Search Result: Mexican Drug Cartels

The U.S. has begun pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into Mexico to help stanch the expansion of drug-fueled violence and corruption that has claimed more than 5,000 lives south of the border this year.

With the homicide toll in Juárez surpassing the 1,500 mark, authorities there are left to face what border experts are calling the biggest Mexican dilemma -- ending the bloody street war between drug cartels, controlling thugs who have gone wild and preventing police corruption.

So far this year in Mexico's drug war, 5,376 people have been killed, double the number of last year and more than all U.S. troops killed in Iraq.

Even for Mexicans accustomed to ghastly headlines chronicling the country's drug-related violence, the current level of killing in Tijuana causes consternation. Some 200 people have been slain in one month. Last weekend turned into one of the city's deadliest: nearly 40 were killed, four of whom were children, and nine of them beheaded.

Frustrated by a crackdown on South Texas drug smuggling routes, the Mexican Gulf Cartel is stockpiling high-powered weapons and recruiting local gang members on both sides of the border to prepare for possible confrontations with U.S. law enforcement, according to an FBI intelligence report.

In what prosecutors said was a significant step in fighting the drug wars raging on the U.S.-Mexico border, the Justice Department said Wednesday that 175 people believed to be connected with one of Mexico's most violent drug cartels were arrested this week in a dozen states.

For more than a decade, Los Angeles street gangs have been killing about 550 to 600 people in L.A. County each year. What you probably don't know is that Mexican nationals, primarily illegal aliens, murder about an equal amount yearly. Many of these murders involve rivalries and vendettas that originated in states, cities, and ranchos in Mexico. They usually often involve Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTO).