Travel warning for Mexico renewed by U.S. government

Brady McCombs, Arizona Daily Star
July 21, 2010 11:30 am

The U.S. State Department has renewed its travel warning for Mexico.

The travel warning — a step up from travel alerts — urges U.S. citizens to defer unnecessary travel to the northern Mexican states of Michoacán and Tamaulipas and parts of Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Durango, and Coahuila.

The state of Sonora is not included in this section.

But the city of Nogales, Sonora is again mentioned as one of the cities in northern Mexico where large gun battles have taken place and as one of the cities that have experienced daytime public shootouts. This wording has been included in the previous travel warning from March and the travel alerts from 2009.

The number of killings in Mexico's drug wars has spiked to unprecedented levels in Nogales over the past three years, as drug cartels battle for the prized corridor and as Mexican law enforcement attempts to weaken them.

There were 130 homicides in 2009, up from 116 in 2008 and 52 in 2007, according to official figures from the Sonoran government. Through June 2010, there have been 120 homicides.

Due to this situation, the State Department has given family members of officials at the U.S. consulates in Nogales, Sonora, Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez, Nuevo Laredo, Monterrey and Matamoros permission to temporarily relocate to the U.S. This new warning extends the authorization that was first issued in March.

Unlike a mandatory evacuation, families aren’t required to leave, but are offered monetary assistance to move. The State Department does not divulge how many families have taken the offer.

The new warning also includes a warning about Mexican highways along the U.S.-Mexico that echoes a “Warden Messageâ€