Immigration News

Today's Illegal Immigration News
Thursday, January 19, 2012


BEHEADINGS IN U.S. LIKELY EVIDENCE OF CARTEL ACTIVITY

Cartels are getting bolder in carrying out their beheadings on our side of the border, according to former DEA supervisor Phil Jordan. Three beheadings in two different states – Arizona and Oklahoma – “have cartel written all over them,” says Jordan.

Tucson, Arizona, County workers found a headless man lying on the side of the road Jan. 6, leading experts to believe that the person(s) responsible wanted to send a message, as this is commonly done in Mexico, Columbia, and other places.

A second headless victim, 19-year-old human trafficking victim Carina Saunders, was found beheaded and stuffed into a bag left in a grocery store parking lot in Oklahoma, more than 600 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. The police chief in the Saunders case says two men in the area running the trafficking ring killed the young woman to send a message to other victims.

The third beheaded body was found in Chandler, Ariz., after cartel operatives came from Mexico to kill 38-year-old Martin Alejandro Cota Monroy.

All three killings occurred in the past 12 months and have federal agents scrambling to develop more informants to get to the cartels before they can commit the gruesome crimes.

ONE MEXICAN STATE ON U.S. BORDER DEADLIER THAN AFGHANISTAN

From January through September 2011, 2,276 deaths were recorded in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, which borders Texas and New Mexico. A Nov. 2011 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report states that over nearly the same period – January through October 2011 – 2,177 civilians were killed in Afghanistan though it did not breakdown responsibility for those deaths between American troops and the Taliban. However, a 2010 report attributed 75 percent of civil deaths to the Taliban and other “anti-government elements.”

There were more drug-related killings in Chihuahua than in any other Mexican states, according to the government report. Ciudad Juarez, located in the Mexican state of Chihuahua just across the border from El Paso, Texas, accounted for 1,206 (roughly 53 percent) of the 2,276 drug cartel-related murders in the state for the entire reporting period.