Thread: Drug cartels from Mexico invading Middle America

Drug cartels from Mexico invading Middle America
Ohio cities prove fertile ground for distribution hubs
By JEREMY SCHWARTZ Cox News Service
Aug. 16, 2008, 5:40PM
26Comments

The situation in Ohio reflects a larger national trend: U.S. officials say Mexican cartels operate in at least 195 U.S. cities and dominate the drug trade in every region of the country except for isolated pockets like the Northeast and South Florida.
MEXICO CITY — Powerful and well-organized Mexican drug trafficking groups have seized control of drug distribution throughout Ohio, flooded local markets with increasingly cheap heroin and are using Dayton as a distribution hub for southwestern Ohio and parts of Indiana, local and federal U.S. drug enforcement officials say.

According to an April report by the U.S. Department of Justice's National Drug Intelligence Center, groups connected with the Federation cartel, one of Mexico's two dominant cartels, control distribution in and around Dayton.

The Juarez Cartel, once Mexico's most powerful cartel but significantly weakened in recent years, operates in Hamilton County, according to the report.

"They are very well trained, very well schooled," said John Postlethwaite, coordinator of the Ohio HIDTA, a joint federal, state and local task force, of the Mexican trafficking groups. "It's become a lot harder than it used to be."


Spike in heroin
Drug enforcement officials blame the Mexican traffickers for an alarming spike in the availability of heroin, saying prices have fallen precipitously recently, from about $5,000 per ounce a few years ago to about $1,000 per ounce.

Officials say heroin use has increased, a trend they expect to continue.

A May report by the U.S. Justice Department on drug activity in Ohio predicts heroin abuse will increase among white, suburban users.

"The number of heroin abusers will very likely grow as more abusers of prescription opioids switch to heroin in the face of increasing Mexican heroin availability throughout the region," the report reads.

It goes on to say that in Dayton, Mexican traffickers have replaced African-American gangs as the primary wholesale distributors of cocaine, marijuana and heroin.

Ohio officials say Mexican groups increasingly are bypassing traditional distribution hubs like Chicago and Detroit and moving drugs directly from the border to Ohio cities.

Todd Spradling, the resident agent in charge of the Dayton DEA office, said that smaller cities like Dayton and Columbus have become more attractive to trafficking organizations. "A lot of the organizations have shifted from larger cities to smaller cities to avoid detection," he said.


Mexican cartels dominate
In the last decade, Mexican cartels have surpassed Colombian traffickers as the ascendant force in the hemisphere: as they have moved into the United States they have also taken control of Central American trafficking routes and now dominate the market in South American countries like Peru, according to law enforcement officials.

"Their idea is to control the whole economic process of production and distribution," said Georgina Sanchez, an independent security consultant in Mexico and executive director of a public safety think tank.

In Dayton, officials say Mexican traffickers are connected to the Federation, a loose group of trafficking organizations based in the state of Sinaloa. The Federation has fought a brutal, three-year war with its primary rival — the Gulf Cartel — for control of smuggling routes to the United States.

Its leader is Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, Mexico's most notorious drug capo, who attained an almost mythical stature after escaping from a federal prison in 2001. In recent months, the Federation, which officials say controls Pacific smuggling routes from Central America, has been torn apart by an internal feud that officials say is responsible for a spike in violence in Sinaloa.

Since Mexican President Felipe Calderon directed the Mexican military to confront the cartels in 2006, nearly 7,000 people, including hundreds of Mexican police and officials, have been killed in the drug violence.


Very organized
Ricardo Ravelo, the author of several books on Mexican cartels and an investigative reporter for Proceso magazine in Mexico, said the Federation is well organized on the American side of the border. "I'm talking about distribution as well as the collection of profits, money laundering and smuggling money back to Mexico," he said.

Analysts fear the cartels will bring peripheral cash-generating crime like kidnapping, extortion and protection rackets, problems that are all too common in Mexico.

"The U.S. will begin to see a little of the same conflict that is happening in Mexico," Sanchez said. "If (the cartels) already have methods, and ways of diversifying into other crimes, it's normal that they won't stop at the border."

While some cartel violence has spilled across the border, mostly along the border and in large cities like Dallas and Atlanta, experts say it's unlikely the U.S. will see the large-scale drug wars that have paralyzed various Mexican cities and forced Calderon to send about 25,000 federal troops to confront the cartels.

Carlos Humberto Toledo, a military affairs expert in Mexico City, predicted the cartels will continue to fight their major battles within Mexico.



http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hea ... 47100.html

So I guess the US will have a 21st Century version of China's Opium War?

"The U.S. will begin to see a little of the same conflict that is happening in Mexico," Sanchez said. "If (the cartels) already have methods, and ways of diversifying into other crimes, it's normal that they won't stop at the border."

No they wont stop at the border. Rapes, molestations, murder, robberies, id theft and kidnapings are just of the few things that will be carried out BY DRUG CARTELS in America very soon. THANK YOU PRESIDENT BUSH FOR YOUR COMPLETE LACK OF LEADERSHIP.