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
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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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