A surge in drug cartel violence along the border with Mexico is reportedly terrorizing locals south of the Rio Grande and driving more migrants north toward the United States.
The ruthless gangs have unleashed a reign of terror in Mexican cities like Juarez that is so common that 40% of adults have witnessed cartel violence over the previous three months, according to Border Report.
With the increase in border crossings, their turf wars now focus on human smuggling routes, not just drug trafficking.
“Whatever product flows in any direction is controlled by whoever controls that territory,” Gary Hale, a nonresident researcher in drug policy and Mexican studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute, told The Post.
“They were already collecting taxes from migrants who came through Mexico, but now there are so many migrants [and] They have done everything they can to control them as much as possible,” said Hale, a former DEA agent.
He said two Mexican gangs, the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels, control about half of the U.S. border with Mexico, and that nothing and no one crosses unless they receive a share.
Mexican cities near the U.S. border have seen a rise in cartel violence, and migrant smuggling is now part of turf wars. REUTERS Mothers in Juárez, Mexico, write the names of their missing children on crosses as victims of turf wars between cartels rise. REUTERS
Rampant violence in and around Juárez is reportedly helping fuel the exodus.
According to Border Report, severed heads have been dumped inside coolers in local parks and dismembered bodies have been dumped in apartment building parking lots or stuffed into storm drains.
While government officials downplay much of the violence as gang-on-gang, residents told the outlet that civilians often get caught in the line of fire, sometimes with fatal consequences.
“One of the worst things I have seen is a shooting where two children were murdered,” said Roxanna Gallegos, who works in the Riberas del Bravo neighborhood. “People came and shot the father dead and there were two children in the car. They also killed the children.”
Other Mexican states such as Guanajuato and Baja California have also been affected by cartel bloodshed.
Soldiers patrol near the crime scene where photojournalist Ismael Villagómez Tapia of local newspaper El Heraldo de Juárez was shot dead by unknown assailants, according to local media, in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, November 16, 2023. REUTERS Chihuahua Agents They examine the area in Juárez, Mexico, where journalist Ismael Villagómez Tapia was murdered. AFP via Getty Images
“This violence is largely perpetrated by gangs and drug cartels, but the [Mexican] The state has also committed human rights violations in its war against these groups,” the Council on Foreign Relations said in an August report. “Civilians suffer the greatest impact, pushing migrants to the US border.”
Last month, the Arizona Daily Star reported that a Mexican border town, Sasabe, in Sonora, had been so devastated by gang violence that it had become virtually a ghost town.
The city, about 75 miles south of Tucson, Arizona, has seen its population drop from about 2,500 residents to fewer than 100 due to violence, the outlet said.
Drug gangs are also taking advantage of the migration crisis by sending large crowds of asylum seekers to the border to overwhelm federal agents, thereby leaving other parts of the border understaffed, making it easier for drugs and other contraband to enter the United States. .
Migrants talk to a U.S. border agent near Juarez, Mexico. Migrant smuggling is now lucrative for violent drug cartels. LUIS TORRES/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Hale said human trafficking has been an important part of the cartels’ playbook since about 2005, when Los Zetas, once the ruthless bodyguards of Mexican drug traffickers, branched out on their own and began selling everything from weapons even people.
The increase in immigrants crossing the border has only made them a more lucrative commodity.
“They did it before, but now they continue to do it on a larger scale because more people come and they make more money,” Hale said. “That is a free increase in cartel revenue, and that free increase is attributed more to US immigration policy than to the cartels.
“We have Biden ignoring immigration just like you have done [Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador] ignoring drug trafficking and production,” he said. “You’re just looking the other way and letting it happen. Who knows why Biden allows this to happen.
“But because he’s allowing this to happen, that creates a tremendous opportunity for the cartel to exploit him, and that’s what’s happening.”
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Source: vtt.edu.vn