Election upset: Enter President Trump

I will be the first to concede that I was wrong about this election, and not just me, but so were the professional statisticians that I was paying attention to.  Donald Trump won the 2016 election in a political upset that will be studied by the political science community for decades to come.  He broke […]

Getting away with murder in Mexico

Every November 2, Mexicans mark the Day of the Dead by honouring deceased loved ones. Given the disproportionate number of deaths produced by Mexico’s US-backed drug war, officially launched in 2006, it is starting to seem like an ever-more tragically appropriate tradition. In a recent investigative piece for The Nation, Dawn Paley details the “spectacular […]

Sons of ‘El Chapo’ blamed for deadly attack on Mexican military convoy

The military convoy was escorting a wounded suspect in an ambulance when it came under armed attack on the outskirts of Culiacan in the northern state of Sinaloa early Friday. General Alfonso Duarte told reporters that Guzman’s sons were “very probably” responsible for the pre-dawn ambush. The gunmen reportedly laid in wait for the ambulance […]

Mexico returns remains of US soldiers from 1846 war

The remains of 10 US soldiers killed during the Mexican-American war are being returned 170 years after their deaths.  The troops are believed to have been volunteers who fought during the Battle of Monterrey in Mexico in 1846. The battle was key in a two-year war which led to the annexation by the US of a […]

Texas Border Agent accused of aiding Narco Cartel operations

Government informants revealed to authorities that, in one case, a Gulf Cartel commander known as El Puma ordered that rifles and vests which had been used in a kidnapping and murder be placed in a box and buried in a property belonging to the Beltran family. The Beltran group had De La Cruz get rid of the weapons, which he did by taking them to a local gun store to be sold off.

Watch: Cartel Smuggling Tactics – Narco cartels continue to use migrants for diversion, cover

Surrendering large groups of families to the Border Patrol is a method cartels have been using since before the humanitarian crisis two years ago. With August reporting the highest number of immigrant apprehensions during that same period since 2012.

Undocumented immigrants are flooding the border once again at the hand of criminal cartels, a tactic that Villegas said doesn’t always work.

“We’re always one step ahead of the game,” he said. “They have their tactics, we have ours. We have multiple units doing what they have to do, we have cameras, we have sensors, and we have things to make sure that they can’t accomplish their mission.”

3 brothers in south Texas, one a Border Patrol agent, charged in drug cartel-linked murder case

Joel Luna seemed an ideal Border Patrol hire: south Texas native, high school ROTC standout, Army combat veteran.

A ledger documented the sale of drugs, guns and ammunition. Most damning of all, authorities said, was a commemorative Border Patrol badge and documents belonging to Joel Luna, including his work station password and Security Service Federal Credit Union account number.

Joel said he “had no knowledge of the safe,” according to investigators’ dash camera video. He was arrested on various charges, including tampering with evidence and capital murder. In his mugshot, he looked weary.

‘Wolf Boys’: How two American teens were trained as Mexican narcos cartel assassins

Cardona’s future became clear when he and a second American teen were assigned two $5,000 commission jobs in Laredo. The first target was a Mexican cop, Bruno Orozco, who’d defected from the Zetas to join a Sinaloan boss, Chuy Resendez, in Laredo. The teens murdered Orozco by the side of a busy road in broad daylight. Most of the hastily assembled crew escaped, but Cardona landed up in the Laredo police station for questioning by Detective Robert Garcia.

Mexico suffers more deaths than war-torn Iraq, Afghanistan

Data from the 2016 Global Peace Index Report indicates that Mexico’s internal conflict led to approximately 33,000 deaths in 2015, a figure higher than those of war-torn countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan. The Institute for Economics and Peace presented its Global Peace Index 2016 report this week, in which Mexico is ranked 140 out of 163 […]