arm, La Linea.

A BOLO was issued to federal agents along the border revealing:

Sergio Ivan Quinonez-Venegas is wanted for questioning in connection with the kidnapping and assault of an off-duty Border Patrol agent that occurred on the evening of June 9, 2017.

Quinonez’ date of birth is 01/25/1984. Quinonez has a possible criminal history of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

The BOLO continues further with the names of the FBI special agents leading the investigation, where the document was prepared, and contact information for those parties. The two images provided were also included in the BOLO released to federal agents. Such information was redacted by Breitbart Texas, but the remainder of the BOLO is provided below.

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Border Patrol agent found badly beaten, missing fingers in N.M.

(OAN) — Authorities have opened an investigation into the kidnapping and torture of a border patrol agent who was assigned to watch a New Mexico crossing.

A motorist found the off-duty agent on the side of the road around 11 p.m. Friday night.

He was badly beaten with wounds on his chest, arms, and head.

Officials say his fingers were also cut-off.

Law enforcement officials are asking all agents in the area to be aware of their surroundings while the investigation continues.

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