On this side, the ones who worked their tails off after school; on that side, the ones who flaked in 10th grade and wound up on the yard. Based in El Salvador, a paramilitary vigilante group of ex military and police, killing and torturing gang members in the name of social justice because the Above all, he learned that the great detectives arent solar-driven, i.e., arriving at nine and leaving at five. For every 100,000 they kill in this country, they know there are 3 million users right behind them., Still, weve never before had an account of the days when sicarios roamed our streets, hunting civilians and fellow soldiers on U.S. soil. Plus a pat on the back from Uncle Sam., Days later, he met Timmy himself at a mall in San Diego. He was last seen in a bar, then taken, tortured, and dismembered. A scene from near Saturdays wedding shooting in which a bride was killed at the altar. We taught everything from intel to mobile surveillance. To be sure, those are givens of investigative policing but till CRIM Squad, no one did that at CBP. He looked stunned when they pulled him from the Caddy and cuffed him he surely assumed he was about to be killed. Authorities identified one of the four victims as Rey Jose Poblete Ramos, a man with a lengthy criminal history. According to local authorities, three police officers were killed and one was wounded during the shooting. It climbs the khaki foothills of the Otay Mountains as it takes the eastbound pass out of San Diego. It took months, but CRIM Squad got a fix on its target by way of a gangland slaying. EL PASO A Mexican national was sentenced today to life in prison and ordered to pay a $100,000 fine for his role in the Sinaloa Cartels operations. We loop back down to the suburbs of National City, where the CRIM Squad cornered the Camacho-Higuera brothers. NBCDFW.com. One day that fall, Vargas got a call from a DEA agent with the Group One Task Force whom Ill call Nikki. The victims werent gangsters, just random civilians held for sums in the low five figures. A gruesome war between Mexico's powerful Gulf cartel and its former armed wing, the Zetas, has killed a record 290 people in Monterrey and surrounding areas since the start of the year, when the two groups split and bloodshed escalated. Mexican authorities claim El Chapo's Sinaloa Cartel was behind the killings after video footage showed them interrogating rival members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (JNGC) days earlier. It was the DEAs Most Wanted List, bearing the photos of 32 kingpins and their capos. One of Vargas neighbors was targeted by the Palillos. REUTERS/Margarito Perez. In light of their achievement, it seems like bad form to ask what all their labors had delivered. A BRUTAL drug runner dubbed Cartel Queen has been captured by the Mexican army after allegedly kidnapping five people. It would be years before they learned the value of what theyd found: the bodies that brought a SWAT team to Teos door. So when he was promoted, in 2004, to a plainclothes desk job at a station near San Diego, the first thing he did was attach himself to investigators in the Anti-Smuggling Unit of CBP. The 100 Best Albums of 2022. One night, he was sitting in his SUV in the pitch-black desert of Arizona. Vargas, who retired last summer as a special agent with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, doesnt despise the cartels or demonize the killers who did their grunt work. Those soldiers would eventually go rogue and form a rival cartel of their own (more on this later). The grisly video shows 20 alleged La Bandera gangsters kneeling on the ground, held at gunpoint by masked men with assault rifles who identify themselves as people from the mountains. Chilling footage of cartel interrogating cop before body found chopped up in bags. Even bad guys who werent on our radar, says Steve Duncan, a retired special agent for the California Department of Justice. Even killers with forged IDs left footprints to follow: a time stamp of arrival; an alias to cross-check; a set of known associates to surveil. Eight men in armor poured out of a van with rifles. The United States attorney in the Southern District of California failed to indict Teo for mass murder. Feds with long guns swarmed both cars. GOP House Oversight Chair Can't Explain Why He's Investigating Biden Classified Docs But Not Trump's Weeks before that dinner, Tijuana went up in flames: Men in balaclavas stormed buses and vans and put them to the torch all over town. Jan. 16, 2023. In fact, they werent even told that the arrests theyd made were material to his capture. Eventually, I heard something about wed played a part, but no one ever reached out and said so, says Vargas. Federal prosecutors will not seek the death penalty for the man accused of killing 23 people and injuring dozens more in a hate crime targeting people of Mexican descent at a Walmart store in His parents, Mexican migrants, slaved for their sons and sent both of them into public service. We wiped em off the face of the Earth, says Sito. The best bunch of hunters you ever saw. It was into this crucible that Vargas stepped when he took over the CRIM Squad in 2007. So it goes for the best part of three hours. That stonewall was standard procedure, says Herrod. Then his cellphone rang: It was Teo. They could reach out and touch anyone on this side. Reportedly, he then affixed the victim's face to a soccer ball to add to his warning intended for the Juarez cartel. Cartel leader massacres eight people because rival made him look 'like a dumb*ss' Mexico's most bloodthirsty cartel has more than 150 dirty cops on the payroll. Ivan Cornejo Goes Through Every Stage of Heartbreak on Ya Te Perdi, Cartels dont send many killers anymore; instead, they just send poison. Among those goodies was something called TECS an exclusive database of every person, vehicle, boat, plane, or shipment entering the United States through a port of entry. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images), A soldier stands guard inside an apartment complex in Cuernavaca, Mexico, Thursday, Dec. 17, 2009. He picked up tricks for poking holes in statements from the felons theyd arrested for smuggling. Mexican authorities recovered the soccer ball from the footsteps of city hall in Ciudad Juarez. They never told us more than we had to know.. Mexican Cartel Violence. Tigre eyed her: Why should I ever trust you? (AP Photo/Antonio Sierra), Covered by a shirt, the body of Claudia Mora sits on a chair where she was murdered at a race circuit on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez, northern Mexico, late Sunday, April 11, 2010. He violently grabs their hair and points a gun at their faces while interrogating them, asking their names and other information. While sitting and drinking beer at the brothers house, the buyer remarked on the shrine theyd erected to their imprisoned Uncle Mayel, the cartel capo. As well as its feud with El Menchos CJNG, El Marros group has made threats against new Mexican President Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador, intelligence website InSight Crime reports. Los escritores recibiran una muerte segura a manos de los carteles que operan en esas reas incluyendo a el Cartel Del Golfo y Los Zetas si no usaran un seudnimo. By the time he hung up, Tigre had changed his mind; he wasnt going out in someones crockpot. Vargas wasnt told what crimes the brothers copped to, but he does know a couple of salient facts. A rift between drug gangs near the U.S. border is terrifying Mexico's richest city Monterrey, once a poster child of development, forcing a quarter of its export factories to freeze investment. The Mexican Drug War - a sustained, violent conflict between powerful drug cartels and the Mexican government - has claimed an estimated 164,000 lives over the past #Celaya #Guanajuato La tarde de este sbado se registr un ataque armado en una iglesia mientras se efectuaba una boda en la comunidad de Pelavacas en Celaya. Duncan was assigned to the Group One Task Force, a legendary squad of state and federal agents who broke the AFO after 20 years. Teo told me this Teo told me that. Raised in a barrio east of Los Angeles, Vargas saw how thin the line was for brown-skinned boys. From those patterns and a set of underutilized laws Vargas built a web to catch cartel killers before they killed again, in the U.S. This story has been shared 209,091 times. One of the La Bandera mobsters is seen on camera apparently admitting Brito has a direct "line" with the mayor's office. The murder rate has soared to peak-Teo levels. We were soldiers bagging soldiers. Having abandoned her family to go and live with the CJNG in 2017, she had commanded her own squad of assassins and regularly posted photographs to Instagram that showed off her cartel lifestyle. They were the best and worst years of my life, says Sito. In 2017, the Mexican government extradited Joaqun "El Chapo" Guzmn, a known member of the Sinaloa cartel, to the US. The hooded man also accuses Iguala's new mayor David Gama Prez of having close links to La Bandera kingpin Jess "Chucho" Brito. Kingpins like Chapo are now imprisoned or dead, their empires a jumble of chockablock shards that their successors kill to reclaim. (AP Photo/Claudio Cruz), A criminal investigator takes a picture of a body with a mask in the street, one of numerous murders over a 24 hour period, on March 26, 2010 in Juarez, Mexico. In a 2010 video, Guzmn used a chainsaw against Hugo Hernandez, reportedly to send a message indicating he would use aggression against anyone who involves law enforcement with the cartel's enterprises. Those mopes, as he calls them the hit men, kidnappers, bent cops, and smugglers were pawns in an industry with no way out, and whose wages were generally paid in blood. Murders came down big-time; we set a record low that year, says Seven, the former police chief of the town. He then threw her limbs into the fire. 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