Federal workers have been awarded bigger average pay and benefit increases than private employees
“What we’re seeing is a rise in Mexican drug trafficking organizations [DTOs],” Rusty Payne of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency told Maclean’s, “in more and more places where you wouldn’t expect it.”
Today, they have a presence in 230 U.S. cities (up from 50 in 2006), from Little Rock, Ark., to Anchorage, Alaska.
Back in El Paso, a popular first stop on the interstate, O’Rourke is waiting for the U.S. troops to arrive. It’s not certain when that will happen, but the day will undoubtedly be celebrated by the border-state governors and senators who have, for years, been demanding a heightened military response to the cartels. But O’Rourke sounds weary. After just five years in office, the 37-year-old already has a tendency to sound fatalistic: “You just can’t build a fence high enough.”
He also opened his doors to U.S. military commanders, who George W. Bush eagerly allowed to step in and train Mexican forces.
It wasn’t like this when Colombia was king. In the 1990s, Bogotá’s Cali and Medellín gangs were the main U.S. suppliers. The Mexicans were just the middlemen: paid a fixed amount by Colombian growers—up to $2,000 per kilo of cocaine—to shuttle drugs into the U.S. But in the late ’90s, Mexican drug families began pushing for more control. Soon, they came to a “payment-in-product” arrangement, which replaced the fixed fee with a chunk of Colombian cocaine that they could traffic independently.
There was no need for violence, adds Bruce Bagley, chair of the department of international studies at the University of Miami:
Around that time, president Bill Clinton—channelling Richard Nixon, who was the first to use the term “war on drugs” in 1971—turned his attention to choking off Colombian production, committing $1.3 billion in 2000. In a way, it worked; soon, the major Colombian cartels were decapitated. But the “war” did not stop coca production in Bogotá—and Colombian cocaine remained available to the Mexican cartels.
The situation in Mexico worsened, McKay says: the cartels swelled, then started fighting amongst themselves. Some formed paramilitary wings, made up of thugs armed with U.S. semi-automatics.
Jack Killorin, who coordinates law enforcement for Atlanta’s High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA), makes a compelling case for a new crime thriller—“Metro Atlanta Vice,” as he playfully calls it. “Miami Vice?” he laughs. “Those days are gone.”
Killorin’s drama would likely be set in the middle-class suburb of Gwinnett County, which district attorney Danny Porter describes as the unlikely new epicentre of the U.S. drug trade: “Miles and miles of identical subdivisions interspersed with industrial parks.” It’s about access, Killorin says.
It starts, says Killorin, when “multi-hundred-kilo loads” are moved directly from Mexico to Atlanta—often hidden among legitimate shipments. The loads are “poly-drug”: meth, cocaine, heroin and marijuana, packaged together. But U.S.-bound cocaine is often still champion. Once the drugs arrive in Atlanta, the loads are split among mid-level Mexican distributors, who then pass the goods along in smaller and smaller parcels.
“They don’t control it on the streets,” says Killorin. Instead, “they sell wholesale loads to other criminal organizations who are not necessarily ethnically tied to them.”
This holds true across the country, says the University of Miami’s Bagley: “The Mexicans are equal-opportunity employers.” In its 2010 “National Drug Threat Assessment,” the U.S. National Drug Intelligence Center (a branch of the Justice Department) noted that “mid-level and retail drug distribution” is carried out “by more than 900,000 criminal active gang members representing approximately 20,000 street gangs in more than 2,500 cities.”
It’s largely the expansive buffet of local gangs that has allowed Chicago to debut as the key supplier of Mexican drugs to the Midwest.
The careful networking with outside gangs is one way the Mexican cartels have succeeded in doing what the Colombians could not: lie low.
“They assimilate into the neighborhoods,” Chicago’s Taylor says. “Their kids go to school. These people blend in!” The Colombians preferred a more “high-visibility lifestyle: flashy cars and Rolexes and Armani suits,” says Killorin. “With that comes a lot of exposure. As a result, they got the crap kicked out of them. The Mexicans went to school on that.” ...
All this, says Elizabeth Kempshall, an Arizona DEA agent, has coincided with a “dramatic increase” in drug flow through her state; 800,000 lb. of drugs were seized there in 2005, she says, but the figure has now more than doubled.
Violence within the cartels might be contained, but the cartels themselves are not. More than anything, it is their affinity for movement—particularly the northbound kind—that has law enforcement on edge. In 2007, the “National Drug Threat Assessment” noted that Mexican DTOs “dominate the illicit drug trade in every area except the Northeast.”
Jay Fallon of the New England HIDTA has been watching the “growing influence of Mexican DTOs.” He says “there is nowhere in the country that has a greater heroin abuse problem” than New England; some of the biggest heroin busts he has overseen in the last few years took place in notoriously posh Connecticut. Perhaps the newness of the cartels’ presence in the region explains Fallon’s eagerness to grasp at small blessings: like the fact that his states are generally “end points” on the drug trail, and not distribution hubs. That is, except for the drugs flowing up through New England and into Canada. “I’m quite certain that happens,” Fallon mumbles.
Much of that happens along the stretch of border that divides Detroit from Windsor, Ont. It’s “the busiest border crossing for vehicular traffic in North America,” says Sgt. Brett Corey of the Windsor police; 28 per cent of Canada-U.S. trade—more than $113 billion per year—crosses the Detroit-Windsor tunnel or Ambassador Bridge. So Corey isn’t surprised that “we’re seeing a lot of crack cocaine coming across the border” too. Some of the drugs stay in Windsor, but a lot “makes its way across the 401 corridor to Toronto or to Montreal.” The drug flow itself is hardly new, but the pace in Windsor has picked up, “because you have safety in numbers with the 9,000 trucks that cross every day,” Fogarty says. He adds that dealers traffic Mexican drugs to Toronto via Windsor often in trucks loaded with produce.
And they’re not just here as sellers; they’re buyers, too. “You have to see this as a north-south trade,” Fogarty says. As a representative of the New York state DEA told Maclean’s: “marijuana comes down and cocaine heads up.” Fogarty says Canadian drug dealers and the cartels have worked out an elaborate “credit system” whereby drugs, rather than money, change hands. “The sophistication is getting better and better and better.”...
Tom Crowley, a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agent in Dallas, works to seize U.S. guns being trafficked into Mexico. In recent years, he’s been troubled by what he’s seeing: “an increase in the amount of weapons and the military capability of those weapons.” Crowley says it’s much more likely now
“You see more military-type weapons and explosives,” agrees Tom Mangan of Phoenix’s ATF: “grenades, grenade launchers, machine guns, fully automatics—a whole plethora.”
New boots on the ground won’t make a difference—because “the cartels aren’t afraid.”"
Calderon has deployed 45,000 federal troops and police to combat the drug gangs. Yet in the midst of this crackdown,
An NPR News investigation has found strong evidence of collusion between elements of the
Dozens of interviews with current and former law enforcement agents, organized crime experts, elected representatives, and victims of violence suggest that the
Sinaloans depend on bribes to top government officials to help their leader, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, elude capture, expand his empire and keep his operatives out of jail.
"I work in the police and because of this I know the government is protecting Chapo Guzman. It's hitting all the cartels but Chapo," said Luis Arturo Perez Torres, 25, until recently a federal police officer stationed in a suburb of Mexico City.
Guzman is the world's most wanted drug lord. His home base is the Pacific coastal state of Sinaloa, known as Mexico's "Sicily." It's the premier narco-state, with a long coastline for smuggling cocaine from South America, and rugged mountains to hide cannabis crops.
Manuel Clouthier, a congressman from Sinaloa state and a member of Calderon's political party,
is deeply frustrated by his country's drug war. He says drug-related murders average 200 a month in his state.
'We Should Be Tearing It Out By The Roots'
"The Calderon government has been fighting organized crime in many parts of the republic, but
It is like we're trimming the branches of a tree, when we should be tearing it out by the roots."
Asked if the government is going soft on the country's biggest drug cartel, Clouthier responds, choosing his words carefully. "I believe that much of the problem of not combating a certain cartel in a certain state
On Tuesday, reporters asked a senior White House official, in light of Washington's large package of security aid to Mexico, if Calderon's government is protecting Chapo Guzman. The U.S. is giving $1.3 billion in military and judicial aid to Mexico for its drug war, as Mexican drug cartels are major suppliers to the illicit U.S. narcotics trade.
The Obama administration official said the president has a long-term commitment to Calderon's struggle against the cartels. He mentioned that Mexico has arrested and extradited important cartel figures in recent months.
NPR Analysis Of Arrest Data
In an effort to find out whether federal forces are favoring the Sinaloa cartel, NPR analyzed thousands of news releases on the federal attorney general's website announcing arrests for organized crime, weapons and drug offenses. The information surveyed spanned from the day Calderon assumed the presidency in December 2006 until last week.
NPR created a database and screened the information for every person the government arrested, prosecuted or sentenced who was associated with one of the seven major drug cartels.
Nationwide, 44 percent of all cartel defendants are with the Zetas and Gulf cartels. Only 12 percent of the defendants are with the Sinaloa cartel. The numbers contradict the Mexican government, which claims it has arrested twice the percentage of Sinaloa gang members.
U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), a former federal prosecutor who sits on the Homeland Security Committee, was asked to review the NPR analysis.
"I think you've identified an issue of concern," he said. "And that is, why is the Sinaloa doing so much better than the others and why is the Sinaloa cartel been the one that has escaped a lot of the prosecutions compared to the other cartel numbers?""
(continuing, NPR): "In response to NPR's findings, the Mexican Interior Secretariat on Tuesday said all drug cartels are being "attacked proportional to their size." A spokesman re-released figures the agency put out three months ago: 72,000 persons have been arrested for drug crimes; of those, 24 percent are members of the Sinaloa cartel, and 27 percent are Gulf cartel and Los Zetas.
A veteran Mexican crime journalist says this figure may include every drug arrest, including street-corner dealers. NPR only counted federal arrest records of named cartel associates.
Calderon Denies Selectively Fighting The Cartels (of course)
The growing criticism in Mexico that Calderon is selectively fighting the cartels prompted him to speak out at a press conference in February.
"These accusations are totally unfounded, false. In most cases, it reflects a misunderstanding of the facts, the result of other interests, I want to be clear," he said.
The Mexican president went on to name several Sinaloa crime bosses the government has arrested — the biggest being Vicente "El Mayito" Zambada, son of El Mayo Zambada, a close ally of Guzman's.
"If you look at the main organized crime group in Mexico, that is, the Sinaloan confederation, it has been left relatively untouched," he said.
Senior U.S. officials, who declined to speak on the record for this report, say they believe Calderon is sincere about rooting out corruption in his government and taking down all the drug mafias.
'Extraordinarily Brazen' Drug Cartels
A senior DEA official, speaking on background, said certain cartels are so "extraordinarily brazen, they've demanded the government's attention first."
Los Zetas, for instance, are involved in everything from drugs to extortion to stealing gasoline. La Familia Michoacana beheads its rivals, and has even threatened the president.
A senior State Department official, also speaking off the record, concurred. "When you have limited capability, there's no doubt that you set priorities and do triage, and that's what we're seeing," she said.
"The FBI has the long history of that in breaking the back of Italian crime groups here in the U.S. If you need intel to go after these organizations, you have to go to individuals who are involved in this to begin with. You're not going to get this info from choirboys," said Fred Burton, now an analyst with the Austin-based global intelligence firm Stratfor.
Sinaloa Cartel Excels At Bribing Officials
But does the Sinaloa cartel's reputation for well-placed bribes help keep its members out of jail?
The Sinaloans are widely regarded as the most sophisticated cartel in transportation, intelligence gathering and bribery.
A few examples:
— Last year, Proceso reported on how a Sinaloan faction controlled several airports around the country through a network of corrupt federal agents. The faction
— Last week, the Mexican newspaper Reforma described how the Sinaloans had
The drug gang knew where the cops were being sent next and how many buses would carry them. The newspaper added that a navy investigation uncovered that the Sinaloans controlled eight seaports for cocaine smuggling from South America.
— A 2007 army intelligence report obtained by The Wall Street Journal and shared with NPR describes how Guzman would visit his marijuana ranch in Sinaloa "in caravans of six vehicles,
— Jose Gomez Llanos is on the U.S. Treasury’s list of foreign narcotics kingpins. He is suspected of being a money launderer for Guzman. He is currently
— A 2008 corruption scandal implicated the
He was accused of taking $450,000 to tip off the Beltran-Leyva cartel, at the time a powerful member of Guzman's so-called Sinaloa federation. Mafia analysts note that federal law enforcement in December 2009 killed and captured two of the Beltran-Leyva brothers, Arturo and Carlos, respectively, which has weakened their crime syndicate to Guzman's advantage.
U.S. Concern About Mexican Corruption
"Has the Sinaloa infiltrated the Mexican government? Absolutely. Has the Sinaloa infiltrated the Mexican military? Absolutely. Calderon has a very difficult job trying to root out corruption within his own ranks," said McCaul, the Texas congressman. He added that he believes the Mexican president has been quick to rid his administration of corrupt officials.
"We have to gauge intelligence sharing [with Mexican law enforcement] against how high the cartels have penetrated. Do we endanger our sources? Right now there's great pushback from our intelligence community for greater intelligence sharing," he said.
"The Sinaloa has been clearly the winner of all that competition among organized crime groups. And as a result of that,
Now you see that Sinaloa is the most powerful criminal group,
How Vast Is The Government's Role?
Buscaglia stops short of saying he thinks it is Calderon's policy to "protect" Guzman, or that the government wants to "help" the drug baron defeat other cartels as a way to restore balance in the underworld and ultimately reduce violence.
Howard Campbell, an anthropologist at the University of Texas, El Paso who studies drug trafficking in Mexico, agrees.
"This isn't to say that the president of Mexico has deliberately made a deal with Chapo Guzman," Campbell said.
Anabel Hernandez is an award-winning investigative reporter who has spent five years researching a book on Guzman. In an interview, she said she is convinced that
"When the Sinaloan cartel began to be protected by all the apparatus of the government after 2001, it felt the power for the first time in history to occupy plazas that for dozens of years belonged to other cartels. So you saw them take on the Gulf cartel in Nuevo Laredo [in 2005], and now the Juarez cartel in Juarez," she said.
Forbes magazine recently named Guzman as the second-most-wanted fugitive in the world, after Osama bin Laden. They are both protected by mountains, native cunning and legions of informers.
The former agent said he knows of a Mexican general who once tried to catch the elusive drug lord.
"The general was up against enormous obstacles," he said. "Every time he got close,
Even as President Felipe Calderon's government touts its arrest record, cases built by prosecutors and police under huge pressure to make swift captures unravel from lack of evidence.
Innocent people are tortured into confessing.
The guilty are set free, only to be hauled in again for other crimes.
Sometimes, the drug cartels decide who gets arrested.
Records obtained by The Associated Press showed that the government arrested 226,667 drug suspects between December 2006 and last September, the most recent numbers available. Fewer than a quarter of them were charged. Only 15 percent saw a verdict, and the Mexican attorney general's office won't say how many of those were guilty. The judicial void is a key reason why Mexican cartels continue to deliver tons of marijuana, methamphetamines, heroin and cocaine onto U.S. streets. "It in effect gives them impunity," U.S. Ambassador Carlos Pascual said, "and allows them to be able to function in ways that can extend themselves into the United States." System corrupt, secret Mexico's justice system is carried out largely in secret and has long been viciously corrupt. Add a drug war that Calderon intensified, and the system has been overrun. Nearly 25,000 people have died in the war to date, and the vast majority of their cases remain unsolved. AP obtained court documents and prison records restricted from the public and conducted dozens of interviews with suspects' relatives, lawyers, human-rights groups and government officials to find out what happened after suspects were publicly paraded in key cartel murder cases. In Ciudad Juarez, where a war between two cartels over trafficking routes killed a record 2,600 people in 2009, prosecutors filed 93 homicide cases that year and got 19 convictions, AP found. Only five were for first-degree murder, court records show, and none came under federal statutes with higher penalties designed to prosecute the drug war. "They never charge anyone with homicide, because they don't have the evidence; they don't have proof," said Jorge Gonzalez, president of the public defenders association. "They just show them to the media to give the impression that they're solving cases." Soldiers in Juarez routinely announce that suspects have confessed to murders. Hector Armando Alcibar Wong, known as "El Koreano," killed 15, they said. But nearly a year after his arrest last August, authorities don't even know where he is. Chihuahua state officials say they handed him over to federal authorities; the attorney general's office says it never had him. Soldiers told the media in 2008 that Juan Pablo Castillo Lopez was tied to 23 killings. He was never charged with homicide and was freed from state prison less than a year later. Oswaldo Munoz Gonzalez, known as "El Gonzo," admitted to killing 40 people, according to the joint police-army operation in Ciudad Juarez. His family says he was tortured into that confession. Eight months later, he hasn't been charged with a single homicide. Authorities say they nabbed Munoz during a traffic stop and found drugs and guns in his truck. His sister, Petra Munoz Gonzalez, says they're lying — he was dragged from his home while his wife and daughters watched. Munoz's family didn't know where he was until they saw him paraded on television days later, with guns and drugs in front of him. "He told me, 'I never killed anyone,' " Petra Munoz said. "He said he confessed because he had been tortured. He told me they put a bag over his head so he couldn't breathe and gave him electric shocks down there (on his genitals) and beat him until he fell over in pain. Who would endure that? "I just ask that the truth be told. Why haven't they presented proof, or witnesses, or anything that incriminates him? It's been almost a year." Chihuahua authorities say they can't discuss open cases. Mexico Attorney General Arturo Chavez declined several requests for comment. Catch-and-release The attorney general's records show the same pattern of catch-and-release in all states where Calderon's government sent federal police and soldiers to crush the cartels. In Baja California, home to the border city of Tijuana, nearly 33,000 people were arrested, but 24,000 were freed. In the northern state of Sinaloa, more than 9,700 were detained but 5,606 freed. In Tamaulipas, birthplace of the gulf cartel, nearly 3,600 were detained while 2,083 were freed. Calderon first launched his military assault in December 2006 in his home state of Michoacan, deploying thousands of troops after a new cartel called La Familia rolled five severed heads onto a nightclub's dance floor. Since then, federal forces have arrested more than 3,300 drug suspects. Nearly half have been released. In 2008, drug traffickers in Michoacan lobbed hand grenades into a crowd celebrating Mexico's independence. Eight revelers died, making it one of Mexico's highest-profile murder cases. Police and federal authorities arrested three suspects within 10 days. None of the men had criminal records. All three confessed. But at least 16 people say the three men weren't even there. The witnesses — next-door neighbors, relatives, bar owners, waitresses, a corner-store owner and a doctor — told authorities they saw all three that night in Lazaro Cardenas, more than 300 miles from the colonial square in Morelia where the attacks occurred, according to interviews and statements obtained by AP. A move to improve A year after the arrests, an appeals judge dismissed charges of organized crime, terrorism and grenade possession against all three men. The confessions have been retracted, but homicide charges still stand. All three men remain in jail. "I'm really disappointed in the government," said witness Edith Franco, a Lazaro Cardenas doctor. "They didn't look for the culprits. They looked for someone to blame." Even Mexico's president admitted the court system is inept recently as he touted a new judicial system that Mexico has begun to adopt, aided by the U.S. Under the new system, defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty; police must investigate and collect evidence before making arrests; and trials are argued in courts open to the public. The U.S. Agency for International Development has provided training to 550 Mexican prosecutors. Some 5,000 federal police officers have taken basic investigation courses, also with U.S. funding. The Obama administration is requesting $207 million more. The new system was piloted in Chihuahua state, home to Ciudad Juarez, in 2007 — just before the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels began their bloody war to control drug routes into the United States. Since then, 98 officials who had received training — police investigators, forensic experts, prosecutors — have been assassinated by gangs, said Carlos Gonzalez, spokesman for the Chihuahua attorney general's office. Nobody has been arrested in any of those killings."
