Mexican Drug Cartels threatens the United States
May 26, 2008 2:00 p.m. PDT
By Michael Webster: Investigative Reporter

As America wages its war on drugs and terror with costs to the tax payer in the billions organized criminal gangs here in the U.S. have merged with the Mexican drug cartels, the threat to U.S. interests from an emerging international crime cartel grows more serious every day.

Groups like the Sinaloa, Juarez, Tijuana, gulf Cartels, has virtually taken over law enforcement and high ranking Mexican government officials in their host country and are dangerous and significant players on the international stage, carrying out their criminal activities across borders and threatening the stability and interests of the United States. In other words they are a big security threat to this nation.

Fresh evidence of this growing threat comes from the powerful Mexican cartels which is already responsible for up to 80 percent of the cocaine that reaches the United States, and are increasingly able to operate above the law, buying off or even killing the government officials who are supposed to work with U.S. law- enforcement agencies to crack down on crime.

What's worse, the cartels have now forged alliances with American street gangs, giving these drug cartels a deep reach into American life and through that alliance with our gangs that gives them control over most of the $300 to $500 billion American drug trade, the largest in the world. These cartels have become a global crime corporation with an international reach of illegal franchises spanning the world.

The ability of these Mexican drug cartels to operate with complete disregard for the law on both sides of the border – trafficking in drugs, weapons, humans, terrorists, prostitution, and money laundering is now threatening to destabilize the American economy and our way of life, especially in poor areas and in our projects and barrios. By corrupting our government officials and buying and undermining legitimate American business enterprises, these criminal aliments threaten to set back what little progress we as a nation have made in regards to American poor minorities and their offspring gang members, and already in the case of Mexico, could forestall reform there indefinitely.

Federal authorities point to the Mexican drug cartels that are ultimately responsible for border violence by having cemented ties to street and prison gangs like El Paso's Barrio Azteca on the U.S. side of the border. Azteca like many other U.S. gangs retail drugs that they get from Mexican cartels and their gangs. One Of The Most Dangerous In Nation Mexican gangs also run their own distribution networks in the United States, and they produce most of the methamphetamine used north of the border. They have even bypassed the Colombians several times to buy cocaine directly from producers in Bolivia, Peru and even Afghanistan. These same gangs often work as cartel surrogates or enforcers on the U.S. side of the border. Intelligence suggests Los Zetas They're known as "Los Zetas have hired members of various gangs at different times including, El Paso gang Barrio Azteca, Mexican Mafia, Texas Syndicate(YouTube), MS-13, and Hermanos Pistoleros Latinos to further their criminal endeavors. Dangerous Mexican Cartel Gangs

The list of crimes the new international criminal organizations are involved in is long. They traffic in drugs, people, and chemical, biological and nuclear material. They perpetrate billions of dollars worth of fraud against banks, businesses and governments. They destroy lives, undermine economies, and diminish confidence in political and economic reform, and spread corruption and violence. In short, they have become an international security threat.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Anti-Narcotics Caucus, in a speech at The Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank said “Clearly, we need to devise a new foreign policy to deal with these criminal groups -- to put them out of business and in jail.â€