Pirates threaten boats on US-Mexico border lake

ZAPATA, Texas - The waters of Falcon Lake normally beckon boaters with waterskiing and world-record bass fishing. But this holiday weekend, fishermen on the waters that straddle the U.S.-Mexico border are on the lookout for something more sinister: pirates.

Twice in recent weeks, fishermen have been robbed at gunpoint by marauders that the local sheriff says are “spillover” from fighting between rival Mexican drug gangs.
Boaters are concerned about their safety, and the president of the local Chamber of Commerce is trying to assure people that everything’s fine on the U.S. side of the lake.

At the fishing camp his family has owned for 50 years, Jack Cox now sleeps with a loaded shotgun at his feet and a handgun within reach. In the American waters, Cox said, “you’re safer, but you’re not safe.” Mexican commercial fishermen regularly cross to set their nets illegally, why wouldn’t gunmen do the same? he asked.

Two weeks ago, the Texas Department of Public Safety warned boaters to avoid the international boundary that zig-zags through the lake, which is 25 miles long and 3 miles across at its widest point. Authorities also urged anyone on the water to notify relatives of their boating plans to aid law enforcement in case of trouble.

Since issuing the warning, most boats have stayed on the U.S. side.

“That’s a good indication. It means they’re getting the message,” Texas Parks and Wildlife Capt. Fernando Cervantes said Thursday as he patrolled with two other game wardens. “They’re still coming out, but they’re not going across.”

The border is marked by 14 partially submerged concrete towers that mark the Rio Grande’s path before the lake was created in 1954.

Game wardens and the U.S. Border Patrol watch over the lake but do not cross into Mexican waters, and no Mexican law enforcement is visible.

Men armed with assault rifles robbed fishermen on the Mexican side of Falcon Lake on April 30 and May 6. They traveled in the low-slung, underpowered commercial Mexican fishing boats that are familiar here. They asked for money, drugs and guns, and took what cash was available. No one was hurt.

A third incident happened a couple of days before the warning was issued, but Cervantes said the fishermen were able to escape without the thieves boarding their boat.

The attacks “were really unusual,” Cervantes said. “We had never seen it, and then they started up.”

Violence on the Mexican side of the lake has been climbing for several months.

A fractured partnership between the region’s dominant Gulf Cartel and its former enforcers, the Zetas, plunged many of the area’s Mexican border cities into violence. Police stations were attacked, officers killed and rolling gun battles between the gangs and with the Mexican military became commonplace.

“To me, this is spillover violence,” Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez Jr. said. “I don’t do the Chamber of Commerce talk. I talk reality.”

Still, the sheriff says, boaters should be safe provided they stay on the American side.

Cox, 81, says it was only a matter of time before the violence from Mexico crept onto the water. And the idea that gunmen looking to score easy cash from fishermen would not cross the lake’s imaginary boundary doesn’t make sense, he said.

That perspective is what worries Chamber of Commerce President Paco Mendoza.

“What’s keeping our town alive is our lake,” Mendoza said. In recent years, drilling in the county’s oilfields has virtually stopped, and the wells are no longer producing like they once did. In those days, oilfield workers packed Zapata’s restaurants and hotels, he said.

So Zapata increasingly looks to the lake for economic growth. Five fishing tournaments are scheduled between now and July, and a few big ones are set for next year.

“As far as we know, all of our contracts are still in play,” Mendoza said.

Falcon Lake landed on the national map of fishing destinations after the 2008 Bassmaster Elite Series tournament, where bass-fishing world records were broken.

The pirate warning could hurt businesses that depend on the lake, “but anglers will continue to come to Falcon because of the great fishing,” Mendoza said.

Norma Amaya, who runs a tackle shop with her husband, insists there is plenty of good fishing in U.S. waters. She points to a photo taken in December of a woman holding a 13.2-pound bass and smiling broadly.

Amaya said her husband’s guide service had had a couple cancellations since the pirate warning, but they are still booked solid for next year’s peak season, which runs from December to March.

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Mexico: Cartels team up to destroy hit men gang

MEXICO CITY (AP) - Two Mexican drug cartels have joined forces to destroy a feared gang of hit men along the border with Texas, a shift in allegiances that is fueling drug-war violence, federal police said Monday.

Intelligence reports indicate the Gulf and La Familia cartels - formerly bitter rivals - have formed an alliance to fight the Zetas gang in the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas, said Ramon Pequeno, the head of the anti-narcotics division of Mexico’s federal police.

It was the first official confirmation of the alliance, which has been rumored since banners appeared throughout the region announcing the pact and warning residents not to leave their homes, saying the conflict would get worse. E-mails were also sent with the same message.

The campaign to wipe out the Zetas has raised fears of open warfare in Tamaulipas, with armed men throwing up roadblocks around army garrisons and ambushing military patrols, brazen tactics that experts say are meant to get soldiers out of the way of the turf war.

Full Story Here:
Mexico: Cartels team up to destroy hit men gang

It only gets worse as every day goes by.

Mexico has deployed tens of thousands of troops to the border and other regions to combat drug trafficking groups, an effort backed by U.S. intelligence work and aid. Gang violence has surged despite the three-year-old deployment, claiming more than 18,000 lives since 2006.

Last weekend, assailants threw a grenade at the U.S. consulate in Nuevo Laredo, a city across the border from Laredo, Texas. Nobody was hurt.

Why isn’t a U.S. consulate considered to be sovereign U.S. soil? Just like an embassy? An attack on one of our embassies is an attack on the United States, is it not?

On Monday, the State Department extended until May 12 the authorized departure of relatives of U.S. government employees from consulates in Nuevo Laredo and five other border cities - an indication that Washington does not expect the violence to subside soon.

When the U.S. government begins to move nonessential personnel from the area, you can bet that there is some really good intelligence coming in saying that an attack of some sort is imminent.

It’s a never ending battle, the Mexican border has never been a safe place, but today it’s sheer chaos. Murder is the order of the day. Drug cartels own Mexico, and for some reason, I think they may own a few past and present U.S. presidents.

FORT HANCOCK, Texas — Ever since the violence spiked in the Valley of Juarez, right across the border from Fort Hancock, Hudspeth sheriff’s deputies and police are on alert.

Chief Deputy Mike Doyal said patrols are being conducted at the schools in order to stop the violence from coming to the town.

“We’ve rearranged some of our personnel in order to keep more deputies not only in the area but around our schools,” said Doyal.

Patrol units are constantly circulating the Fort Hancock area, a town with a population of about 2,000 people.

U.S. Representative Ciro Rodriguez, D-Texas said the area is well protected.

PDF file: Border Delegation Letter to Governor Perry

Full Story Here:
Fort Hancock Resident: Drug Violence Spilling Into U.S. - News Story - KFOX El Paso

I like our Governor, I have respect for him, as things stand at this moment.

But if we don’t get some serious relief on the Texas/Mexico border, in the form of well armed and fully combat ready Texas Army National Guard troops, Texas Air National Guard and any other forces necessary, I am pretty sure that we’re going to see Texas border towns shot up old west style, and we’re gonna see a lot of dead Texans soon.

When that happens, and yes, I said WHEN, not IF, then there’s going to be some REAL Texans that will be ready to go to war against Mexicans, anyone that looks Mexican, anyone that sounds Mexican, anyone suspected of even being remotely connected to Mexico, the violence will happen, all over this state.

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New foe in U.S. drug war: Mexican assassins

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - A cross-border drug gang born in the prison cells of Texas has evolved into a sophisticated paramilitary killing machine that U.S. and Mexican officials suspect is responsible for thousands of assassinations here, including the recent ambush and slaying of three people linked to the U.S. Consulate.

The heavily tattooed Barrio Azteca gang members have long operated across the border in El Paso, dealing drugs and stealing cars. But in Ciudad Juarez, the organization now specializes in contract killing for the Juarez drug cartel. According to U.S. law enforcement officers, it may have been involved in as many as half of the 2,660 murders in the city in the past year.

Officials on both sides of the border have watched as the Aztecas honed their ability to locate targets, stalk them and finally strike in brazen ambushes involving multiple chase cars, coded radio communications, coordinated blocking maneuvers and disciplined firepower by masked gunmen in body armor. Afterward, the assassins vanish, back to safe houses in the Juarez barrios or across the bridge to El Paso.

“Within their business of killing, they have surveillance people, intel people and shooters. They have a degree of specialization,” said David Cuthbertson, special agent in charge of the FBI’s El Paso division. “They work day in and day out, with a list of people to kill, and they get proficient at it.”

Full Story Here:
New foe in U.S. drug war: Mexican assassins

We ALL know that the Feds and Police LIE to us. Right?

Isn’t that what so many said about the Hutaree militia sting? The FBI is lying? The government is making this up? They’re just peaceful people that like guns and God? The FBI is only targeting them because they’re Christian? This is Waco or Ruby Ridge all over again?

Does that just about cover it? I can add MORE if you like.

Make no mistake, I have absolutely NO faith in Obama, Holder, Napolitano or anyone else in the hierarchy of the Obama regime when it comes to having the competency required to protect this nation from threats of violence.

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t some top notch federal, state and local officers out there doing an outstanding job given the constraints imposed on them by the Obama regime. Politics, and those that play politics be damned, there are some truly great men and women working to keep this nation safe.

It’s not some diabolical plot to snatch up LAWFUL, and law abiding Americans, these people are working in the most dangerous environment a LEO can work in, and they are not only in a battle with the drug cartels, terrorists and such, they too are having to fight the political minds that preach PCness, open borders and whatever else it is that is turning the U.S. border states into Norte Mexico.

The special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in El Paso, Joseph Arabit, said, “Our intelligence indicates that they kill frequently for a hundred dollars.”

How do you combat that? How do you stop a people that hold life so worthless that they will take it for $100? These drug cartels aren’t humans, they are animals! They are worse than animals, I am pretty sure animals don’t kill for a thrill or for money.

Arabit said investigators have no evidence to suggest the Barrio Azteca gang includes former military personnel or police. It is, however, working for the Juarez cartel, which includes La Linea, an enforcement element composed in part of former Juarez police officers, according to Mexican officials.

Now we get into that area of political correctness known as doublespeak. There’s no evidence to suggest that Barrio Azteca has former military or police involved, but, the cartel they work for does. That is the utterance of a career bureaucrat. Arabit may have been a hard working field agent, once upon a time, but now he’s in the office and you know how it goes, C.Y.A.

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