BLOG LAUGH OF THE DAY: LIKE WE'RE FUCKING IDIOTS....!
Two former Mexican presidents publicly denied taking bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel. The statements came after the legal defense for Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera made contrary claims this week.
HIGHLY
GRAPHIC IMAGES OF AMERICA UNDER LA RAZA MEX OCCUPATION
This
is what America will look like with continued open borders with Narcomex. That
is the agenda of the Globalist Democrat party for endless hordes of ‘cheap’
labor.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/10/america-la-raza-mexicos-wide-open.html
Fmr. Mexican Secretary of Defense Walks Hours After U.S. Court Dismissal
Mexican prosecutors released the nation’s former secretary of defense hours after a U.S. court dismissed multiple drug trafficking charges against him. After landing in Mexico and speaking briefly with prosecutors, the cartel-linked general shared contact information and walked away a free man.
Listed in U.S. court documents as “The Godfather or Padrino,” Salvador Cienfuegos, a career Mexican Army General, was the secretary of defense under former President Enrique Pena Nieto. On October 15, U.S. agents arrested him in California as he landed for a family vacation and sent him to New York where he was held without bond. U.S. prosecutors claimed Cienfuegos was a close ally of the Beltran Leyva Cartel (H2) and leaked sensitive information.
On Wednesday evening, Cienfuegos landed at the Toluca airport. He met with Mexican prosecutors and was notified of a pending investigation, but was allowed him to leave.
El General Cienfuegos se dio por notificado y proporcionó toda su información personal y de contacto, donde puede ser localizado y citado para las diligencias a que haya lugar y ordene el #MPF, manifestando su total disposición de atender los requerimientos de la investigación.
— FGR México (@FGRMexico) November 19, 2020
El General Cienfuegos Zepeda se retiró de las oficinas de la #FGR en el hangar de Toluca, Estado de México, terminándose así las diligencias ministeriales correspondientes.
— FGR México (@FGRMexico) November 19, 2020
Despite what initially appeared to be a strong case in New York, the U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday asked for the charges to be dismissed so Mexico could investigate Cienfuegos. The dismissal came after Mexico threatened to end various bilateral security partnerships.
On Wednesday, a U.S. District Judge granted the dismissal even after Cienfuegos admitted he did not fear Mexico’s justice system.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.
The
gangs are already here, importing the meth and fentanyl that are slaughtering
tens of thousands of Americans a year after coming across the border the
Democrats refuse to defend. Kurt
Schlichter
Mexican Presidents Deny They Took
Bribes from
El Chapo
https://www.breitbart.com/border/2018/11/14/mexican-presidents-deny-they-took-bribes-from-el-chapo/
Two former
Mexican presidents publicly denied taking bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel. The
statements came after the legal defense for Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera
made contrary claims this week.
The drug lord is facing several money
laundering and drug trafficking charges at a federal trial in New York. In his
opening statement, defense attorney Jeffrey Lichtman spoke of bribes “including
the very top, the current president of Mexico and the former.”
Soon after the statements became public,
Mexico’s government issued a statement denying the allegations. Eduardo
Sanchez, the spokesman for current Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said
the statements were false and “defamatory.”
El gobierno
de @EPN persiguió, capturó y extraditó al criminal Joaquín Guzmán Loera. Las
afirmaciones atribuidas a su abogado son completamente falsas y difamatorias
— Eduardo Sánchez H.
(@ESanchezHdz) November
13, 2018
Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon
took to social media to personally deny the allegations, claiming that neither
El Chapo or the Sinaloa Cartel paid him bribes.
Son
absolutamente falsas y temerarias las afirmaciones que se dice realizó el
abogado de Joaquín “el Chapo” Guzmán. Ni él, ni el cártel de Sinaloa ni ningún
otro realizó pagos a mi persona.
— Felipe Calderón
(@FelipeCalderon) November
13, 2018
Under Guzman’s leadership, the Sinaloa
Cartel became the largest drug trafficking organization in the world with
influence in every major U.S. city.
The allegations against Pena Nieto are
not new. In 2016, Breitbart
News reported on an investigation by Mexican
journalists which revealed how Juarez Cartel operators funneled money into the
2012 presidential campaign. The investigation was carried out by Mexican
award-winning journalist Carmen
Aristegui and her team. The subsequent
scandal became known as “Monexgate” for the cash cards that were given out
during Peña Nieto’s campaign. The allegations against Pena Nieto went largely
unreported by U.S. news outlets.
Ildefonso
Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the
Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K.
Bannon. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Brandon
Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He
co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and Stephen K.
Bannon. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.
Should We Invade Mexico?
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2018/07/05/should-we-invade-mexico-n2497140?utm_campaign=rightrailsticky2
One fact a lot of
Americans forget is that our country is located right up against a socialist
failed state that is promising to descend even further into chaos – not
California, the other one. And the Mexicans, having reached the bottom
of the hole they have dug for themselves, just chose to keep digging by
electing a new leftist presidente who
wants to surrender to the cartels and who thinks that Mexicans have some sort
of hitherto unknown “human right” to sneak into the United States and
demographically reconquer it. There’s a Spanish
phrase that describes his ideology, and one of the words is toro.
Mexico
is already a failed state, crippled by a poisoned, stratified culture and a
corrupt government that have somehow managed to turn a nation so blessed with
resources and hardworking people into such a basket case that millions of its
citizens see their best option as putting themselves in the hands of gangsters
to cross a burning desert to get cut-rate jobs in el Norte. It
is a country dominated by bloody drug/human trafficking cartels that like to
circulate videos of their members carving up living people. They hang mutilated
corpses from overpasses and hijack busloads of citizens to rape and slaughter
for fun. Whole police agencies are owned by the cartels. Political candidates
live in fear of murder. The people are scared. And this chaos will inevitably
grow and spread north.
The
gangs are already here, importing the meth and fentanyl that are slaughtering
tens of thousands of Americans a year after coming across the border the
Democrats refuse to defend. Let’s not even
think about the other foreigners, like Islamic terrorists, who might exploit
this vulnerability. “Abolish ICE,” the liberals screech, yet what they really
mean is “Erase that line on the map.” But that line is all that is keeping the
bloodshed in Mexico at bay for now. You can stand on US soil, look south, and
see places where the rates of killing dwarf those of the Middle Eastern killing
fields you see on TV.
The
chaos in Mexico will spill over the theoretical border. It is just a matter of
time. Normal Americans know it. As
my book upcoming book Militant Normals explains,
the establishment willfully ignoring their legitimate concerns about border
security is a big part of why Normals are getting militant. The Democrats, and
the GOP donor class stooges, have a vested interest in ignoring the issue, and
they will insure that both the political class and the hack media will continue
to play ostrich. Already there are Americans, on American soil, living near the
border who cannot venture outside at night on their own property for fear of
being murdered because of foreigners invading out territory. This is
intolerable for any sovereign country. Yet there is a huge liberal
constituency, abetted by GOPe fellow travelers, not merely willing to tolerate
the invasion but who actively want to increase the flow.
When
the 125-million-man criminal conspiracy that is Mexico falls apart completely,
as it will, we are going to have to deal with the consequences. Watch the flood
of illegals become a tsunami, a real refugee crisis instead of today’s fake
one. Watch the criminal gangs and pathologies of the Third World socialist
culture they bring along turn our country into Mexico II: Gringo
Boogaloo. And importing a huge mass of foreigners, loyal to a foreign
country and potentially susceptible to the reconquista de Aztlan rhetoric of
leftists, both among them and among our treacherous liberal elite, would create
a cauldron for brewing up violent civil upheaval right here at home.
So,
what do we do? We defend ourselves, obviously. But how?
Should
we be reactive? Should we continue the fake defense of our border we’re
pretending to conduct today? Or should we seriously defend ourselves by
building a wall and truly guarding it, and by deporting all illegals we catch
inside. But would that even be enough when Mexico collapses?
It’s
time to ask: Should we be proactive?
Should
we invade Mexico? Should we send our military across the Rio Grande to secure
the unstable territory, annihilate the criminal infestation that suppurates
there, and impose something resembling order? One thing is certain. The border
charade we tolerate today can’t be an option – it’s an open door to the fallout
from the failing state next door.
Militarily,
there are three obvious courses of action (I had input on this by several
people familiar with the issue; none of this reflects any actual operational
planning that I or anyone I spoke to is aware of).
One
is the Buffer Zone option. We move in and secure a zone perhaps 50-100 miles
inside the country, aggressively targeting and annihilating criminal gangs – we
know where these bastards are – and thereby seal off the threat until Mexico is
secure again and then return the territory once we are assured America is safe.
This
is doable, but it would take a huge chunk of our military forces (we would need
to call up most of our reserves). The conventional Mexican forces that fought
would last for about un momento before being vaporized, but
it would spark at a minimum a low-intensity insurgency by cartel hardliners
and, at worst, a large one by Mexican patriots, probably using guns left over
from when the Obama cartel was shipping them south. Regardless, it would be
expensive. There is the “You break it, you buy it” rule. We would end up
administering a long strip of territory full of people living, largely, in what
Americans consider abject poverty. They would become our problem. Moreover,
there is the giving back part – millions of Mexicans might find they like being
nieces and nephews of Tio Sam.
The
second is Operation Mexican Freedom, a much more ambitious campaign that would
recognize what liberals already think – that Mexico and America are one
country. Our forces would conquer the nation by driving all the way south,
perhaps with an amphibious landing at Veracruz for old times sake and because
the Marines would insist, then seal the Mexican-Guatemalan border. We would
annex the whole country, making it a colony like Puerto Rico (A dozen new
senators from Old Mexico? Nogracias). We would kill every
terrorist drug gang member and take or torch everything they own, while
simultaneously deporting every illegal from the US-Canada border to the
Mexican-Guatemalan border.
Of
course, that would take up pretty much our entire military and certainly spark
some sort of endless guerilla conflict. We would be stuck in another bloody,
expensive fight to make a Third World country cease sucking despite itself. It
would make the Iraq War seem cheap. But, on the plus side, Bill Kristol and his
bombs away pals would probably be excited.
Oh,
in both cases the Europeans would be outraged, which is a powerful argument for
these options.
Still,
no. Invading Mexico is a bad idea. It would convert the problems of Mexico,
created and perpetuated by Mexicans, into our problems. We tried that in the
Middle East. It doesn’t work. Making Mexico better for Mexicans is not worth
the life of one First Infantry Division grenadier.
But
the consequences in America are our problem, and we must solve it. That brings
us to the third option – Forward Defense. Think Syria in Sinaloa. We secure the
border, with a wall of concrete and a wall of troops, perhaps imposing a
no-fly/no-sail zone (excepting our surveillance and attack aircraft), and then
conduct operations inside Mexico using special operations forces combined with
airpower to target and eliminate the cartels. We would also identify friendly
local Mexican police and military officials and support their counter-cartel
operations outside of our relationship with the central government – they would
be the face of the fight. We would channel Hernán Cortés and, in essence, we would
allow friendly Mexican allies, with our substantial direct and indirect
support, to create our buffer zone for us.
This
avoids the problem of buying Mexico’s problems and making them ours. It’s
somewhat deniable; everyone could save face by denying the Yankees have
intervened. But the cartels would not just sit there and take it. They would
target Americans and probably do so inside the United States. Yet that’s going
to happen anyway eventually. This course of action risks the lowest number of
US casualties, but perhaps the highest number of Mexican losses.
So
no, we should not invade Mexico. There are no good military options, and none
are necessary or wise today, but we may eventually have to choose between bad
options. Mexico is failing more and more every day. We are not yet at the point
of a military solution, but anyone who says that day can never come is lying to
himself and to you. We need a wall, but more than that, we need the commitment
to American security and sovereignty that a wall would physically represent.
The issue is very clear, and we need to be very, very clear about it when we
are campaigning in November. Border security. Period.
Are
we going to prioritize the interests of liberals who want to replace our
militant Normal voters with pliable
foreigners and establishment stooges who want to please rich donors by
importing countless cheap foreign laborers, or are we going to prioritize the
economic security and the physical safety of American citizens by securing our
border no matter what it takes?
Come
on, open borders mafia, let’s have that discussion. Bueno suerte with
that at the ballot box.
THE NARCOMEX
INVASION OF AMERICA…. By invitation of the Democrat Party
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/11/trump-seeks-deal-with-narcomex-as.html
There
are many reasons why, for the first time, the government of Mexico would agree
to work cooperatively with the United States over an extremely serious
immigration-related issue. It is likely, of course that President Trump was not
just posturing when he said he would cut off aid to Mexico and other countries
who permit the United States to be invaded by illegal aliens.
Under
Guzman’s leadership, the Sinaloa Cartel became the largest drug trafficking
organization in the world with influence in every major U.S. city.
The allegations against
Pena Nieto are not new. In 2016, Breitbart News reported on
an investigation by Mexican
journalists which revealed how Juarez Cartel operators funneled money
into the 2012 presidential campaign. The investigation was carried out by
Mexican award-winning journalist Carmen Aristegui and her team….The
subsequent scandal became known as “Monexgate” for the cash cards that
were given out during Peña Nieto’s campaign. The allegations against Pena
Nieto went largely unreported by U.S. news outlets.
Former
Mexican military chief pleads not guilty to US drug trafficking charges
·
·
·
Retired Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, the
Mexican defense secretary from 2012 to 2018, appeared in a US federal court in
Brooklyn last Thursday, following his Oct. 15 arrest at Los Angeles
International Airport.
Cienfuegos, referred to as “The Godfather” in
the indictment, pleaded “not guilty” to charges of conspiracy, drug trafficking
to the United States and money laundering. Between December 2015 and February
2017, according to the court filing, “in exchange for bribe payments, he
permitted the H-2 Cartel—a cartel that routinely engaged in wholesale violence,
including torture and murder—to operate with impunity in Mexico.”
The prosecutors claim to have thousands of
incriminating BlackBerry Messenger exchanges with the H-2 Cartel, a remnant of
the Beltrán Leyva Cartel, they obtained through US phone-tapping operations
against Cienfuegos and cartel members. One message allegedly indicates that he
provided assistance for far longer to another organization, which is widely
believed to be the Sinaloa Cartel.
General Cienfuegos in 2018
receiving award at Pentagon's Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies (Credit:
NDU Audio Visual)
The trial of Cienfuegos is the latest in a
string of cases pursued by the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn since
it handed down a life sentence against Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquín “Chapo”
Guzmán last year.
Currently, the two main overseers
of the so-called “war on drugs” during the administration of Mexico’s President
Enrique Peña Nieto are being charged for working with the drug cartels. Genaro
García Luna, former secretary of public security, arrested last year in Texas,
has also pleaded not guilty to charges of receiving millions to protect the
Sinaloa Cartel. The case also involves charges against his closest underlings
Luis Cárdenas Palomino and Ramón Pequeño García.
The Cienfuegos arrest sent shockwaves through
the Mexican ruling elite, with nervous press commentaries calling it
“irresponsible” and warning that it “shatters trust in Mexico’s armed forces.”
Cienfuegos was not under any investigation in
Mexico, raising suspicions about the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador,
who claims to be leading a campaign against corruption. He has responded to the
charges in the US by claiming that “We won’t cover for anybody,” while refusing
to remove any of the officials appointed by Cienfuegos, or even those in his
circle of confidence like the current chief officer of the secretary of
defense, Agustín Radilla.
“I don’t see anyone in the Army happy about
this detention,” wrote Mexican reporter Eunice Rendón, who added, “They are the
same then and now under [López Obrador’s] ‘Fourth Transformation.’”
The recent cases have gravely tarnished all
institutions involved in the “war on drugs,” from the presidencies of Felipe
Calderón (2006–2012) and Peña Nieto (2012–2018), to the military and police
leaderships, as well as the US administrations that backed the war through the
$3.1 billion Merida Initiative since 2007.
As in other countries in the region, chiefly
Colombia, drug trafficking has long been exploited by US governments to further
Washington’s influence over the region’s security forces and, through this,
over domestic politics. “Prior to FY2008,” explains a 2020 report by the US
Congress Research Service, “Mexico did not receive large amounts of U.S.
security assistance, partially due to Mexican sensitivity about U.S.
involvement in the country’s internal affairs.”
The corporate media has largely avoided commenting
on the questions the cases raise about the role of the US government itself.
García Luna, especially, played a key role in setting up and selling the Merida
Initiative to the US and Mexican public.
A December 2007 diplomatic cable released by
WikiLeaks indicates that then Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte was a
personal handler of García Luna, helping him “fill in the blanks in preparation
for future questioning regarding the Merida Initiative.”
García Luna was also allowed to personally
“vet” officials in the Mexican police, a cover used by US agencies to assuage
fears of corruption in the Mexican state. An April 2008 cable explains that
“unprecedented cooperation … would not be possible without our ability to work
with vetted units [by García Luna] supported by USG agencies including DEA and
ICE.”
After the killing of several of García Luna’s
officials by rival drug cartels in 2008—officials eulogized by the US embassy
for their “outstanding work” and “highest professional standards”— an embassy
cable expressed “concerns about García Luna’s ability to manage his
subordinates.” Nonetheless, in October 2009, the US ambassador said García
Luna, who had just quintupled the size of the federal police with the help of
US aid, would be a “key player” in reaching “new levels of practical
cooperation in two of the country’s most important institutions.”
After the war claimed more than 300,000 lives,
left 73,000 missing—including numerous extrajudicial massacres by the military—
and cost Mexican taxpayers $120 billion, the promises to end the war and the
Merida Initiative by Andrés Manuel López Obrador were central to his 2018
election as president.
Shortly after the 2018 election, an Internal
Security Law approved by Peña Nieto and requested by Cienfuegos—allowing troops
to carry out police functions and granting greater autonomy to the military to
select targets, wage operations and collect intelligence—was declared
unconstitutional.
As soon as he came to power, however, López
Obrador and his Morena party changed the Constitution to permit the domestic
deployment of the military and created a National Guard as a new cover for the
discredited military.
Meanwhile, the US Congress, with bipartisan
approval, has granted AMLO nearly $300 million under the Merida Initiative.
Commenting on the Cienfuegos arrest, the
renowned journalist and expert on Mexican drug cartels, Anabel Hernández,
stressed that, “The same system remains embedded in his own political party
Morena.” She explained that Morena’s security chief in Mexico City, Omar García
Harfuch, rose through the ranks under the patronage of García Luna and Cárdenas
Palomino, and cites federal police documents confirming Harfuch’s talks with
organized crime.
A December 2009 cable published by WikiLeaks
shows that the US State Department vetted Harfuch when he was working for the
federal police under García Luna so that Harfuch could complete programs with
the FBI, DEA and Harvard University.
Additionally, a DEA agent told Proceso in December
2012 that they had long known about García Luna’s ties to the Sinaloa Cartel,
but kept quiet “out of respect for Mexican institutions and because he was the
direct contact with the United States.”
In the case of Cienfuegos, several cables note
his constant collaboration with the United States, with the Pentagon awarding
him an award for excellence two years ago.
While carrying out widespread austerity
measures amid the pandemic crisis, including the elimination of $3 billion for
science, culture and victim protection, the Morena administration granted $1.5
billion for military equipment and subsidies for the families of the chiefs of
staff and proposed a 20 percent budget increase for defense.
This context explains why the US case against
Cienfuegos ignores the widespread human rights abuses carried out by the
military under the general’s term, including countless extrajudicial
executions.
Last September, soldiers were first arrested in
Mexico for their involvement in the killing of the 43 Mexican teaching students
from Ayotzinapa in 2014. Cienfuegos lied repeatedly about the involvement of
the military, which collaborated in the killings with Guerreros Unidos, another
splinter of the Beltrán Leyva cartel.
From 2005 to 2007, Cienfuegos headed the IX
military region of Guerrero, the state where Ayotzinapa is located, at a time
when the Beltrán Leyva cartel prospered out of their base in Acapulco, the
state’s largest city. Cienfuegos would then lead the first military region of
Mexico City from 2007 to 2009, which was then a stronghold for the Sinaloa
Cartel.
In 2012, Sergio Villarreal, a leader of the
Beltrán Leyva Cartel known as “El Grande,” testified after his arrest that in
2007 and subsequently, he and his then partners of the Sinaloa Cartel had
“bought” the commanders of the security forces in Guerrero and Mexico City.
Mexican
President Pushes Amnesty on Crime, Senate to Decide
Mexico’s
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is pushing for a new bill that would
grant amnesty to thousands of currently jailed individuals. The bill called Ley
de Amnistia or Amnesty Law is expected to go before Mexico’s Senate. If the
senate passes the bill, it would lead to the release of thousands of
individuals who have been “unjustly jailed”.
Mexico’s leading Senator Ricardo Monreal said the law is part of
a process aimed at bringing peace to Mexico, Mexico’s Vanguardia reported.
The bill is supposed to target underage teens and women who have been forced to
commit crimes by organized criminal groups, women who were forced by their
lovers to carry weapons, and farmers who were forced to grow drugs by giving
them a chance at freedom and access to jobs, Mexico’s Animal Politico reported.
According to Mexico’s Secretary of the Interior Olga Sanchez
Cordero, the bill is not meant as a measure of impunity, because the bill would
also look at crime victims and reparations, Animal Politico reported. The
politician also said in multiple interviews that the bill would not apply to
those convicted of serious offenses such as murder, kidnapping, and crimes
against humanity.
The new proposed bill comes at a time when Mexico’s government
has been pushing for the legalization of drugs and where earlier this
year, AMLO claimed that the war on drugs was over, Breitbart Texas reported.
The news comes as Mexican border cities like Nuevo Laredo and
Reynosa continue to be hotspots of violence where violent drug cartels such as
factions of Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel regularly use armored vehicles with
mounted machine guns, .50 caliber rifles, and grenade launchers to clash with
state police officers. In most of the recent gun battles, federal authorities
and military forces have been absent or only made an appearance after the
shooting ended. This led the governor of Tamaulipas to publicly call out the federal
government for not fighting against cartels, Breitbart Texas reported.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart
Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon
Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be
contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of
Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with
Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted
at bdarby@breitbart.com.
New border wall forces smugglers to dig expensive tunnels
and launch drones
SAN DIEGO — Top U.S. border
officials expect cartels to build more tunnels from Mexico to the United States
and increasingly rely on drones for surveillance operations as the 400 miles of
new border wall makes it harder to smuggle people and drugs into the country.
Transnational criminal
organizations have long used tunnels and drones at the southwest border, but senior
Border Patrol officials across the country are bracing for more activity as new
30-foot-tall barrier wall goes up in areas that have long been easy for
criminals to cross.
“Don't be fooled into
thinking that the cartels and smuggling organizations won't do whatever to try
to adapt,” said Anthony Porvaznik, chief of the Border Patrol’s Yuma sector in
western Arizona. “We fully expect to see more tunneling activity.”
“Smugglers are in the
business to make money,” said Border Patrol’s national chief, Rodney Scott,
during a one-on-one tour with the Washington Examiner of the
Southern California region. “I definitely think they will, but again, we talk
about the wall system all the time … because it's a 30-year, enduring
investment that, without it, they wouldn't have to go to drones, they wouldn't
have to go to tunnels, they wouldn't even have to go to the port of entry. They
were just driving trucks across before, and the overhead expenses for them were
significantly lower to just drive across.”
Three types of tunnels
are seen on the southern border: rudimentary tunnels comparable to gopher holes
that only go several feet deep; those that connect into existing infrastructure
systems, like a drainage system; and sophisticated ones that can go as deep as
90 feet. Scott said federal investigators typically learn very early on about
the elaborate kind of tunnels and intentionally do not bust them until they are
almost complete.
“On average, it takes
about a year for them to dig it. It takes engineers, and it takes a lot of
money, so if we can literally keep them focused on pouring their money into a
hole in the ground, we know about, we'll let it go until right at the end,”
said Scott. “We just want to make sure no illegal substances or people get into
the U.S.”
In August, federal
agents announced the discovery of the “most sophisticated” tunnel ever found at
the border. The tunnel was built 25 feet below the sandy grounds of Yuma, Ariz.
It was far enough along that ventilation and rail systems had already been
installed.
Anna Giaritelli /
Washington Examiner
In August, federal
agents announced the discovery of
the “most sophisticated” tunnel ever found at the border. The tunnel was built
25 feet below the sandy grounds of Yuma, Arizona. It was far enough along that
ventilation and rail systems had already been installed. Yuma border officials
showed the tunnel to the Washington Examiner. Outside companies are
remediating the tunnel, which includes filling it with concrete so that it
cannot be used in the future.
Despite Yuma’s recent
bust, the San Diego region’s soil composition makes it the most suitable for
tunnel builders out of the nine regions by which the Border Patrol divides the
southwest border.
“Here, it's soft, so
they have to actually line it with wood and hold it up,” said Porvaznik, who is
based in Arizona. “In San Diego, they can dig it out, and it's more clay-like
material, so it'll stay.”
Yuma border officials
showed a recently discovered cross-border tunnel to the Washington
Examiner during a regional tour in late October. Outside companies are
remediating the tunnel, which includes filling it with concrete so that it
cannot be used in the future.
Anna Giaritelli / Washington
Examiner
Border officials
expected the wall to have an impact on tunneling and included in annual wall
funding money for underground systems that can detect disturbances in the soil.
In Southern California, Border Patrol has a team that tracks tunnel activity.
Border Patrol San Diego Chief Aaron Heitke said intelligence specialists map
out warehouses located near the border and go door to door to meet with
business owners to get a feel for who may be a threat. The team takes an overt
approach, out in public and by asking businesses if they see unusual activity
to tip off the Department of Homeland Security. The task force can also track
imports and exports, as well as taxes filed to the Internal Revenue Service, to
see if a business is a front or conducting legitimate trade.
The tunnel found near
Yuma, Ariz., had a rail system built inside that would have been used to move
contraband from Mexico into the United States.
Immigration and Customs
Enforcement
“We’re literally kind
of mapping out like, ‘Sony has been here forever. It's a legitimate business.
We've never had any problems. It's a lower threat,'” said Scott, who previously
oversaw the San Diego region. “This warehouse — you’ve got seven businesses in
different suites that have been here for years. We know them. They call, they
don’t, whatever — you kind of gauge it. And this one turns over every 30 days,
every 60 days. That's something we're going to watch.”
In El Paso, where
tunnels are less prevalent because of the river and canal systems, agents
constantly see drones flying over from Mexico.
“All day long — 24/7 in
this area — there’s drones going up and down,” said Border Patrol's El Paso
division chief for operations, Walter Slozar. “They’re not using them to
smuggle things yet ... We can even tell like when one goes up, ‘Oh, when that
one goes up, that’s when something happens over here.'”
Drones surveil agents
on the ground and inform smugglers when to send migrants over the border and
when agents may be wrapped up elsewhere.
The western Arizona and
eastern California regions are also seeing a heavy use of drones but for the
smuggling of drugs over the wall. Porvaznik said drones will make up to 30
trips back and forth each night, carrying approximately a kilogram of drugs
northbound.
Porvaznik points to a
framed photograph in his office that shows an “octocopter,” an eight-propeller
unmanned aerial system that goes for $16,000. Border Patrol’s aerial
surveillance trucks detected it flying through U.S. airspace near the border
transporting 25 pounds of cocaine over the border.
“It’s dark, and they’re
silent,” said Porvaznik. “We've had numerous instances of drones working in
[the] San Luis area, bringing over load after load, and they just keep making
trips all night. At times, they overload them, and they crash. And so, our
agents have found them with dope strapped to them."
Yuma agents have been
able to track where some drugs are dropped and then pursue drivers who
transport it. Agents do not have a way to force a drone and are still in the
process of detecting them.
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