From approximately 1998 through 2004, Cuevas Cabrera conspired with others to manufacture and distribute tons of Colombian cocaine that he knew would be imported into the U.S., according to evidence presented at trial.
The word "war" is not just hyperbole; it correctly describes what is going on. It's estimated that the violence—kidnapping and murder—has driven 400,000 locals out of the Juarez area with an estimated 30,000 fleeing to El Paso and beyond. A U.S. border sheriff claimed that the cartels printed fliers ordering his residents to evacuate their homes in the border area or they would be murdered.
Calling it the most significant narcotics conspiracy case of its kind ever in Chicago, authorities today announced indictments against leaders of warring Mexican drug cartels blamed for increasing violence south of the border and for bringing up to four tons of cocaine to the city each month for national distribution.
President Barack Obama said Wednesday that his administration is examining options to deal with deteriorating security conditions on the Mexican border, including the deployment of the National Guard if violence continues to spill over into American cities.
Drug money is so corrupting that the drug lords have bribed both police and soldiers at the highest levels of the Mexican government.
Gov. Rick Perry said he wants 1,000 troops to help guard the Texas-Mexico border, and for the U.S. to fund strong security measures to fight the Mexican drug cartels that have spread violence and fear in Mexico, including Juárez.
Border violence, which claimed more than 1,000 lives in January and about 6,000 in 2008, is already on the radar of Pentagon and CIA officials, who have told The Washington Times of their involvement in the current crisis in Mexico and say they are watching developments closely.
Federal authorities arrested more than 750 people across the country in what they describe as "the largest and hardest hitting" operation to ever target the "the very violent and dangerously powerful" drug cartel known as Sinaloa.
A failure by the Mexican political system to curtail lawlessness and violence could result (in) a surge of millions of refugees crossing the U.S. border to escape the domestic misery of violence, failed economic policy, poverty, hunger, joblessness, and the mindless cruelty and injustice of a criminal state," Barry McCaffrey said.
El Paso Mayor John Cook on Tuesday vetoed a unanimously supported resolution from City Council asking the federal government to seriously study the legalization of narcotics as a way to respond to the plague of violence that last year killed 1,600 people in Juárez, Mexico.