Conservative Opposition Surges to Landslide Victory in Australian Federal Elections

A coalition of right-of-center parties handed the Labour party their worst defeat since the 1930s in last week's Federal elections in Australia. The defeat came only a few weeks after former PM Kevin Rudd ousted Julia Gillard as head of the Labour party and replaced her as Prime Minister. Gillard had originally called for the elections to take place in mid-September, but the date was moved up by a few weeks once she was ousted.

Tony Abbott of Australian Liberal Party [which would be more along the lines of 'classic liberalism' by US standards- NANESB!] will be sworn in as Australia's newest Prime Minister this week after coalition of Australia's Liberal and National parties had formed a coalition. Abbott campaigned on a number of hot-button issues including repealing the unpopular carbon tax and turning back 'boat people'- asylum seekers and illegal immigrants reaching Australia by boat in the hopes of being granted asylum upon arrival in Australia- at sea and processing them offshore.

Abbott stated this week that his first order of business will be to scrap the carbon tax, although remaining members of Australia's Labour party in parliament have vowed to fight such a move by the new government. The carbon tax was implemented by then PM Julia Gillard last year and faced considerable opposition from Australian mining firms, steelmakers and airlines as well as the public.

A campaign proposal by Abbott to pay Indonesian nationals bounties for information leading to human traffickers was also sharply rebuked by Indonesia's foreign minister this week. The two governments are expected to discuss the boat people issue in-depth during a summit next month.

Border Patrol Agent Fatally Shot in Southern Arizona Identified; Unconfirmed Reports Claim Mexican Police Detained 2 Suspects in Killing

A US Border Patrol agent was killed and another wounded in what investigators are describing as an ambush in rugged terrain along the Mexican border west of Naco, AZ. The shooting reportedly took place in the early morning hours of Tuesday as the agents were responding on horseback to a tripped sensor along the border fence.

The agents reported over the radio that they had come under fire as they were following a trail into the area, said Carol Capas, a spokeswoman with the Cochise County Sheriff's Office. Earlier reports said they were on horseback.

When deputies arrived, one of the agents had died and another suffered serious but non-life threatening injuries, she said. Cochise County Sheriff's Office sent every available deputy to the scene.

The wounded agent was flown to a hospital, according to Crystal Amarillas, a spokeswoman for the Tucson Sector Border Patrol.

On Tuesday, investigators patrolled a rugged area south of U.S. 80 on ATVs and trucks, and James Turgal Jr., FBI special agent in charge for Arizona, said at a Tuesday press conference that they would likely continue gathering evidence for two days.

The murdered Border Patrol agent has been identified as 30 year old Nicholas Ivie of Provo, UT. Ivie joined the Border Patrol in 2008 and family described him as a loving father and husband who grew up around horses and loved his job which involved patrolling remote and rugged terrain in south eastern Arizona on horseback. Ivie was also a Mormon and he learned Spanish during his two year mission to Mexico at the age of 19.

The second agent, whose name hasn't been released, was treated and released by Wednesday after sustaining multiple gunshot wounds including to the ankle and buttocks.

The area in which the shootings took place has been described by local, state and federal law enforcement officials as a high-intensity drug trafficking and smuggling area owing to the rugged terrain and the distance from the Border Patrol stations in Naco and Douglas, AZ- creating a gap in effective coverage.

Lt. Floyd Gregory, who oversee the Cochise County Sheriff's Department Narcotics Unit, has pointed out that smugglers have gotten increasingly brazen and resourceful in recent years.

In the past, the area was a major route for illegal immigrants who left behind piles of discarded clothing, water jugs and other debris. But most of the illegal-immigrant traffic has dried up. What remains is the drug smuggling.

They use the canyon to smuggle loads of marijuana from the border north to Arizona 80, where it is quickly loaded into vehicles and transported to stash houses in Douglas, Tucson or other communities, Gregory said.

Sometimes, the smugglers use pickup trucks or SUVs loaded with cellophane-wrapped bricks of marijuana to get to the highway. But more commonly, the marijuana bricks are stuffed inside homemade burlap backpacks and trekked north through the desert. The backpacks weigh anywhere from 40 to 80 pounds, he said. Sometimes one smuggler is designated to carry only food and water for the rest of the group, he said.

In the past, Gregory said these human smuggling "mules" traveled in groups with as many as 15 people. But more recently, law-enforcement officials are encountering smaller groups of two to four mules. That way, the groups are harder to detect and smuggling organizations can reduce their losses if the mules are caught

"We've had intel that the higher-ups have told their people to do whatever it takes: 'We are not going to lose a load at any cost,' " Gregory said.

In March 2010, Cochise County rancher Robert Krentz was gunned down on his property while checking fences and water lines.

In December 2010, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed when his BORTAC [Border Patrol Tactical- the Border Patrol equivalent to a SWAT Team- NANESB!] unit was engaged in a firefight with what law enforcement describes as a "rip crew"- armed bandits who ambush and rob smugglers of their contraband. At least two guns from the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms' ill-advised 'Fast And Furious' gunwalking program were recovered from the scene, where field agents were ordered to allow guns purchased on the US side of the border to cross unimpeded into Mexico, where they would surface at any number of crime scenes in Mexico. Operation Fast and Furious was carried out without any notification of Mexican authorities about the trafficked weapons. The death toll on the Mexican side of the border from Fast And Furious guns is thought to be in the hundreds and a recent Univision report has uncovered additional Fast and Furious weapons that were recovered by Mexican troops from the scene of a 2010 massacre of 16 teenagers at a birthday party in a residential area of Ciudad Juarez. This eventually led to a Congressional inquiry and impeachment of Attorney General Eric Holder.

Last month, Mexico Federal police announced the arrest of one of the suspects in the shooting of Brian Terry- although any eventual extradition to face charges in the USA may be a thorny issue as Mexico will not extradite prisoners facing the death penalty in the United States. Ironically, the Border Patrol station in nearby Bisbee, AZ was renamed in honor of Agent Terry a few weeks before the murder of Agent Ivie.

On Thursday, reports were circulating that Mexican police had detained two suspects in the shooting of Agent Ivie.

Federal police have arrested two men who may be connected with the fatal shooting of a U.S. Border Patrol agent just north of the Mexico-Arizona border, a Mexican law enforcement official said Thursday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information, said it was unclear if there was strong evidence linking the men to the shooting of Agent Nicholas Ivie.

Brenda Nath, an FBI spokeswoman in Arizona, and Border Patrol officials in Arizona declined to comment on the detention of the two men in Mexico. The Cochise County sheriff's office, which is also investigating the shooting, didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

Lydia Antonio, a spokeswoman for the Mexican Embassy in Washington, confirmed the two detentions, but declined to say what prompted them and what made authorities suspect the two might be involved in the shooting.

Authorities have declined to provide key details about Tuesday's shooting, including what they believe prompted the shooting, whether the agents were ambushed and whether any guns from the shooting were recovered. Still, they suspect that more than one person fired on the agents.

The head of the Border Patrol agents union has said he believes those who carried out the shooting probably had time to escape in the early morning darkness before authorities could seal off the area and that he doubted that whoever shot the agents would still be hiding in the area.

While its still early in the investigation, there exists the distinct possibility that Agent Ivie was also slain with a gun from Operation Fast & Furious.

This was not the first death involving a law enforcement officer from Southeastern Arizona in Recent weeks. On September 19, Cochise County Sheriff Larry Deever was killed when his pickup truck rolled over on this way to meet up with his son for a hunting trip outside of Williams, AZ.

Supreme Court Upholds Provisions of Arizona's SB1070 Immigration Law

The Supreme Court on Monday upheld a provision in Arizona's controversial SB1070 that allowed state and local officers to enquire about a suspect's immigration status but struck down other provisions that included requiring all immigrants to obtain or carry immigration registration papers, making it a state criminal offense for an illegal immigrant to seek work or hold a job and allowing police to arrest suspected illegal immigrants without warrants.

The portion of the law allowing city, county or state police in Arizona to investigate the immigration status of an individual detained or questioned if there is reasonable suspicion that individual is in the country illegally is expected to face additional challenges from civil liberties and open borders activist groups.

After the Supreme Court announced their ruling, the Obama Administration and the Department of Homeland Security would suspend existing agreements with law enforcement in Arizona, issuing a directive to Homeland Security to ignore many of the calls they might get from police and sheriff's departments in Arizona.

Federal officials said they’ll still perform the checks as required by law but will respond only when someone has a felony conviction on his or her record. Absent that, ICE will tell the local police to release the person.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said the court’s decision frees police up to perform immigration checks. In anticipation of the ruling, she issued an executive order calling for guidance to be issued to every police department on how to fairly carry out the law.

On Monday the administration officials also said they are ending the seven 287(g) task force agreements with Arizona law enforcement officials, which proactively had granted some local police the powers to enforce immigration laws.

The task forces, named for the section of law that allows them, have proved popular among many localities but have been a political headache for the Obama administration, with immigrant-rights groups saying they led to abuses.

In July 2010, US District Judge Susan Bolton issued an injunction against the implementation of many parts of SB1070, but permitted one that included making knowingly harboring illegal immigrants a crime to remain. A few weeks prior, the Department of Justice had filed a lawsuit against the Grand Canyon State over SB 1070.

Interestingly, the state of Rhode Island had similar laws implemented via executive order from then-governor Carcieri, but Little Rhody never drew the wrath of the Obama Administration or open-borders activists like Arizona's SB1070 did. On the flip side, a Vermont state trooper was accused of racial profiling and Gov. Shumlin ordered an internal investigation after the trooper arrested two illegal immigrants who were passengers in a speeding car in September 2011.

Arizona's SB1070 ruling is one of two decisons from the Supreme Court- after much buildup and anticipation, the justices are expected to rule on 0bamacare later on this week.

Borderline Psychosis Update- 49 Headless Corpses Dumped by Highway; Gunmen Open Fire on Tamaulipas Newspaper; Mexican Official Arrested in Texas

NUEVO LEON- Authorities in the Nuevo Leon town of San Juan made a gruesome discovery early Sunday morning as 49 mutilated and headless corpses were found strewn along the highway linking Monterrey and the Texas border. Every one of the bodies- 43 men and 6 women- also had their extremities hacked off while some of the corpses reportedly had tattoos of Santa Muerte [Holy Death], a venerated figure in Mexico's criminal underworld.

The bodies of the 43 men and six women were found in the town of San Juan on the non-toll highway to the border city of Reynosa at about 4 a.m. (5 a.m. EDT), forcing police and troops to close off the highway. Nuevo Leon state security spokesman Jorge Domene said at a news conference that a banner left at the site bore a message with the Zetas drug cartel taking responsibility for the massacre.

Domene said the fact the bodies were found with the heads, hands and feet cut off will make identification difficult. The bodies were being taken to Monterrey for DNA tests.

De la Garza said the victims could have been killed as long as two days ago at another location, then transported to San Juan, a town in Cadereyta municipality, about 105 miles west-southwest of McAllen, Texas, or 75 miles southwest of the Roma, Texas, border crossing.

On a nearby archway, was graffiti that reportedly read '100% Zetas'. Cartels have been leaving mutilated corpses of slain rivals in public places in an attempt to intimidate competing cartels, police and the public. In September 2011, masked gunmen held up rush hour traffic outside of Veracruz as 35 corpses were pulled from a truck and dumped in the highway.

The bloody scene in Nuevo Leon comes less than 10 days after 23 bodies were hung from overpasses or stuffed in garbage bags and iceboxes in the Tamaulipas border town of Nuevo Laredo, across the Rio Grande from Laredo, TX. Last month, fugitive billionaire Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman reportedly announced an agreement with the Gulf Cartel to go after the Zetas- themselves former paramilitary enforcers for the Gulf cartel- who were staedily encroaching on territory previously held by both the Gulf cartel and Guzman's Sinaloa cartel.

Some have speculated that the public will see an escalation of these gruesome narco-slayings and displays in the weeks leading up to the July 1st Mexican Presidential election in an attempt to affect the outcome. Since taking office in 2006, Mexican President Felipe Calderon has committed to using Mexico's military to go after the various drug cartels. However, with more than 50,000 casualties since he took office, public support for Calderon's campaign has waned and his PAN political party is currently trailing in polls.

TAMAULIPAS- The offices of Nuevo Laredo's El Mañana were raked by heavy caliber gunfire and a grenade on Friday night.

Staffers at El Mañana in Nuevo Laredo were working late Friday night when gunmen sprayed the building with high-caliber ammunition and tossed a homemade grenade at the building. No injuries were reported, said co-owner Ramon Cantu Deandar, and the staff was able to finish the edition and returned to work Saturday, stoically though terrified.

"I'm honored to work alongside brave men and women who are an example of how we won't allow ourselves to be intimidated," he said.

In 2006, El Mañana made a public vow to censor itself following a similar attack on its building that partially paralyzed a reporter. Before that incident, the city editor was stabbed to death. The newspaper has largely kept its pledge not to report on cartel crime.

Mexico has become one of the world's most dangerous countries for journalists, with at least 51 killed in the past two years. Four were killed in the last two weeks, all in the state of Veracruz, including investigative journalist Regina Martinez of the newsmagazine Proceso.

Since the escalation of Mexico's narcoinsurgency in the last decade, reporters and editors have been targeted by the cartel's sicarios in an attempt to silence them from reporting on any cartel activities.

COAHUILA- Mexican Marines arrested two suspected members of the Zetas cartel and rescured 18 migrants in the city of Piedras Negras.

Antonio Camacho Soria and Martin Molina Vazquez were arrested on May 5 on charges that they were holding the migrants hostage, the secretariat said.

Marines seized firearms, marijuana, a substance that could be cocaine, cash and communications gear in the operation.

Camacho Soria and Molina Vazquez confessed that they were holding several illegal immigrants at a house.

The marines went to the house and found the migrants there, the secretariat said.

The migrants, whose nationalities were not released, were handed over to federal prosecutors in Piedras Negras, the secretariat said.

Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, known as “El Lazca,” deserted from the Mexican army in 1999 and formed Los Zetas with three other soldiers, all members of an elite special operations unit, becoming the armed wing of the Gulf drug cartel.

In recent years the Zetas have diversified their operations from drug trafficking to human trafficking and collecting fees from migrants and smugglers who operate through territory controlled by them. The Zetas are thought to be responsible for the August 2010 massacre of 72 migrants and the 2011 mass abduction and murder of bus passengers in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas.

TEXAS- US Authorities have arrested a commander in the Tamaulipas State Police and cousin of the state's former governor. Gilberto Lerma Plata was named in a sealed indictment filed in Washington DC last year that accused him of consipiring to smuggle cocaine and marijuana into the USA.

Gilberto Lerma Plata, 50, was arrested as he attempted to cross the Hidalgo-Reynosa International Bridge late Friday night, a former federal agent confirmed Tuesday.

Lerma, who has U.S. citizenship, is not formally tied to any Mexican drug cartel in a federal indictment unsealed Monday. But he reportedly has had ties to the Gulf Cartel at least since 2002, when a Mexican newspaper quoted Mexican intelligence reports that stated he provided criminals with information on police movements.

Lerma had been serving as the Tamaulipas State Police commander in Miguel Alemán, across the Rio Grande from Roma, upon his arrest, the former agent said. Lerma previously served in the same capacity in Reynosa.

Lerma is the cousin of former Tamaulipas governor Manuel Cavazos Lerma, an Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, politician who served from 1993 to 1999 and candidate for senator from Tamaulipas in Mexico's upcoming federal elections.

Lerma joined the Tamaulipas State Police after his cousin was first elected governor in the state.

A 2002 report in El Universal newspaper named Lerma as a Gulf Cartel member who used his police ties to provide information on police movements against the cartel. The report outlined how Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, the former Gulf Cartel leader now serving a federal prison sentence in the U.S., had direct contact with commanders of state and federal law enforcement in many of Tamaulipas’ major municipalities.

Lerma's arrest comes less than two months after another person linked to a former Tamaulipas governor has been the focus of a federal investigation in the United States.

Federal authorities arrested Antonio Peña Arguelles in February in Laredo. In a criminal complaint filed in federal court in San Antonio, Peña is accused of funneling cash from the Zetas drug cartel to former Tamaulipas governor Tomas Yarrington, a PRI member who served from 1999 to 2004.

Three of Tamaulipas' former governors are being investigated for corruption and aiding and abetting drug cartels in the state.

ELSEWHERE IN TEXAS- Thanks to a guilty plea for extortion and money laundering in federal court, the US Government may become stakeholders in a proposed prequel to Mel Gibson's 2004 blockbuster The Passion of the Christ.

In a real-life case of drugs and extortion that could itself make a pretty good screenplay, federal prosecutors have forced a Mexican drug trafficker to turn over his stake in a planned prequel to Mel Gibson's 2004 blockbuster "The Passion of the Christ."

If the movie gets made, the U.S. government will receive a cut of the profits.

Some of the big names behind the Hollywood project include megachurch pastor Joel Osteen, who had no idea about the script's unsavory backstory.

"When you get a script, you just don't think to say 'Hey, was this script ever tied to a Mexican cartel?'" said Donald Iloff, a spokesman for Osteen's Lakewood Church in Houston. The script was already being handled by a legitimate production company when Osteen got involved.

Jorge Vazquez Sanchez pleaded guilty this week in federal court to extortion and money laundering in a deal that required him to give up a 10 percent stake in future profits of "Mary, Mother of Christ," which is scheduled to begin production this year and includes Osteen as an executive producer.

The script was written by the same person behind "The Passion of the Christ," which became a worldwide smash and earned more than $611 million.

Aloe Entertainment, the Los Angeles-based production company that paid more than $900,000 for the script, said it knew nothing about Vazquez, who was sentenced to seven years in prison.

Had Vazquez kept his stake, "we don't know what would have happened," the company said in a statement. "We have assembled an amazing team to bring it to the big screen. Now the American taxpayers can be part of this incredible project."

The screenwriter, Benedict Fitzgerald, had to give control of the script to a company called Macri Inc. after it foreclosed on a loan to Fitzgerald, said Richard Rosenthal, attorney for Aloe.

Then Vazquez and one of his co-defendants extorted Macri's owner, a San Antonio businessman named Arturo Madrigal, to wrest the script away. At one point, the conspirators even kidnapped Madrigal's brother in Guadalajara, Mexico, according to court documents.

Vazquez, a Mexican citizen identified in court documents as a drug trafficker who laundered money, acquired the screenplay in 2008.

Aloe, known at the time as Proud Mary Entertainment, then paid one of Vazquez's co-defendants $925,000 for the script, believing it was held by a San Antonio real estate mogul.

Before the company issued a payment, Aloe executives hired an entertainment copyright attorney who spent more than three months researching the screenplay's origins. Federal prosecutors contacted them last year seeking documents for the transaction.

When prosecutors moved to seize Vazquez's assets, the stake he had retained in the film's profits was included. Vazquez's lawyer, Donald Flanary, said his client did not contest the forfeiture.

If the movie becomes a reality, it will probably be "the first time that a major motion picture was made in which 10 percent of the profits went to the American taxpayers," Rosenthal said. "It would be an incredibly unique story."

The film Mary, Mother of Christ is already listed on the Internet Movie Database as having a 2013 release date.

Borderline Psychosis Complete W/ Alligator Filled Moats- Ranch Hands Massacred in Guatemala; Gulf Cartel Underboss Arrested; Cartel's AZ 'Expressway'

TEXAS: I find it noteworthy that while President Obama was telling us on how secure America's southern borders are between one-liners during a campaign stop in El Paso earlier this month, the brass casings were still hot from a bloody shootout between the Mexican Marines and drug traffickers in which 13 were killed (most of them suspected Zetas) on an island in a lake straddling the USA/Mexico border.

The Mexican naval secretariat confirmed the shootout at a Zeta encampment on an island on the reservoir used by the Zetas to stage marijuana loads to be transported by boat into the United States. The island is located less than two miles northeast of Nueva Ciudad Guerrero, Tamps., across the border from Falcon Dam.

The bloody fight ensued on Mother’s Day when marines were patrolling the area in boats when they found the camp, officials said in a statement released Monday.

Upon seeing the marines, Zeta gunmen opened fire. A dozen cartel members were killed in the battle. One marine died, as well.

Officials noted no arrests after the shootout, but said they seized 19 firearms, including a Barrett .50-caliber sniper rifle and a 5.56 mm machine gun. Marines also seized gun magazines, ammunition, protective vests and other field equipment that was transferred to Reynosa.

Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez said he learned of the deadly shootout when member of the local media contacted him late Monday morning. Had Mexican officials alerted their U.S. counterparts to the shootout, Gonzalez’s deputies would have been able “to react accordingly,”

The shootout capped a busy week along the northern Tamaulipas border for Mexican marines, who killed two suspected cartel gunmen Saturday afternoon in Valle Hermoso, about 25 miles south of Brownsville. Marines also seized weapons and a vehicle Thursday in Matamoros, and rescued a kidnap victim Wednesday in Camargo, across the border from Rio Grande City.

ELSEWHERE IN TEXAS: Border Patrol agents in rural Starr County found nearly 3000 pounds of marijuana in a van with Dish Network markings that they stopped and searched.

U.S. Border Patrol agents reported tha the seizure happened in the rural Starr County community of La Casita on Wednesday, April 20th.

Court records were not immediately available but Border Patrol agents reportedly spotted a Dish Network van exiting a brushy area near the Rio Grande River.

Working on a tip that are drug smugglers are now using counterfeit vehicles from well-known companies as a cover, Border Patrol stopped the van.

Border Patrol agents reported immediately noticing a strong odor of marijuana.

Investigators looked inside and found 100 bundles with close to 3,000 pounds of marijuana worth $2.3 million dollars inside.

Vehicles with counterfeit commercial markings have become increasingly popular with smugglers over the past few years, leading to the occasional moments of hilarity such as this:

In another case, a truck painted with DirecTV and other markings was pulled over in a routine traffic stop in Mississippi and discovered to be carrying 786 pounds of cocaine.

Police said they became suspicious because the truck carried the markings of DirecTV and several of its rivals. An 800 number on the truck's rear to report bad driving referred callers to an adult sex chat line.

Of course, there are concerns that more competently 'cloned' vehicles with EMS, fire or law enforcement markings could be used by smugglers to evade scrutiny from police and the Border Patrol or terrorists to gain access to otherwise secure areas.

CALIFORNIA: A former US Intelligence agent told An ABC affiliate in San Diego that the Shi'a Muslim terrorist group Hezbollah is setting up shop across the border in Mexico.

The former agent, referring to Shi'a Muslim terrorist group Hezbollah, added, "They certainly have had successes in big-ticket bombings."

Some of the group's bombings include the U.S. embassy in Beirut and Israeli embassy in Argentina.

However, the group is now active much closer to San Diego.

"We are looking at 15 or 20 years that Hezbollah has been setting up shop in Mexico," the agent told 10News.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, U.S. policy has focused on al-Qaida and its offshoots.

"They are more shooters than thinkers … it's a lot of muscles, courage, desire but not a lot of training," the agent said, referring to al-Qaida.

Hezbollah, he said, is far more advanced.

"Their operators are far more skilled … they are the equals of Russians, Chinese or Cubans," he said. "I consider Hezbollah much more dangerous in that sense because of strategic thinking; they think more long-term."

Hezbolah has operated in South America for decades and then Central America, along with their sometime rival, sometime ally Hamas.

Now, the group is blending into Shi'a Muslim communities in Mexico, including Tijuana. Other pockets along the U.S.-Mexico border region remain largely unidentified as U.S. intelligence agencies are focused on the drug trade.

"They have had clandestine training in how to live in foreign hostile territories," the agent said.

The agent, who has spent years deep undercover in Mexico, said Hezbollah is partnering with drug organizations, but which ones is not clear at this time.

He told 10News the group receives cartel cash and protection in exchange for Hezbollah expertise.

"From money laundering to firearms training and explosives training," the agent said.

For example, he tracked, along with Mexican intelligence, two Hezbollah operatives in safe houses in Tijuana and Durango.

Hezbollah has already established a presence in the tri-border region of South America, where the borders of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay converge around Iguazu Falls. Mexico has also been home to a number of Lebanese migrants for the past century- some of whom have alerted Mexican and American intelligence to the possibility of Hezbollah operating in Mexico.

In recent years, the DEA has claimed that Hezbollah has utilized the same network of drug traffickers, gun runners and document forgers that the Mexican cartels use.

ARIZONA: An 18-month investigation by the DEA, Arizona Department of Public Safety and Tribal Police has resulted in 25 arrests and highlighting the scope of the Sinaloa cartel's operations along the Mexican border in Arizona's Tohono O'Odham Indian Reservation southwest of Tuscon.

The vast Sonoran desert is the expressway for drug smugglers to get their goods into the U.S.

DEA agent, Todd Scott says, "You've got a clear line of sight all the way here to the roads that they coordinate with smuggling loads on. Continue that way a little further that way and you've got Mexico."

Scott stood on a spot known as a spider hole. It's on the Tohono O'odham Nation where you can easily see 10 miles out on a clear day, "It allows you to observe law enforcement whether it's border patrol or TOPD , DEA anybody operating in this area from this position," says Scott.

This is where Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel hides surveillance teams. People live there 30 to 60 days at a time.

Scott says they act as air traffic controllers, "The smuggling loads come across in either human mule trains or vehicles and the scouts here use night vision goggles or binoculars coordinate those movements of those loads with the radios."

AP Photo/ Matt York

ELSEWHERE IN ARIZONA- *GILA BEND*: Two Border Patrol agents were killed in Gila Bend earlier this month when their vehicle collided with a Union Pacific freight train while pursuing suspected drug traffickers.

Early Thursday, U.S. Border Patrol agents Edward Rojas Jr. and Hector Clark were stationed near Gila Bend, on assignment with a task force, when they got a call about marijuana smugglers moving toward Interstate 8.

Even veteran officers talk about the adrenaline rush that comes with such a call, which causes a sort of tunnel vision. Rojas and Clark sped west on a frontage road parallel to railroad tracks, slightly ahead of a freight train going in the same direction at over 60 mph.

The conductor and engineer would later tell investigators that they sounded the locomotive whistle several times. Suddenly, the agents' vehicle turned left onto a private rail crossing, immediately in front of the 4,600-ton train.

Agents Clark and Rojas were the first Border Patrol agents killed in the line of duty since the December 2010 shooting of Brian Terry outside of Nogales, AZ. After the wreck, deputies from the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office recovered 300 pounds of marijuana and detained eight suspects a few hundred yards from the crash site.

*PHOENIX*: The DEA is refusing to turn over a cache of semiautomatic rifles seized in a raid earlier this month to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms when a routine check on some of the weapons revealed that they were obtained under the ATF's watch as part of Operation Fast & Furious.

The federal drug agents discovered the AK-47-type assault rifles wrapped in cellophane and hidden inside two giant trash barrels. Agents believe the confiscated weapons were heading to drug cartels in Mexico. Problem is, a serial number on at least one of the weapons traces back to the ATF.

The DEA arrests took place on April 13 and the DEA has expressed an interest in keeping the seized weapons as evidence in their own case and separate from the now infamous Fast and Furious investigation.

Agencia Guatemalteca Noticias Photo

GUATEMALA: At least 27 people were massacred at a ranch in the restive northern Peten province along the borders with Mexico and Belize last weekend.

The massacre, which stretched from Saturday into Sunday, took place on a coconut farm in the lawless region of Peten province, a porous region on the Mexican border known as a gateway for drug trafficking.

It was one of the worst mass killings since the end of Guatemala's 36-year civil war in 1996, authorities said.

Police were investigating a link between the ranch killings and the murder of Haroldo Leon, the brother of one of Guatemala's biggest drug kingpins, Juan Jose "Juancho" Leon, who was killed in 2008.

Local reports said the ranch belonged to Haroldo Leon, who was gunned down with three of his body guards in another part of Peten early Saturday.

Hours later, heavily armed members of Mexico's Los Zetas drug gang raided the ranch, tying up their victims before killing them and then writing in blood threatening messages on the walls of the house, cops said.

One of the messages read, "Salguero, we're coming for you." Police did not say who Salguero was.

Police said that the victims - including two women and children - worked at the farm.

Late Sunday, authorities said they found one survivor of the massacre, who had pretended to be dead. Cops didn't release any other details about the survivor.

Authorities in Guatemala arrested a former member of the Kaibiles, a special operations unit of the Guatemalan Army, in neighboring Alta Verapaz province after coming across information left behind in a recently abandoned Zetas encampment in the same province where the ranch massacre took place. Hugo Gomez Vazquez was arraigned in court and charged with obstruction of justice, kidnapping, extortion and accesory to murder. The prosecution presented a recording of a telephone conversation where Vazquez was apparently negotiating a ransom after the abduction of a relative of the ranch's owner who was later killed and decapitated prior to last weekend's massacre.

Three other Guatemalan nationals suspected of involvement in the massacre were arrested in the city of Quetzalenango on Saturday.

Investigators are also looking into ties between the owner of the ranch, Otto Salguiero, and Mexico's Gulf Cartel. Peten's location along the porous borders with Mexico and Belieze make it an attractive venue for smugglers. Guatemala's president declared a state of siege in nearby Alta Verapaz province in late 2010 after the Zetas began infiltrating the region and setting up staging areas and clandestine airstrips.

AP Photo, Marco Ugarte

TAMAULIPAS: Mexican federal police arrested a leading member of the Gulf cartel after raiding his birthday party at a ranch in Reynosa, Tamaulipas.

Gilberto Barragan Balderas "is considered one of the main leaders of the Gulf Cartel" and is the subject of a $5 million reward by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, said Ramon Pequeno, head of anti-drug operations for the federal police.

Barragan Balderas was allegedly in charge of the cartel's operations in Miguel Aleman, across the border from Roma, Texas. Police captured him at a party at a ranch near another border city, Reynosa, which is across from McAllen, Texas.

Police said the party was apparently in honor of Barragan Balderas' May 19 birthday. Two alleged associates were also arrested in the raid, which also netted an assault rifle and three pistols.

According to the DEA, Balderas' duties included obtaining advanced information regarding military and state police patrols and mobile checkpoints in order to protect drug shipments for both the Zetas and the Gulf cartel prior to the organizations violent 2010 split. Since then, he was supposedly tasked with defending the territory from any Zetas incursion.

The fact that the DEA has a US$5 million reward out for Balderas is a pretty good indicator that he wasn't exactly a small fry in the Gulf organization.

ELSEWHERE IN MEXICO: Not surprisingly, human trafficking continues to be a lucrative side business for many of the drug cartels.

Smuggling in decades past was the business of small independent operators who helped migrants cross once they reached the U.S. border. But evading U.S. authorities has become much more difficult with increased border enforcement in recent years. At the same time, Mexico's migrant routes have become much more dangerous, controlled by drug gangs that see new moneymaking opportunities in kidnapping and extorting those who cross their territory.

The harder the trip, the higher the price. Guatemalan officials, who estimate 300 to 500 undocumented nationals cross the border each day into Mexico, say those migrants are paying double what they did two years ago, as much as $10,000 for the hope of gaining work in the United States.

Unlike those running drugs, guns or other contraband, people smugglers lose virtually no upfront costs when migrants are intercepted by authorities or escape.

In the case of Mexico's southern border, no one can say exactly who the organized smuggling groups are. Some say that large transport rings operate separately from Mexico's brutal drug gangs, such as the Zetas or the Gulf Cartel, who stick to kidnapping and extortion.

Some say they are all in collusion, including authorities. Both local police and federal immigration agents have been arrested in recent raids on kidnapping operations in Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas.

"It's clear that they're immigration agents, federal police, Zetas, maras, the whole gamut, along with local crime groups," said the Rev. Alejandro Solalinde, a Catholic priest who runs a migrant shelter in Oaxaca. "Those who make money off migrants are all part of the same mafia."

Added to all this is the fact that organizations like the Zetas or Gulf cartel will target the migrants transiting through territory controlled by them and extort them, hold them for ransom or press them into service as drug mules.

Borderline Psychosis Update- Badges? We Don't Need No Steenkin' Badges! (We Quit!); Tunneling Through; Inmate Running the Asylum Prison?

NUEVO LEON: The entire police force for the town of Los Ramones resigned en-masse after a brazen assault on their days-old headquarters.

Mayor Santos Salinas Garza said that all 14 officers of the town's police department resigned the day after the late October attack in which grenades were thrown at the brand-new police station and the town's police cars were raked with machine gun fire. There were no fatalities in the nighttime attack and the officers were able to create an improvised blockade from the town's police cars.

The mayor said that the department hadn't received any specific threats but had noticed luxury SUV's with tinted windows in the days prior to the assault. The Los Ramones station had been open all of three days at the time of the attack. President Calderon is reportedly considering relieving most of Mexico's poorly trained, undermanned and outgunned municipal police departments of their duties and handing over the patrolling to state or federal agencies.

JALISCO: The director of the maximum security Puente Grande prison outside of Guadalajara has been arrested for suspected ties to organized crime.

Officials from Mexico's Federal Public Safety Department did not elaborate on the charges against Francisco Javier Gomez Meza. But an unnamed official said that Gomez came under investigation in 2008 while a part of the now-defunct Federal Investigative Agency during a sweeping corruption probe that led to the arrest of several top officials believed to be protecting members of the Beltran-Leyva cartel. Prior to that, Gomez was responsible for prison transfers of suspects and would oversee the deployment of officers throughout Mexico.

It is unclear why exactly Gomez was named to such a high profile position as the director of Puente Grande earlier this year while he was under investigation.



TAMAULIPAS: Mexican Marines killed one of the top-ranking members of the Gulf Cartel in an hours-long shootout in the border city of Matamoros on Friday night.

Antonio Ezequiel Cardena Guillen, aka Tony Tormenta (Tony the Storm) and four of his bodyguards were killed along with three Mexican Marines and a local reporter in the city just across the river from Brownsville, TX. The US State Department had taken out a US$5 Million bounty on Cardena after he took over Cartel operations from his brother Osiel, who was arrested in 2003.

Putting a 21st century twist on Mexico's age-old problems with entrenched corruption and influential criminal organizations was messages from residents of Matamoros circulating via Facebook and Twitter warning residents of cartel members using vehicles to block off streets and warning others to remain inside while the prolonged gunbattle between cartel gunmen and Mexican soldiers and Marines raged. A shaky video of a convoy of Marines in the back of pickup trucks and SUV's believed to those of Gulf cartel gunment speeding through the streets of Matamoros with gunfire in the background were circulating on YouTube.

Los Zetas- a group of narco-traffickers and enforcers with police and military training that formerly worked with the Gulf Cartel- hung up banners taunting the remaining members of the Gulf Cartel from pedestrian overpasses in the city. One such banner read "Again, the traitor's destiny is evident. There is no place for them, not even in hell".

While this is good news for Mexico's President Calderon and that country's armed forces, it's increasingly likely that the Los Zetas will attempt to move in and take advantage of their former employer's weakened state.

CALIFORNIA: Authorities in San Diego have unearthed a massive cross-border tunnel that connected a warehouse on the Tijuana side of the border with another warehouse some 600 yards north in the Otay Mesa section of San Diego.

Suspicious DEA agents kept the warehouse on the US side of the border under surveillance and tracked a vehicle from the warehouse, searching it as the tractor trailer approached a US Border Patrol checkpoint in Temecula, CA some 75 miles northeast. There, agents seized an estimated 10 tons of marijuana packed into cargo boxes.

Police, DEA and Border Patrol agents raided the Otay Mesa warehouse where another 15 tons of marijuana was found, as well as the entrance to the tunnel. Police on the Mexican side were alerter, where they seized another 4 tons of pot. The tunnel was described as being recently built and sophisticated, coming equipped with lighting and ventilation systems.

ARIZONA: The discovery of a decapitated body in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler, AZ has renewed concerns that violence from Mexico's narcoinurgency could be spilling over into the USA.

Martin Alejandro Cota-Monroy's body was found stabbed to death and with his severed head a few feet away in his suburban apartment back on October 10. Decapitation is a common tactic cartels employ to threaten or intimidate, with headless bodies being strung up from busy overpasses or severed heads being left in duffel bags in public places.

Both Cota-Monroy and the three men alleged to be involved in the brutal slaying are believed to have been in the country illegally. One suspect is in custody while three others are believed to have fled back to Mexico.

Borderline Psychosis Update- More Freshwater Piracy at Falcon Lake; Mexican Authorities Tread Cautiously in Cartel-Held Territory

A Colorado man is missing and presumed dead after he and his wife were attacked and pursued by smugglers in the waters on the Mexican side of Falcon Reservoir along the Texas/Mexico border.

According to a second, more comprehensive statement to Mexican investigators, Tiffany Young-Hartley, 29, said that she and her husband David Hartley, 30, were accosted by gunmen in three small boats as they were sightseeing along the Reservoir on separate jet skis on September 30. The gunmen opened fire, striking David as the couple fled according to her statement. Both Hartley and his jet-ski have been missing since then.

Mexican investigators were initially skeptical of Young-Hartley's account.

Only ranchers and steers populate the abandoned and partially submerged ruins, as well as a handful of anglers who remain along the Salado river, which flows into Falcon Reservoir. None told investigators they heard anything Thursday while out on the quiet waters.

“How would someone know where the incident occurred?” asked Rolando Armando Flores Villegas, the Tamaulipas State Police commander. “That place is very unsafe. Nobody lives there — only organized criminals. That’s their land.”

Flores has received reports of attacks on Falcon Reservoir, he said. But no one has alleged anything close to what Young-Hartley reported to authorities.

“Since everything is so calm over there, they could hear any noise,” Flores said of the anglers and ranchers in that area. “But they said they didn’t hear any gunshots or anything — and they didn’t even hear a Jet Ski.”

The case took an even more sinister turn last week when commander Flores' severed head was dropped off in a suitcase in front of a Mexican military base at nearby Miguel Aleman. Since then, authorities have suspended the search for Hartley's body.

Investigators in the USA and Mexico and a Texas-based national security think tank believe that the couple was initially mistaken for rival smugglers by the gunmen that accosted them.

ELSEWHERE: The Los Angeles Times accompanied a detachment of heavily armed Mexican police officers who were tasked with delivering US$40,000 in pension and back-pay to senior citizens living in remote towns and pueblas in Sonora.

This was necessary because the region is increasingly cut off from the rest of the country due to a struggle for territorial control between two of Mexico's cartels- the Beltran-Leyva and Sinaloa. Gunmen from the Beltran-Leyva cartel had taken over a string of ranches and pueblas between Altar, Sonora and the Arizona border 50 miles to the north. In retaliation, the Sinaloa Cartel has been patiently and methodically cutting off the area from the rest of the country, choking off food, mail and fuel deliveries to their rivals and an estimated 5,000 residents in the reigon.

I'm not a fan of the LA Times, but read the whole thing. Aside from the high profile and brazen acts of violence in places like Juarez or the grisly discoveries of mass graves in Taxco or Monterrey, the besieged villages in northern Sonora are an example of how the cartels are able to control vast tracts of rural land to expedite their lucrative human and drug smuggling routes.

Borderline Psychosis Update- 25 Slain in Ciudad Juarez; Mexican Authorities Arrest Cartel Leaders, Disable Car Bombs; US Customs Agent Sentenced

CHIHUAHUA: Twenty five people were slain in the border town of Ciudad Juarez on Thursday when attackers stormed four homes in three hours. The attackers killed men thought to be working with the cartels as well as witnesses.

Two graffiti message appeared in Ciudad Juarez threatening Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the fugitive head of the Sinaloa drug cartel.

"You are killing our sons. You already did, and now we are going to kill your families," one sign read.

State Prosecutors in Chihuahua say this is the bloodiest single day in Juarez in at least two years.

Billy Calzada/San Antonio Express-News

Also in Juarez, local and federal police deactivated a car bomb in the parking lot of a day-care center over the weekend after responding to a tip concerning a dead body in one of the cars. The dead body was found inside a Ford Escape at the scene, but Federal police also found explosives in a blue Kia at the same parking lot. The unidentified victim in the Ford was apparently shot in the face with a rifle.

TAMAULIPAS: Authorities in the border city of Reynosa are investigating a mass jailbreak earlier in the week in which 85 inmates scaled a wall in the prison early Friday morning. Two prison guards were also missing, leading investigators to believe that the escapees had help from the inside. Other guards and employees are being investigated by federal officials on charges of corruption and negligence.

Earlier in the year, Federal investigators chraged seven guards at the same prison for aiding and abetting suspected cartel gunmen during an April 2010 jailbreak attempt which gunmen on the outside exchanged gunfire with guards.

It was also learned over the sumertime that officials at a state prison in Durango freed inmates and provided them with weapons and vehicles to carry out killings before returning to their cells.

PUEBLA: Mexican Marines have captured a key figure in the fractured Beltran-Leyva cartel in Puebla. Sergio 'El Grande' Villareal was captured without a fight and paraded before the media over the weekend. This is the second top figure n the Beltran Leyva cartel that Mexican officials have captured in the last few weeks, with American-born Edgar 'La Barbie' Valdez Villareal being detained by police outside of Mexico City at the end of August. There were conflicting reports of how 'La Barbie' was taken into custody, with Federal police claiming they lured Edgar out to a remote location through a phone call from an arrested associate. However, documents obtained by the Associated Press indicate that La Barbie's three vehicle convoy had raised the suspicions of local police on a highway west of Mexico City. The report seems to indicate the local police were initially unaware of who they had in custody.

TEXAS: The Washington Post is reporting that a former US Customs agent known as 'La Estrella' (the star) to smugglers was sentenced to 20 years of Federal prison on smuggling and corruption charges at the end of August. According to the affidavit, Martha Garnica conspired to smuggle illegal aliens and more than 100kg of marijuana and recruited other Customs officers to allow drug shipments through one of the El Paso border crossings.

UPDATED 8/27- Even More Borderline Psychosis: 72 Migrants Slain at Remote Ranch by Gunmen

The sole survivor of a brutal massacre alerted Mexican authorities to a bloody scene at a remote ranch in Tamaulipas after stumbling into a military checkpoint Monday.

Mexican Marines with helicopter support were directed by the wounded survivor to a ranch roughly 90 miles from the Texas/Mexico border. As the Marines moved in, gunmen opened fire on the marines, leaving one marine and three suspected cartel gunmen killed by return fire while more suspected gunmen escaped by truck.

At the ranch, the military discovered the 72 bodies. According to the sole survivor, an Ecuadorean national, the victims were illegal immigrants from El Salvador, Honduras, Ecuador and Brazil who were attempting to enter the USA illegally via the Texas/Mexico border.

Authorities also discovered a cache of arms and ammunition as well as a number of trucks painted to look like military vehicles at the crime scene. The perpetrators are suspected to be from Los Zetas, the one-time enforcers for the Gulf cartel comprised mainly of former soldiers and police officers, who have also been extorting, kidnapping and murdering illegal immigrants that transit through their territory en route to the USA.

Earlier this year, the Zetas and Gulf Cartel were locked in a bloody turf war to secure lucrative smuggling routes through northeastern Mexico. However, the Zetas have been known to kidnap and ransom migrants or press them into service as drug couriers or prostitutes.

UPDATE- 8/27: The lead investigator in the massacre and an unnamed policeman from the nearby town of San Fernando have reportedly disappeared. There were unconfirmed reports circulating in the Mexican press early Friday that the bodies of the two men were found dumped by the side of the road near where the 72 migrants were massacred.

Speaking of the Mexican press, two car bombs were set off in Ciudad Victoria on Friday with one of them targeting the local Televisa TV station [NYSE: TV]. There were no reports of casualties, but the station lost its signal for several hours. The other car bomb was apparently targeting a transit center.