Cartel leaders turning up north of the Rio Grande

By Jason Buch
jbuch@express-news.net
Updated 06:08 p.m., Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Two alleged Gulf Cartel leaders arrested last week in South Texas were most likely hiding out north of the border to avoid the extreme violence caused by warring cartels in Mexico, analysts said.

These cartel capos are potential gold mines of information for law enforcement, but the schisms they're fleeing may have spilled into the U.S. in two recent incidents, they said. And the demise of these bosses works to the benefit of their opponents across the river.

Border Patrol agents on Thursday arrested Eudoxio Ramos Garcia, 34, at a house in Rio Grande City. Ramos is the Gulf Cartel's former plaza boss, or regional commander, for the Mexican border city of Miguel Alemán, according to court documents. He'd been living in the U.S. only for a few days, paying $500 to cross the border illegally because his visa expired, according to court documents.

The day before, agents near the river in Santa Maria arrested Juse Luis Zuniga Hernandez on a weapons charge. There's no reference to his position within the cartel in the court documents, but a former top official at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said agents think Zuniga was at one point the plaza boss for Matamoros, across the Rio Grande from Brownsville.

“He's a major player,â€