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Caveat Lector! This is The Washington
Times!
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Mexican mercenaries expand base into U.S.
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
August 1, 2005
A renegade band of Mexican military deserters, offering $50,000 bounties
for the assassination of U.S. law-enforcement officers, has expanded its base of
operations into the United States to protect loads of cocaine and marijuana
being brought into America by Mexican smugglers, authorities
said.
The deserters, known as the "Zetas," trained in the
United States as an elite force of anti-drug commandos, but have since signed on
as mercenaries for Mexican narcotics traffickers and have recruited an army of
followers, many of whom are believed to be operating in Texas, Arizona,
California and Florida.
Working mainly for the Gulf Cartel, one of Mexico's most
dangerous drug-trafficking organizations, as many as 200 Zeta members are
thought to be involved, including former Mexican federal, state and local
police. They are suspected in more than 90 deaths of rival gang members and
others, including police officers, in the past two years in a violent drug war
to control U.S. smuggling routes.
The organization's hub,
law-enforcement authorities said, is Nuevo Laredo, a border city of 300,000
across from Laredo, Texas. It is the most active port-of-entry along the
U.S.-Mexico border, with more than 6,000 trucks crossing daily into Texas,
carrying about 40 percent of Mexico's total exports.
Authorities said the Zetas control the city despite efforts by Mexican President
Vicente Fox to restore order. He sent hundreds of Mexican troops and federal
agents to the city in March to set up highway checkpoints and conduct raids on
suspected Zeta locations.
Despite the presence of law
enforcement, more than 100 killings have occurred in the city since Jan. 1,
including that of former Police Chief Alejandro Dominguez, 52, gunned down June
8, just seven hours after he was sworn in. The city's new chief, Omar Pimentel,
37, escaped death during a drive-by shooting on his first day, although one of
his bodyguards was killed.
Authorities said the Zetas
operate over a wide area of the U.S.-Mexico border and are suspected in at least
three drug-related slayings in the Dallas area. They said as many as 10 Zeta
members are operating inside Texas as Gulf Cartel assassins, seeking to protect
nearly $10 million in daily drug transactions.
In March,
the Justice Department said the Zetas were involved "in multiple assaults and
are believed to have hired criminal gangs" in the Dallas area for contract
killings. The department said the organization was spreading from Texas to
California and Florida and was establishing drug-trafficking routes it was
willing to protect "at any cost."
Just last month, the
department issued a new warning to law-enforcement authorities in Arizona and
California, urging them to be on the lookout for Zeta members. An intelligence
bulletin said a search for new drug-smuggling routes in the two states by the
organization could bring new violence to the areas.
The
number of assaults on U.S. Border Patrol agents along the 260 miles of
U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona known as the Tucson sector has increased
dramatically this year, including a May 30 shooting near Nogales, Ariz., in
which two agents were seriously wounded during an ambush a mile north of the
border.
Their assailants were dressed in black
commando-type clothing, used high-powered weapons and hand-held radios to point
out the agents' location, and withdrew from the area using military-style cover
and concealment tactics to escape back into Mexico.
Santa
Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada in Nogales said his investigators found
commando clothing, food, water and other "sophisticated equipment" at the ambush
site.
Since Oct. 1, the start of the fiscal year, there
have been 196 assaults on Border Patrol agents in the Tucson sector, including
24 shootings. During the same period last year, 92 assaults were reported, with
five shootings. The sector is the busiest alien- and drug-trafficking corridor
in the country.
U.S. intelligence officials have described
the Zetas as an expanding gang of mercenaries with intimate knowledge of Mexican
drug-trafficking methods and routes. Strategic Forecasting Inc., a security
consulting firm that often works with the State and Defense departments, said in
a recent report the Zetas had maintained "connections to the Mexican
law-enforcement establishment" to gain unfettered access throughout the southern
border.
Many of the Zeta leaders belonged to an elite
anti-drug paratroop and intelligence battalion known as the Special Air Mobile
Force Group, who deserted in 1991 and aligned themselves with drug traffickers.
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