Threat grows as Mexican cartels move to beef up U.S. presence
When a major Mexican drug cartel opened a branch office here on the California side of the border, U.S. authorities tapped into their cellphones – then listened, watched and waited.
Their surveillance effort captured more than 50,000 calls over six months, conversations that reached deep into Mexico and helped build a sprawling case against 43 suspects – including Mexican police and top officials – allegedly linked to a savage trafficking ring known as the Fernando Sanchez Organization.
According to the wiretaps and confidential informants, the suspects plotted kidnappings and killings and hired American teenage girls, with nicknames like Dopey, to smuggle quarter-pound loads of methamphetamine across the border for $100 a trip. To send a message to a rival, they dumped a disemboweled dog in his mother’s front yard.
But U.S. law enforcement officials say the most worrisome thing about the Fernando Sanchez Organization was how aggressively it moved to set up operations in the United States, working out of a San Diego apartment it called “The Office.”
And now… the rest of the story. …..
Harold
Does it look like we are leaving Asia in time to move into Mexico and beyond????
At the rate drug-cartels are moving on American states and Cities, it is problematic Cartels at some point might threaten U.S. Citizens with deadly acts of terrorism if U.S. Government and Police interfere with their drug distribution efforts in the U.S. The U.S. State Department should designate all Mexican Drug-Cartels as terrorist organizations and charge their members caught in the U.S. with supporting terrorism. Leaders of Mexican Drug Cartels have advanced beyond being criminals and should be hunted and dealt with in the same manner U.S. Intelligence agencies hunt Terrorists in foreign countries that threaten out homeland.