Ever wonder why the drug war never ends?
"US agents are said to launder cash for Mexican drug cartels; Efforts defended as effective way to trace drug money" December 04, 2011|By Ginger Thompson, New York Times
WASHINGTON - Undercover US narcotics agents have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds as part of Washington’s expanding role in Mexico’s fight against drug cartels, according to current and former federal law enforcement officials.
The agents, primarily with the Drug Enforcement Administration, have handled shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal cash across borders, those officials said, to identify how criminal organizations move their money, where they keep their assets, and, most importantly, who their leaders are.
They said agents had deposited the drug proceeds in accounts designated by traffickers, or in shell accounts set up by agents.
The officials said that while the DEA has conducted such operations in other countries, it began doing so in Mexico only in the past few years.
The high-risk activities raise delicate questions about the agency’s effectiveness in bringing down drug kingpins, underscore diplomatic concerns about Mexican sovereignty, and blur the line between surveillance and facilitating crime.
As it launders drug money, the agency often allows cartels to continue their operations over months or even years before making seizures or arrests....
And they only bust the ones they don't like and have double-crossed or because they need a pr example.
Yup, turns out the GOVERNMENT is the BIGGEST DRUG DEALER in AmeriKa!
The laundering operations that the United States conducts elsewhere - about 50 so-called Attorney General Exempt Operations are under way around the world - had been forbidden in Mexico after US customs agents conducted a cross-border sting in 1998 without notifying Mexican authorities. That was how most US undercover work was conducted in Mexico up to that point.
It's called a violation of national sovereignty, but it's okay when we do it.
But that changed in recent years after President Felipe Calderon declared war against the country’s drug cartels and enlisted the United States to play a leading role in fighting them because of concerns that his security forces had little experience and long histories of corruption.
Today, in operations supervised by the Justice Department and orchestrated to get around sovereignty restrictions, the United States is running numerous undercover laundering investigations against Mexico’s most powerful cartels.
What a joke.
One DEA official said it was not unusual for US agents to pick up two or three loads of Mexican drug money each week. A second official said that as Mexican cartels have extended their operations from Latin America to Africa, Europe and the Middle East, the reach of the operations has grown as well. When asked how much money has been laundered as a part of the operations, the official would only say, “A lot.’’
“If you’re going to get into the business of laundering money,’’ the official added, “then you have to be able to launder money.’’
Yup, the US GOVERNMENT is the DRUG LORD'S BANKER!
Related:
Drug Money Saving Banks
Drug money saved banks in global crisis
Oh, another reason for another fraudulent war.
Former counternarcotics officials, who also would speak only on the condition of anonymity about clandestine operations, offered a clearer glimpse of their scale and how they worked. In some cases, the officials said, Mexican agents, posing as smugglers and accompanied by US authorities, pick up traffickers’ cash in Mexico.
US agents transport the cash on government flights to the United States, where it is deposited into traffickers’ accounts, and then wired to companies that provide goods and services to the cartel.
In other cases, DEA agents, posing as launderers, pick up drug proceeds in the United States, deposit them in banks in this country, and then wire them to the traffickers in Mexico.
The former officials said the drug agency tried to seize as much money as it laundered - partly in the fees the operatives charged traffickers for their services and another part in carefully choreographed arrests at pickup points identified by their undercover operatives.
It is not clear whether such operations are worth the risks. So far there are few signs that following the money has disrupted the cartel’s operations, and little evidence that Mexican drug traffickers are feeling any serious financial pain.
And there you go.
Last year, the DEA seized about $1 billion in cash and drug assets, while Mexico seized an estimated $26 million in money laundering investigations, a tiny fraction of the estimated $18 billion to $39 billion in drug money that flows between the countries each year.
There has been no significant dip in the volume of drugs moving across the country. Reports of human rights violations by police officers and soldiers have soared.
Those seem to come with every war.
And drug-related violence has left more than 40,000 people dead since Calderon took office in December 2006.
It's a war, all right, and it's failed.
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"Holder defends self, vows not to quit; Draws fire from GOP on security, civil rights issues" December 18, 2011|By Charlie Savage, New York Times
AUSTIN, Texas - For nearly three years, Republicans have attacked Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on national security and civil rights issues. For months, they have criticized him over a gun-trafficking investigation gone awry, with dozens of leaders calling for his resignation. More than 75 members of Congress cosponsored a House resolution last week expressing “no confidence’’ in his leadership.
The intensifying heat on Holder comes as the Justice Department is stepping into some of the most politically divisive social issues of the day, including investigating an Arizona sheriff known for his crackdowns on illegal immigrants of racial profiling, scrutinizing new restrictions on voting in search of signs that they could lower turnout among minorities, and telling judges that a law banning federal recognition of same-sex marriages is unconstitutional....
Related: Apathetic About Arizona Post
Fast and Furious was an operation in which agents for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, investigating an arms trafficking network working for a Mexican drug cartel, sometimes did not move quickly to arrest low-level suspects and seize guns because the agents were seeking to build a bigger case. They lost track of hundreds of weapons; two guns linked to a suspect in the case were found near the site where a Border Patrol agent was killed.
Or they were arming the cartels as they laundered their money.
Also see: Mexican Marijuana Made Me Forget
AmeriKa's War on Mexico
Gambling in Mexico
Great.
And now casinos are being brought here to launder drug mone... oooooooooooh! Now I see why states are rushing to legalize casinos!! They love the tax loot funneled back in the form of campaign contributions, and at bottom they serve banks once again.
Two Republicans, Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Representative Darrell Issa of California have led an inquiry into the operation.
Holder has denounced the tactics used in the operation, known as “gunwalking,’’ but said he did not know about them or sanction their use.
These guys are all the same no matter what letter is after their name.
No documents or testimony have shown otherwise, but Republicans have pummeled Holder. Some accused him of perjury; others floated theories that the operation was intended to go bad so as to build a case for stronger gun-control laws and called the Holder Justice Department an accessory to murder.
That's part of it, as is the perception that we must pour more money and men into Mexico.
Holder said he viewed such attacks as “payback’’ for the way his predecessors in the Bush administration John Ashcroft and Alberto R. Gonzales, were treated by their critics.
All those crimes -- from torture to attorneygate -- all down the media collective memory hole.
Why aren't you prosecuting those crimes, sir?
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Related: End the Drug War Now
You $ee why we can't, right?
How is that stuff getting here anyway?
"Arrests along Mexico border fall; Data indicate flow of illegal migrants is at 1970s levels" December 11, 2011|By Nick Miroff, Washington Post
MEXICALI, Mexico - Arrests of illegal migrants trying to cross the southern US border have plummeted to levels not seen since the early 1970s, according to tallies released by the Department of Homeland Security, a historic shift that could reshape the debate over immigration....
The number of illegal migrants arrested at the border has been dropping over the past few years but appears to be down by more than 25 percent this year.
Coupled with census and labor data from both countries that shows far fewer Mexicans coming to the United States and many returning home, it appears that the historic flood of Mexican migration north has slowed to a trickle.
Because the US economy is worse than theirs, 'murkn!!
“We have reached the point where the balance between Mexicans moving to the United States and those returning to Mexico is essentially zero,’’ said Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, whose conclusion was shared by many migration experts.
Such a steep drop in illegal crossings gives supporters of immigration reform ammunition to argue that now is a good time to tackle the issue.
When I read something like that now in my agenda-pushing paper I reflexively reach for the break.
GOP presidential contenders Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney have been sparring over the estimated 11 million people living illegally in the United States. Gingrich says it would be heartless to kick out migrants who have worked and raised families here for years, while Romney blasted Gingrich for supporting “amnesty’’ for illegal residents but has not given a clear answer on what he would do.
See: Romney Responds to Gingrich
Also see: Boston Globe Green Card
Let's see if we can get you one.
In Congress, comprehensive immigration reform has been sidelined, stuck between those who would not allow illegal migrants to remain and others who are pushing, like President Obama, to create a pathway to legal status but not necessarily citizenship.
The lower number of apprehensions supports the Obama administration’s contention that the border is more secure than ever - that the doubling of Border Patrol agents since 2004, along with hundreds of miles of new fence, cameras, lights, sensors, and Predator drones has helped slow the illegal flow northward.
The global control grid being built right in front of your eyes.
But those who say the border remains out of control can point to the hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants who still try to make the crossing every year....
This isn't about necessarily stopping them; they just want to know who crossed by tracking them. Think about it. If the problem is $olved tho$e contract$ for the $ecurity mea$ure$ go down the drain.
Most analysts agree that Border Patrol apprehensions along the border are an imprecise but useful marker for estimating the total flow of illegal migration, because the US government has no idea how many are not caught. But a number of recent surveys indicated that migration has been inexorably altered in the last few years....
Translation: they don't really know, and the numbers are once again a huge, public-relations, agenda-pushing s***-shovel.
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"US proposes unmanned crossing; Would afford access for isolated Mexican town" December 12, 2011|By Christopher Sherman, Associated Press
BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK, Texas - The bloody drug war in Mexico shows no sign of relenting. Neither do calls for tighter border security amid rising fears of spillover violence.
This hardly seems a time the United States would be willing to allow people to cross the border legally from Mexico without a customs officer in sight. But in this remote West Texas terrain, where wading across the shallow Rio Grande undetected is all too easy, federal authorities are touting a proposal to open an unmanned port of entry as a security upgrade.
It's a joke, but it's fatal and not funny.
By the spring, kiosks could open up in Big Bend National Park allowing people from the tiny Mexican town of Boquillas del Carmen to scan their identity documents and talk to a customs officer in another location, at least 100 miles away.
The crossing, which would be the nation’s first such port of entry with Mexico, has sparked opposition from some who see it as counterintuitive in these days of heightened border security. Supporters say the crossing would give the isolated Mexican town long-awaited access to US commerce, improve conservation efforts, and be an unlikely target for criminal operations.
“People that want to be engaged in illegal activities along the border, ones that are engaged in those activities now, they’re still going to do it,’’ said William Wellman, Big Bend National Park’s superintendent. “But you’d have to be a real idiot to pick the only place with security in 300 miles of the border to try to sneak across.’’
The proposed crossing from Boquillas del Carmen leads to a vast expanse of rolling scrub, cut by sandy-floored canyons and violent volcanic rock outcroppings. The Chihuahuan desert wilderness is home to mountain lions, black bears, and roadrunners, sparsely populated by an occasional camper and others visiting the 800,000-acre national park.
Customs and Border Protection, which would run the port of entry, says the proposal is a safe way to allow access to the town’s residents, who currently must travel 240 road miles to the nearest legal entry point. It also would allow park visitors to visit the town.
If the crossing is approved, Border Patrol would have eight agents living in the park in addition to the park’s 23 law enforcement rangers.
“I think it’s actually going to end up making security better,’’ CBP spokesman William Brooks said. “Once you’ve crossed you’re still not anywhere. You’ve got a long ways to go, and we’ve got agents who are in the area.’’
A public comment period runs through Dec. 27 on the estimated $2.3 million project, which has support at the highest levels of government from both countries.
For that reason alone I oppose it.
US Representative Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican member of the House Homeland Security committee, questioned the wisdom of the plan.
“We need to use our resources to secure the border rather than making it easier to enter in locations where we already have problems with illegal crossings,’’ McCaul said in an e-mail. “There is more to the oversight of legal entry than checking documents. (The CPB) needs to be physically present at every point of entry in order to inspect for contraband, detect suspicious behavior and, if necessary, act on what they encounter.’’
Unless they are really not interested in that, right?
While CBP will run the port of entry, the National Park Service is the driver behind the project, which it hopes will help conservation efforts. Joint conservation work with Mexico has been limited by the inability of personnel to cross the border without making a circuitous 16-hour drive, Wellman said.
Now they are using the environment to justify this?
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How far you gotta drive to get around the fence?
"New fencing toughens US, Mexico border crossings" January 03, 2012|By Nick Miroff
CALEXICO, Calif. — In the past five years, the international border here has become a harder, tougher, taller barrier — an American Great Wall....
We are like a big Israel over here.
Now the question is: How much more should be built?
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President Obama has made light of such proposals, saying fence advocates won’t be satisfied until the United States builds a moat stocked with alligators.
Hey, whatever works here.
But leading Republican candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have vowed to barricade the entire US-Mexico divide, with Gingrich signing a pledge to install a “double fence’’ while campaigning in Iowa earlier this month.
With such an endeavor projected to cost tens of billions of dollars, this stretch of California desert might be as good a place as any to assess how the existing border fence works....
At night, smugglers toss pot-stuffed footballs and fling golf-ball-sized heroin nuggets over to waiting receivers. Stealthy ultralight aircraft bomb the lettuce fields outside town with bundles of dope, then swoop back into Mexico, well below radar but high above the fence.
Then there are rugged sections in the desert where fencing is porous or nonexistent, but crossings rare. And those who do try to slip through are tracked by the Border Patrol’s array of sensors, night-vision cameras, and surveillance drones.
In short, agents say, fencing is a tool and a first line of defense, but it does not bestow border security by its mere existence....
That's okay because I've been told they ain't comin' and are going home because of our crap economy.
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Now if you will excuse me, I need to go to the bank and then find me a piece.
