THE BORDER REPORT The following story was produced for the Fronteras Desk, public radio, Arizona. Click here for the audio version. Long known as Arizona’s beach town, tourists and business owners in Rocky Point, Mexico, say a recent State Department’s travel warning about this place is unfair. Victims say otherwise. They say cartel violence in [...]
THE BORDER REPORT This story aired on KJZZ, public radio Arizona as part of the Fronteras Desk. For more stories, go to FronterasDesk.org. An accused Mexican drug lord being held on charges in the U.S. has filed a unusual motion in federal court. He’s challenging the United States, saying he’d been working with its own [...]
THE BORDER REPORT No, no, not those numeros. I’m talking about the official numeros de secuestros and home invasion rip-offs in Phoenix. The statistics seem to have turned into a hen-pecking party with allegations against the recently demoted former chief, Jack Harris for $2.4 million in federal funding. Here’s the latest: an independent panel has [...]
TUCSON – Three people are accused of trying to buy anti-tank weapons in Arizona for a drug cartel in Mexico. Federal indictments were recently unsealed in Phoenix. Court documents show the three also tried to buy a Stinger missile. Click here to download the Indictment. The accused were trying to buy the military weaponry for [...]
THE BORDER REPORT The Mexican Army arrested nine suspects in the murder of an American federal agent working in that country. Officials are calling the shooting a case of mistaken identity. The Obama Administration has lauded the Mexican government for its fast work. But some are suspicious of the arrests. Six of the nine suspects [...]
THE BORDER REPORT This is a story I produced for KJZZ, public radio, Arizona. Note, law enforcement sources I spoke with say police recovered more than 80 shellcasings at the crime scene. New details have emerged in the attack of two US immigration agents working in Mexico. People familiar with the case say the agents [...]
THE BORDER REPORT Asi dicen las fuentes. The murdered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, Jaime Zapata, from Laredo, was temporarily assigned to Mexico. Somehow along the way, up that Highway 57 towards Monterrey. Lots of narco-bloqueos on that highway these days. Still, the questions linger. Back in late 2010, the Hermosillo Consulate issued a [...]
THE BORDER REPORT This State Department cable out of Wikileaks caught my eye. 51 FBI informants and 10 DEA “liaison officers” were murdered in Mexico between 2007-09. When we talk about American law enforcement in Mexico, we generally view the Americans as not being part of the game; for the most part, this has held [...]
The U.S. Border Patrol held a memorial service in Tucson on Friday morning, paying homage to one of its elite agents, Brian Terry, who was killed during a gunbattle with bandits in a canyon along the Arizona-Mexico border. He was a man who friends called “Super-Cop.” (Click inside for slideshow of images.) This is a [...]
THE BORDER REPORT TUCSON – When a gunman killed six people last Saturday in Tucson, he took the life of one of the hardest working judges along the U.S.-Mexico border. Federal Judge John Roll was truly impartial, even in a time when rhetoric dominates much of the politics of the border region. Those who worked in his [...]
