Alleged murderer of US ICE Agent Jaime Zapata pleads not guilty!

 

Julian Zapata Espinoza accused in Jaime Zapata Murder

Julian Zapata Espinoza, aka “The Tweety” linked to “Los Zetas“, was extradited, and facing trial in federal court in Washington, DC

Julian Zapata Espinoza, alias “El Piolín“, alleged murderer of the agent of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Jaime Zapata last February in Mexico, pleaded not guilty today in federal court Washington.

ICE director John Morton, said Zapata Espinoza was extradited from Mexico to face four charges, including three of murder and carrying a set in the commission of a violent crime.

“Extradition and accusations against Zapata Espinosa is an important step in bringing to justice the attackers of Jaime Zapata and Victor Avila“, another ICE agent who was injured, said Morton.

A grand jury in the District of Columbia issued on 19 April an indictment against Zapata Espinoza for the attempted murder of an officer and two of attempted murder in the case of Avila, but the document had been sealed.

Zapata Espinoza, an alleged member of Los Zetas drug cartel, was captured in Mexico in February along with five of his accomplices. His extradition was requested by the United States last May.

During his detention, the Mexican army said Zapata Espinoza admitted the commission of murder and attributed to confusion about the identity of the agents, who mistook them for members of another organization.

The Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer said the extradition and criminal prosecution against Zapata Espinoza show the determination of the administration of President Barack Obama to prosecute attackers Zapata.

“We will continue working with our partners in Mexico to police these violent criminals accountable,” said Breuer.

The deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Kevin Perkins, said the case against Zapata Espinoza is a “significant breakthrough” in the investigation into the death of Zapata agent.

During the hearing of a charge, a judge decided to keep him in jail without bail. His next hearing’s scheduled for Jan. 25 in Washington

Related articles

• Drug cartel member extradited to D.C. to face murder charge of ICE special agent Jaime Zapata (mysanantonio.com)
• Suspect in immigration agent killing held in US (sfgate.com)

 

Rafael Cardenas Vela, Indicted by U.S. grand Jury; Alias-“El Junior,” “Comandante 900” and “El Rolex

El Junior Indicted in USA

A U.S. federal grand jury on Friday indicted a Gulf Cartel leader suspected of overseeing the syndicate’s criminal operations in and around Matamoros.

Rafael Cardenas Vela, 38, faces drug, money laundering and document fraud charges. The two most serious charges – conspiracy to possess, deliver and import more than five kilograms (11 pounds) of cocaine and more than 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds) of marijuana – each carry a sentence of 10 years to life in prison, a fine of up to $10 million and up to five years of supervised release, upon conviction. Cardenas – known variously as “El Junior,” “Comandante 900” and “El Rolex” – also faces one count of money laundering and two counts of using fraudulent documents. He was the only party charged in the indictment issued Friday in Brownsville.

The government also moved to force Cardenas to forfeit $20 million dollars, a house in Rio Hondo and a house in Brownsville. The forfeiture would take place if he is convicted. The house in Rio Hondo is listed as 35698 Farm-to-Market Road 106 in the Latina Country Estates. The house in Brownsville – 1312 Bluewing Circle in the Lakeway Subdivision – is listed under the name of Emilio Villarreal and Laura Capistran.

The Monitor attempted to contact the homeowners listed but was unable to speak with anyone. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement led an operation in October that led to Cardenas’ arrest in Port Isabel. Municipal police there pulled over Cardenas’ Ford F-150 pickup as part of a traffic stop and took him into custody without incident. 

 Once seen as the Gulf Cartel’s heir apparent, Cardenas is the nephew of infamous Gulf Cartel leader Osiel Cardenas Guillen and co-leader Antonio Ezekiel “Tony Tormenta” Cardenas Guillen.  The Mexican military arrested Osiel Cardenas in 2003 in Matamoros. He is serving a prison term in the United States. Antonio Cardenas was killed by the Mexican military on Nov. 5, 2010, in Matamoros after a day of firefights.

Rafael Cardenas and other members of the Gulf Cartel purchased bulletproof vehicles, automatic weapons, grenades, homemade cannons and body armor that the syndicate used to further its operations and carry out its ongoing struggle with the rival Zetas, according to court documents. Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched a sweeping crackdown on his country’s entrenched criminal organizations in December 2006, dispatching thousands of soldiers to Mexico’s northern frontier. From then until early October, nearly 43,000 were killed in the nation’s drug war, according to congressional testimony by Rodney G. Benson, chief of intelligence for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Even Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño – long critical of state and federal leaders who he said played loose with their definition of “spillover” violence from Mexico – acknowledged earlier this month that the shooting of one of his deputies amounted to bona fide spillover. That incident, which stemmed from a botched drug transaction and kidnapping, is directly tied to the Gulf Cartel, the sheriff has said. 

Court records identify Rafael Cardenas as one of the principal leaders of the Gulf Cartel, which is listed as a criminal enterprise headquartered in Matamoros that imports, warehouses, transports and distributes tons of cocaine and marijuana from Mexico to the United States.

The indictment further accuses Rafael Cardenas of working with current Gulf Cartel leader Jorge Eduardo “El Coss” Costilla Sanchez and others in managing drug distribution cells in the U.S that acted as smaller units within the Gulf Cartel and were present in Brownsville, McAllen, Houston and northern U.S. cities.

The Gulf Cartel would move the drug proceeds back to Mexico and used hidden compartments in vehicles to hide the currency going south and the drugs coming north, according to the indictment. During the regular course of business, members of the syndicate would use call signs to conceal their identities.

Cardenas Vela has been identified as El Junior, Comandante 900 and El Rolex. Court records allege Rafael Cardenas directed the payments of money and gifts to various individuals in law enforcement in Mexico.

Documents on file with the court also confirm a previous report identifying him as the “plaza boss” – the chief of operations for a specific area – in San Fernando, Tamps, since 2000. Located some 80 miles south of Brownsville, San Fernando has made grim headlines in the past two years. In 2010, authorities found the bodies of 72 migrants inside a warehouse in the city’s rural area. In early 2011, authorities discovered 193 bodies in several mass graves, also in a rural area.

Mexican authorities have attributed the slayings to the Zetas, the former enforcement wing of the Gulf Cartel that has since become its worst enemy. After his stint as boss in San Fernando, Rafael Cardenas was moved to Rio Bravo – across the border from Donna – and finally became embroiled in an internal struggle for control of Matamoros after the death of his uncle Antonio Cardenas. The younger Cardenas assumed control of Matamoros in March 2011.

Related articles

• More about Rafael Cardenas Vela “El Junior” or is it Pedro? Arrest! (pikapvs.wordpress.com)
• Rafael Cardenas Vela known as “Pedro and Junior” in pink shorts going to Jail in Texas! (pikapvs.wordpress.com)

 

Authorities seize 18 tons of drugs in “narcotúnel-between San Diego and Tijuana

U.S. officials announced today the discovery of a new “narcotúnel” in the area of ​​Otay Mesa, California, connecting Mexico and the U.S., where 18 tons of marijuana seized.

Drug Tunnel Tijuana to USA

 

The head of the Border Patrol San Diego Sector, Paul A. Beeson said in a press conference that the tunnel had a length of 400 yards, 3 feet wide and 4 feet high.

Besides having a ventilation system, the underground passage was based on a warehouse near the Tijuana International Airport and ended in a warehouse district near the junction of heavy goods vehicles east of San Diego.

A spokeswoman for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in San Diego, Lauren Mack, said the discovery was made by the Task Force San Diego tunnels, made by officers of ICE, Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection (CBP ) and the DEA, whose representatives were at the press conference.

This group alerted the Mexican authorities, which located the entrance to a precarious place with dirt floors and tin roof.

Beeson said the tunnel did not have the sophisticated infrastructure of other structures, lacking a lighting system, concrete foundation or rails.

Federal agents seized six tons of marijuana in the U.S. sector of the tunnel, and other three tons on a truck.

The U.S. authorities confirmed information of the neighboring country which suggests that the drugs belonged to Alfredo Arteaga Gonzalez, alias “The Achilles’, as found in several packages of Captain America figure associated with that drug dealer, who is presumably working for the Sinaloa cartel.

The most important finding is attached to the dismantling of two tunnels discovered in November 2010 in the same area, which had sophisticated rail systems, ventilation and electricity and where it seized 50 tons of marijuana.

One of these passages was almost a mile long, from a residence in Tijuana to a warehouse in Otay Mesa, while the second covered a distance equivalent to six football fields, and had light, ventilation and a rail system.

About 75 “narcotúneles” have been discovered in the last four years on the border between the U.S. and Mexico. The Otay Mesa area is a favorite because it has good roads and many wineries where you can hide drugs.

On 9 March, for example, a small, crude tunnel was discovered east of the port of entry in Calexico, California, which only penetrated 10 feet into the United States, together with drainage pipes and considered by ICE as “not significant “.

From 2002 to 2004, authorities discovered at least 13 tunnels, most of them in the area of ​​San Diego and Calexico, representing a significant increase from the 12 that were discovered in the 12 years prior to the terrorist attacks of 2001 to result of which was tightened border security.

In February 2002, for example, authorities discovered a sophisticated tunnel about 1,000 feet long equipped with rails, electric lights and a ventilation system, which started from the Mexican city of Tecate and connected with a residence in the mountains East of San Diego.

 

Related articles

• US authorities find major drug tunnel in San Diego (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• US authorities find major drug tunnel in San Diego (sfgate.com)
• 14 Tons of Marijuana Seized After Border Tunnel Found (nytimes.com)
• 14 tons of pot seized in S. California drug tunnel (ctv.ca)

 

 

Arizona caught drug smuggler with $1.6 million worth of heroin and meth! Sinaloa cartel?………..

caught with 1.6M$ in hand

$1.6 million worth of heroin and meth is photographed at a news conference Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2011 in Florence, Ariz. announcing the Arizona arrest of a drug smuggler for Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa cartel. Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu says that the man was caught Monday, two weeks after he was deported as part of a larger investigation into the cartel.

A drug cartel member who was deported to Mexico as part of a major smuggling bust announced this week in Arizona has already returned to the U.S. and been caught with $1.6 million worth of drugs — yet another example of how relentless and seemingly unstoppable Mexican cartels can be, officials said Tuesday.

Francisco Guillermo Morales Esquer, 36, was arrested Oct. 13 in one of three major busts that state and federal officials credited with dismantling the smuggling ring, which is believed to be tied to the Sinaloa cartel — Mexico’s most powerful.

The busts were announced Monday at a Phoenix news conference in which officials displayed hundreds of pounds of drugs and dozens of guns they had seized.

Morales’ arrest came about five hours later when a deputy clocked him driving at 50 mph in a 15 mph school zone in Stanfield, about 50 miles south of Phoenix. A chase ensued at speeds of up to 100 mph during which officials said Morales tried to hit a deputy who was putting down stop sticks.

The 3-mile chase ended in the desert after Morales crashed his car and jumped into an irrigation canal. After he was arrested, deputies found 80 pounds of white- and black-tar heroin and eight pounds of methamphetamine in the car.

Morales was booked on charges of drug smuggling, possession of drug paraphernalia, felony flight and aggravated assault. It’s unclear whether he had an attorney.

Catching Morales two weeks after he was arrested as part of the department’s larger bust involving the Sinaloa cartel was the height of irony, Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said at a Tuesday news conference.

“Here we strike a body blow on the Sinaloa cartel, (and) they’re still operating in a robust fashion,” he said. “They can regenerate immediately.”

 Although Morales was found in a home tied to the cartel during the Oct. 13 bust, he wasn’t identified as a main target of the investigation and prosecutors didn’t have enough to convict him, Babeu said. Guns were found in that home, but not drugs.

Although Babeu acknowledged that his agency was involved in the decision to turn over Morales to the Border Patrol, he said it was the federal government’s responsibility to prosecute him for felony re-entry into the U.S. because he had been deported at least once before. The fact that he wasn’t prosecuted shows that the law isn’t being enforced, he said.

“There’s no consequences,” he said.

Officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

The long-term investigation of the Sinaloa cartel’s Arizona offshoot began in June 2010 after a traffic stop in Stanfield turned up 1,500 pounds of pot and a suspected smuggler began giving authorities information.

In three busts in September and October, ICE‘S Homeland Security Investigations and the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office arrested a total of 76 suspected smugglers, and seized more than 61,000 pounds of pot, about 160 pounds of heroin, about 210 pounds of cocaine, nearly $760,000 in cash, and 108 weapons, including assault rifles and shotguns.

The busts dismantled the ring, which they said was responsible for bringing more than $33 million worth of drugs through the state’s western desert every month for distribution nationwide, authorities said.

They believed the ring was in operation for at least five years and netted profits of $2.2 billion in that time.

 

Gulf Cartels’ El Wicho turned himself in to U.S. authorities! Was he a Target?

Gulf cartels El Wicho

U.S. authorities detained the Gulf Cartel‘s leader over Matamoros late last week — a third high-profile cartel arrest in recent weeks.

Court records state Jose Luis Zuniga Hernandez was arrested by U.S. Border Patrol agents Wednesday near Santa Maria, a town along the Rio Grande near the Cameron-Hidalgo County line.

Zuniga, also known as “Comandante Wicho,” was found with a .38-caliber handgun and “freely admitted” to be a Mexican national without documents to reside in the United States, a criminal complaint states.

A source familiar with Zuniga said he turned himself in to U.S. authorities, though an exact reason remains unclear.

Zuniga’s arrest comes amid fierce infighting within the Gulf Cartel at least since early September, when Samuel “Metro 3” Flores Borrego, the plaza boss for the Reynosa area, was found fatally shot.

Since then, widespread firefights have broken out across the Gulf Cartel’s territory in northern Tamaulipas, with much of the bloodshed coming from rivals once loyal to the same side.

“What we’re seeing on a daily basis is … a lot of changes in the Gulf Cartel,” said one U.S. law enforcement official. “We just don’t know, but what I think everybody agrees on is there’s some infighting that’s going on and the landscape is changing a bit.”

Court records do not indicate Zuniga’s role within the Gulf Cartel.

Zuniga has led the Matamoros plaza of the Gulf Cartel since the death of Ezequiel Cárdenas Guillén, better known by his nickname “Tony Tormenta,” or “Tony the Storm.” Mexican soldiers killed Cárdenas and scores of others in fiery street battles in Matamoros in November 2010.

A U.S. Magistrate Judge in Brownsville unsealed court records in Zuniga’s case on Friday. His arrest marks the third Gulf Cartel capo to be detained in recent weeks by federal authorities.

Eudoxio Ramos Garcia, 34, was detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents Thursday at a house in Rio Grande City. Ramos has been identified as the former Gulf Cartel boss over operations in Miguel Alemán, across the U.S.-Mexico border from Roma.

And perhaps the highest profile arrest came in Port Isabel on Oct. 20, when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained Rafael “El Junior” Cárdenas Vela. “El Junior” is the nephew of Osiel Cárdenas Guillen, the former Gulf Cartel kingpin extradited to the U.S. in 2006 and sentenced to 25 years in prison last year. The nephew was considered a rising leader within the cartel.

 

Americans infiltrate the Mexican Drug Cartels!

 

Image via Wikipedia

The United States has opened new law enforcement and intelligence outposts across Mexico in recent years, Washington’s networks of informants have grown there as well, current and former officials said. They have helped Mexican authorities capture or kill about two dozen high-ranking and midlevel drug traffickers, and sometimes have given American counter-narcotics agents access to the top leaders of the cartels they are trying to dismantle.

Typically, the officials said, Mexico is kept in the dark about the United States’ contacts with its most secret informants — including Mexican law enforcement officers, elected officials and cartel operatives — partly because of concerns about corruption among the Mexican police, and partly because of laws prohibiting American security forces from operating on Mexican soil.

“The Mexicans sort of roll their eyes and say we know it’s happening, even though it’s not supposed to be happening,” said Eric L. Olson, an expert on Mexican security matters at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

“That’s what makes this so hard,” he said. “The United States is using tools in a country where officials are still uncomfortable with those tools.”

In recent years, Mexican attitudes about American involvement in matters of national security have softened, as waves of drug-related violence have left about 40,000 people dead. And the United States, hoping to shore up Mexico’s stability and prevent its violence from spilling across the border, has expanded its role in ways unthinkable five years ago, including flying drones in Mexican skies.

The efforts have been credited with breaking up several of Mexico’s largest cartels into smaller — and presumably less dangerous — crime groups. But the violence continues, as does the northward flow of illegal drugs.

While using informants remains a largely clandestine affair, several recent cases have shed light on the kinds of investigations they have helped crack, including a plot this month in which the United States accused an Iranian-American car salesman of trying to hire killers from a Mexican drug cartel, known as Los Zetas, to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington.

American officials said Drug Enforcement Administration informants with links to the cartels helped the authorities to track down several suspects linked to the February murder of a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, Jaime J. Zapata, who is alleged to have been shot to death by members of Los Zetas in central Mexico.

The D.E.A.’s dealings with informants and drug traffickers — sometimes, officials acknowledged, they are one and the same — are at the center of proceedings in a federal courthouse in Chicago, where one of the highest-ranking leaders of the Sinaloa cartel is scheduled to go on trial next year.

And last month, a federal judge in El Paso sentenced a midlevel leader of the Sinaloa cartel to life in prison after he was found guilty on drug and conspiracy charges. He was accused of working as a kind of double agent, providing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency with information about the movements of a rival cartel in order to divert attention from his own trafficking activities.

As important as informants have been, complicated ethical issues tend to arise when law enforcement officers make deals with criminals. Few informants, law enforcement officials say, decide to start providing information to the government out of altruism; typically, they are caught committing a crime and want to mitigate their legal troubles, or are essentially taking bribes to inform on their colleagues.

Over the past two years, officials said, D.E.A. agents in Houston managed to develop “several highly placed confidential sources with direct access” to important leaders of the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas. This paid informant network is a centerpiece of the Houston office’s efforts to infiltrate the “command and control” ranks of the two groups.

One of those paid informants was the man who authorities say was approached last spring by a man charged in Iran’s alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador. Law enforcement documents say the informant told his handlers that an Iranian-American, Mansour J. Arbabsiar, had reached out to him to ask whether Los Zetas would be willing to carry out terrorist attacks in the United States and elsewhere.

Authorities would provide only vague details about the informant and his connections to Los Zetas, saying that he had been charged in the United States with narcotics crimes and that those charges had been dropped because he had “previously provided reliable and independently corroborated information to federal law enforcement agents” that “led to numerous seizures of narcotics.”

The Justice Department has been more forthcoming about the D.E.A.’s work with informants in a case against Jesús Vicente Zambada-Niebla, known as Vicentillo. Officials describe Mr. Zambada-Niebla as a logistics coordinator for the Sinaloa cartel, considered one of the world’s most important drug trafficking groups. His lawyers have argued that he was an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration, which offered him immunity in exchange for his cooperation.

The D.E.A. has denied that allegation, and the Justice Department took the rare step of disclosing the agency’s contacts with him in court documents. The intermediary was Humberto Loya-Castro, who was both a confidant to the cartel’s kingpin, Joaquín Guzmán, known as El Chapo, and an informant to the D.E.A.


“A D.E.A. agent’s job, first and foremost, is to get inside the body of those criminal organizations he or she is investigating,” the former official said, asking not to be identified because he occasionally does consulting work in Mexico. “Nothing provides that microscopic view more than a host that opens the door.”

Related articles

• Report: U.S. infiltrating Mexican drug cartels (cbsnews.com)

 

Obama deporter elite!

Image via Wikipedia

Another Obama! Not elected!

Mr Obama you are really messing up the USA, whilst your drunken Uncle, caught in Framingham Mass gets a free ride, you kick a family out of the USA with an American Born daughter! What will you do next?

Fearing for her safety during a fight with her husband on Christmas Eve in 2009, Maria Bolaños called the police in Prince George’s County, Maryland — but she said what happened after that call was far more dangerous.  “If I had known what was going to happen, I never would have called the police on December 24,”Bolaños said.

Nearly six months later, the police arrived at Bolaños’ door and arrested her for allegedly selling a $10 phone card.  “A police officer got out and told me, you’re  being arrested. And my husband said ‘Why?’ They didn’t even known what they were accusing me of,”Bolaños said.

After five days in detention, Bolaños’ charges were dropped. She asked if she could return home to breastfeed her infant daughter, but she was told she was being deported.  “Then I asked them, can I go home? The clerk told me yes you can go. And then a police officer stopped him and said, no, you can’t go home, we have a deportation order and we are going to deport you back to your country,” Bolaños said. “They brought me back to the cell, with my hands and feet shackled, like a criminal.”

The 28-year-old undocumented immigrant from El Salvador was released with a tracking bracelet. Unable to find work because of the court order, Bolaños continues to fight deportation today and has become an unlikely hero of the immigrants’ rights movement because of her courage to stand up to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Far from unique, Bolaños’ case is part of a program called Secure Communities. Billed as a program to remove dangerous criminals, federal statistics show that 29% of those actually arrested under the program had no prior criminal conviction and an additional 30% had minor offenses like traffic violations.

“They’re getting picked up by police who quite frankly know if they pick up some brown person in an old car that doesn’t have paper, they can get them deported,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America‘s Voice. “It’s ripping apart the families of the very people Barack Obama promised to legalize, who are being deported under a program he says is for serious criminals.”

Already active in 42 states, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has mandated that the program be implemented nationwide by 2013.

Critics like Enid Gonzalez of immigrant advocacy organization CASA de Maryland said the program is about filling a quota. 

“Wherever there’s a problem, someone is making money,” Gonzalez said. “Congress has allotted funding for 400,000 beds for immigrants in proceedings, and there’s this pressure to keep those beds occupied. People who are in detention, they call us and say, ‘What can we do so they will send us home?'”

Gonzalez said rather than making communities more secure, the program breeds fear and prejudice.

“These nice white folks have got in their head: ‘These undocumented! These illegals!’ They’ve even got in their heads that there’s such a thing as an illegal person for God’s sake – when illegality is ascribed to conduct.”

President Obama has deported 1.4 million undocumented immigrants. But responding to immigrants rights groups last week, Obama agreed to review 300,000 pending deportations of “low priority” immigrants – including undocumented students like DREAM Gaby Pacheco.

“The president has totally failed the immigrant rights movement. Mainly, he has failed this community of young people who stood by him, who went out for him and registered people to vote for him,”said Pacheco. “If he’s going to ask the Latino vote, for the immigrant vote, in 2012 he’s going to have to deliver something.”

Sharry said it is still possible for Obama to deliver on his campaign promise of comprehensive immigration reform.

“He, as president, has executive authority that could change things now,”   Sharry said. So why isn’t he doing something? Obama is afraid of antagonizing white swing voters who are going to be critical, in his next election.

 Immigrants, rights advocates say Secure Communities encourages racial profiling as well. “The police just look for people who look like us, latinos’, and they’re always bothering us. They’re racist,”Bolaños said.

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