A surge in drug cartel violence along the Mexican border is terrorizing locals south of the Rio Grande – and pushing more migrants north to the US, according to reports.
The brutal gang has waged a reign of terror in Mexican cities like Juarez that is so common that 40% of adults have witnessed cartel violence in the previous three months, according to Border Reports.
With border crossings on the rise, their wars now involve human smuggling routes, not just drug trafficking.
“Any commodity that flows in any direction is controlled by whoever controls the territory,” Gary Hale, a non-resident fellow in drug policy and Mexican studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute told The Post.
“They already tax immigrants coming through Mexico, but now there are so many immigrants [and] they’ve done everything they can to control them as much as possible,” said Hale, a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent.
He said two Mexican gangs – the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels – control about half of the US border with Mexico, and nothing and no one can cross unless they get a cut.
Mexican towns near the US border have seen a surge in cartel violence, with migrant smuggling now part of a turf war. REUTERS Mothers in Juarez, Mexico, write the names of their missing children on a cross as the toll rises from the cartel war. Reuters
Helping to drive the migration is unchecked violence in Juarez and surrounding areas, according to reports.
Severed heads were dumped in coolers at local parks and bodies were dismembered in apartment building parking lots or stuffed in storm drains, according to Border Reports.
While government officials downplay the majority of violence as gang-on-gang, residents report that civilians are often caught in the line of fire, sometimes with fatal consequences.
“One of the worst things I’ve seen is a shooting where two children were killed,” said Roxanna Gallegos, who works in the Riberas del Bravo neighborhood. “People came, shot dead the father and there were two children in the car. They also killed the child.”
Other Mexican states, such as Guanajuato and Baja California, have also been plagued by cartel bloodshed.
Soldiers patrol near the scene where photojournalist Ismael Villagomez Tapia of local newspaper El Heraldo de Juarez was shot dead by unidentified assailants, according to local media, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico November 16, 2023. REUTERS Agents from Chihuahua check the area in Juarez, Mexico , where journalist Ismael Villagomez Tapia was killed. AFP via Getty Images
“This violence is largely committed by gangs and drug cartels, but [Mexican] the country has also committed human rights abuses in its war against this group,” the Council on Foreign Relations said in a report in August. “Civilians bear the brunt of the impact, which drives immigrants to the US border.”
Last month, the Arizona Daily Star reported that a Mexican border town, Sasabe, in Sonora, has been so ravaged by gang violence that it has become a virtual ghost town.
The town, about 75 miles south of Tucson, Arizona, has seen its population drop from about 2,500 residents to fewer than 100 as a result of the violence, the outlet said.
Drug cartels are also exploiting the migrant crisis by sending large groups of asylum seekers to the border in large numbers to overwhelm federal agents – thus leaving other parts of the border understaffed, making it easier to bring drugs and other contraband into the US.
Migrants speak with US border agents near Juarez, Mexico. Migrant smuggling is now profitable for violent drug cartels. LUIS TORRES/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Hale said human trafficking has been a big part of the cartel’s playbook since about 2005 when Los Zetas, once brutal bodyguards for Mexican drug traffickers, broke free and began peddling everything from weapons to people.
The surge of immigrants flooding the border only makes them a more profitable commodity.
“They did it before, but now they continue to do it on a larger scale because there are more people coming, so they make more money,” Hale said. “That is an unjustified increase in cartel revenue, and that unjustified increase has more to do with US immigration policy than the cartel.
“You’ve made Biden ignore immigration the way you did [Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador] ignore the distribution and production of drugs,” he said. “You just look the other way and let it happen. Who knows why Biden let it happen.
“But because he let it happen, that created a huge opportunity for the cartels to exploit it, and that’s what happened.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
