Arizona Republic And Washington Times: Cartels To Send Assassins Into Arizona To Begin Operations – UPDATED
Oct 17, 2010 65 Comments ›› Pat Dollard
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Trust me, this report ain’t bogus. I’ve seen ‘em, I know how they work. You don’t get bullsh*t intel with this degree and type of detail, not down here from the cartels. I know how the bogus reports look, and they don’t look like this. I’m so f-ing pissed at the DHS right now. These f-ing covering-up liars are willing to kill Americans in order to get Mexican f-ing voters up here. Just like the Dems killed us in Iraq by extending the war trying to get us to surrender.
Once those sicarios are up here, they’ll stay, even after any initial mission is completed. This is the whole f-ing thing I’ve been saying was coming. It’s like a f-ing Hollywood movie: there’s a f-ing no-sh*t insurgency that this country is about to get embroiled in. And once the polticians, cops, judges, press, and military get bribed, these Mexicans will have real ruling power, to whatever degree.
Unless we act, and sooner rather than later.
Read both articles, carefully.
Drug smuggling gangs in Mexico have sent well-armed assassins, or “sicarios,” into Arizona to locate and kill bandits who are ambushing and stealing loads of cocaine, marijuana and heroin headed to buyers in the United States, the Department of Homeland Security has warned Arizona law enforcement authorities.
In a memo sent in May and widely circulated since, the department said: “We just received information from a proven credible confidential source who reported that a meeting was held in Puerto Penasco in which every smuggling organization who utilizes the Vekol Valley was told to attend. This included rival groups within the Guzman cartel.”
Joaquín Archivaldo Guzman Loera heads what formally is known as the Sinaloa Cartel, which smuggles multi-ton loads of cocaine from Colombia through Mexico to the United States. One of the most powerful and dangerous drug gangs in Mexico, it also is known as the Guzman cartel, which has been tied to the production, smuggling and distribution of Mexican marijuana and heroin and has established transshipment outlets in the United States.
The Vekol Valley is a widely-traveled drug smuggling corridor running across Interstate 8 between the Arizona towns of Casa Grande and Gila Bend, continuing north towards Phoenix. It gives drug smugglers the option of shipping their goods to California or to major cities both north and east.
The Homeland Security memo said a group of “15, very well equipped and armed sicarios complete with bullet proof vests” had been sent into the valley. It said the assassins would be disguised as “groups of ‘simulated backpackers’ carrying empty boxes covered with burlap into the Vekol Valley to draw out the bandits.” Once identified, the memo said, “the sicarios will take out the bandits.”
The federal government has posted signs along Interstate 8 in the Vekol Valley warning travelers the area is unsafe because of drug and alien smugglers, and the local sheriff says Mexican drug cartels now control some parts of the state.
The signs were posted by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) along a 60-mile stretch of Interstate 8 between Casa Grande and Gila Bend, a major east-west corridor linking Tucson and Phoenix with San Diego. They warn travelers they are entering an “active drug and human smuggling area” and may encounter “armed criminals and smuggling vehicles traveling at high rates of speed.”
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, whose county lies at the center of major drug and alien smuggling routes to Phoenix and cities east and west, told The Washington Times earlier this month that Mexican drug cartels have posted scouts on the high points in the mountains and in the hills and “they literally control movement.
“They have radios, they have optics, they have night-vision goggles as good as anything law enforcement has,” he said. “This is going on here in Arizona. This is 70 to 80 miles from the border — 30 miles from the fifth-largest city in the United States.”
The sheriff said he had asked the Obama administration for 3,000 National Guard soldiers to patrol the border, but instead got 15 signs. He also has confirmed that he got the Homeland Security memo warning of the assassins.
Rising violence along the border has coincided with a crackdown in Mexico on warring drug gangs, who are seeking control of smuggling routes into the United States. Mexican President Felipe Calderon has waged a bloody campaign against powerful cartels, and more than 28,000 people have died since he launched his crackdown in late 2006.
Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee and a member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, has called the signs “an insult to the citizens of border states.”
“American citizens should not have to be fearful for their lives on U.S. soil,” he said. “If the federal government would do its job of enforcing immigration laws, we could better secure the border and better protect the citizens of border states.”
Two years ago, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the investigative arm of Homeland Security, said in a report that border gangs were becoming increasingly ruthless and had begun targeting not only rivals, but federal, state and local police. ICE said the violence had risen dramatically as part of “an unprecedented surge.”
The Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center, in its 2010 drug threat assessment report, called the cartels “the single greatest drug trafficking threat to the United States.” It said Mexican gangs had established operations in every area of the United States and were expanding into rural and suburban areas.
It said assaults against U.S. law enforcement officers along the southwestern border were on the increase, up 46 percent against Border Patrol agents alone.
Mexican cartels plan to send armed assassins into Arizona this spring to eradicate bandits who are stealing drugs from smugglers, according to a Department of Homeland Security intelligence report disclosed Friday by the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office.
The intelligence email, sent May 13, warned law enforcement agencies that rival cartels had agreed to the plan after a meeting in Rocky Point, Mexico. “Once the bandits have been identified, the sicarios (assassins) will take out the bandits,” says the memo.
DHS spokesman Matthew Chandler on Friday responded that the intelligence report “proved to be inaccurate.”
“At this time,” he said, “DHS does not have any specific, credible information on intra-cartel violence taking place in Arizona.”
The Sheriff’s news release includes a copy of the alert which was deemed “law enforcement sensitive,” and which credits the information to a “proven, credible, confidential source.”
According to the intelligence email, cartel leaders in Mexico agreed to send “a group of 15 very well equipped and armed sicarios complete with bullet-proof vests into the Vekol Valley,” an area of intense smuggling activity southwest of Casa Grande.
The memo says members of the hit squad planned to establish positions in the valley, then send in backpackers pretending to haul loads of marijuana through the desert to lure armed thieves, known as bajadores, who prowl the area.
Chandler said DHS regularly shares information with state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies to keep them aware of potential threats. Just because the agency shares information does not, however, mean the intelligence is credible.
DPS Maj. David Denlinger, director of the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center, said he has not heard of large numbers of armed cartel assassins ever crossing the border for an operation. Denlinger said law enforcement agencies frequently circulate information that cannot be immediately verified.
“While we can’t determine the credibility, we push it out for (officer) safety and awareness,” he said.
Tim Gaffney, a spokesman for Babeu, said additional information suggests that two Mexican nationals who died in a Vekol Valley shootout in early June might have been bandits ambushed by cartel operatives. “They may have been part of a (drug) rip-off team that was taken out by assassins,” he said.
The DHS warning notice includes a final note that, on April 30, the day Pinal County Deputy Louie Puroll was wounded in a controversial shootout with smugglers in Vekol Valley, cartel scouts in the area also reported a shootout.
Babeu, who has been seeking money for counter-smuggling operations, said the intelligence memo proves that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano “knows exactly what the citizens of Arizona are faced with, yet she continues to publicly state how much safer we all are.”
“I once again ask her to please put politics aside and secure the border or give us the resources,” Babeu said.
Gaffney said Babeu wants 3,000 troops sent to the border and a double-barrier fence erected.
Chandler, the DHS spokesman, said the Obama administration has for 20 months “dedicated unprecedented manpower, technology and infrastructure to the Southwest border,” including deployment of National Guard troops in the past few months.
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