The Secretary of DHS says that our border with Mexico is secure.  Really?  Why are Mexican drug gangs operating inside the United States?  When a major Mexican drug cartel opened a branch office here on the California side of the border, U.S. authorities tapped into its cellphones - then listened, watched and waited.

Their surveillance effort captured more than 50,000 calls over six months, conversations that reached deep into Mexico and helped build a sprawling case against 43 suspects - including Mexican police and top officials - allegedly linked to a savage trafficking ring known as the Fernando Sanchez Organization.

According to the wiretaps and confidential informants, the suspects plotted kidnappings and killings and hired American teenage girls, with nicknames like Dopey, to smuggle quarter-pound loads of methamphetamine across the border for $100 a trip. To send a message to a rival, they dumped a disemboweled dog in his mother's front yard.

But U.S. law enforcement officials say the most worrisome thing about the Fernando Sanchez Organization was how aggressively it moved to set up operations in the United States, working out of a San Diego apartment it called "The Office."
At a time of heightened concern in Washington that drug violence along the border may spill into the United States, the case dubbed "Luz Verde," or Green Light, shows how Mexican cartels are trying to build up their U.S. presence.

The Fernando Sanchez Organization's San Diego venture functioned almost like a franchise, prosecutors say, giving the group greater control over lucrative smuggling routes and drug distribution networks north of the border.  "They moved back and forth, from one side to the other. They commuted. We had lieutenants of the organization living here in San Diego and ordering kidnappings and murders in Mexico," said Todd Robinson, the assistant U.S. attorney who will prosecute the alleged ring next year.

The case shows that as the border becomes less of an operational barrier for Mexican cartels, it appears to be less of one for U.S. surveillance efforts. Because the suspects' cellphone and radio traffic could be captured by towers on the northern side of the border, U.S. agents were able to eavesdrop on calls made on Mexican cellphones, between two callers in Mexico - a tactic prosecutors say has never been deployed so extensively.

Captured on one wiretap: a cartel leader, a former homicide detective from Tijuana, negotiating with a Mexican state judicial police officer about a job offer to lead a death squad.  Recorded on other calls: the operation's biggest catch, Jesus Quinones Marquez, a high-ranking Mexican official and alleged cartel operative code-named "El Rinon," or "The Kidney." As he worked and socialized with U.S. law enforcement officials in his role as international liaison for the Baja California attorney general's office, Quinones passed confidential information to cartel bosses and directed Mexican police to take action against rival traffickers, prosecutors say.

He and 34 other suspects are now in U.S. jails. The remaining eight are still at large.  Investigators say it is not unusual for Mexican cartel leaders and their underlings to move north in search of refuge or to place representatives in such cities as Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta to manage large deliveries of drugs. But the Fernando Sanchez Organization was more ambitious. It was building a network in San Diego, complete with senior managers to facilitate large and small drug shipments and sales.

The gang is an offshoot of the Tijuana cartel, led by baby-faced Fernando Sanchez Arellano, a nephew of the once fearsome Arellano-Felix brothers who ran the Tijuana drug trade for almost 20 years before they were captured or killed. The nephew's organization is a weaker syndicate, at war with itself and rivals, police say, and locked in a desperate struggle to maintain market share in the highly competitive billion-dollar drug corridor into California.

Unlike the cartel crews in Mexico, which are typically built on strong ties between families or friends, the San Diego franchise recruited from U.S.-based Latino street gangs. Some recruits were illegal immigrants, others U.S. citizens, according to arrest warrants. Twelve of the 43 indicted have alleged gang affiliations in San Diego. Six of the 43 are current or former Mexican law enforcement officers. Eight are women.

"You couldn't pick these people out of a crowd," said Leonard Miranda, a retired captain in the Chula Vista, Calif., police department who worked on the investigation. "Some of them kept a very low profile. Their family members didn't even know."
According to the 86-page federal racketeering indictment unsealed July 23, cartel members operated stash houses, managed smuggling crews, distributed marijuana and methamphetamine, trafficked in weapons, laundered money, committed robberies and collected drug debts. When people did not pay, they were kidnapped or targeted with execution on both sides of the border.

U.S. authorities say the wiretaps allowed them to foil murder plots and other violent acts. The assistant special agent in charge of the San Diego FBI office, David Bowdich, said his teams stopped the execution of two Mexican police officers. The authorities also saved a cartel associate called "Sharky" who was going to be killed because he had disrespected drug lords in Tijuana.

From their apartments by the beach or cars parked at motels, the targets of the investigation talked and talked on their cellphones.  They almost always spoke in Spanish, usually in clipped code, with lots of street slang. They bought and quickly discarded the phones. Top lieutenants often employed "alineadores," personal assistants who juggled a dozen phones and took messages so that the boss would not be heard on the line. Investigators say the alleged cartel members clearly were afraid that their calls could be monitored.

And they were right. In February, the FBI secured hard-to-get "roving" wiretaps for 44 individuals that allowed investigators to track their movements via global positioning satellites.  According to U.S. law enforcement officials, the Mexican government was not involved in the investigation.  Quinones, the high-ranking Mexican official, was a close adviser to Attorney General Rommel Moreno, the top prosecutor in Mexico's Baja California state. He was arrested July 22 when U.S. agents invited him to the San Diego police department to help with an investigation. It was a setup.

"My client's gone from a cross-border international liaison officer to a guy in a 10-by-10-foot isolation cell in lockdown 23 hours a day," said his attorney, Patrick Hall, who described Quinones as "a normal dad with three kids, married 11 years, who lived in Tijuana all his adult life and was one of the dads out there at the Little League baseball games."  Hall said the federal agents were "reading in facts and interpretations and distortions into the true meanings of what's being said on the wiretaps."

Quinones's arrest has almost certainly dealt a blow to efforts at cross-border information sharing and collaboration, though officials on both sides played down the apparent betrayal. "Would you stop going to church just because of one bad priest?" Quinones's boss, Moreno, said in an interview in Tijuana.  But the U.S. wiretaps also detected other troubling signs of corruption.

On the day of the mass arrests, U.S. agents arranged for suspected drug lieutenant Jose Najera Gil to pick up visa documents he was seeking from the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana. But the Mexican police who were supposed to arrest him at the consulate failed to show up.

A day before the arrests, another Mexican police officer, Jose Ortega Nuvo, received a call on his cellphone, which was being tapped by U.S agents. The caller warned him that he was about to be arrested. According to court testimony, the call came from the offices of the federal police in Mexico City - a special unit vetted to work alongside agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Secure our border--get control of illegals and drugs.

The Obama administration says that it has secured our southern border and Arizona is a racist state since it wants to crack down on illegals.  Obama's Justice Department has sued the Governor of Arizona for doing her elected job of protecting the citizens of her state.  Obama's State Department has reportred Arizona to the United Nations as an example of how Obama is targeting one of the proud US 50 states on human rights violations...go figure.

Now, the federal government has posted signs along a major interstate highway in Arizona, more than 100 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, warning travelers the area is unsafe because of drug and alien smugglers, and a local sheriff says Mexican drug cartels now control some parts of the state.

The signs were posted by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) along a 60-mile stretch of Interstate 8 between Casa Grande and Gila Bend, a major east-west corridor linking Tucson and Phoenix with San Diego.  I guess that the Obama's Chief of Staff and Justice Department did not send a memo to the BLM saying that all illegals are just law abiding folks who are seeking honest employment.

They warn travelers that they are entering an "active drug and human smuggling area" and they may encounter "armed criminals and smuggling vehicles traveling at high rates of speed." Beginning less than 50 miles south of Phoenix, the signs encourage travelers to "use public lands north of Interstate 8" and to call 911 if they "see suspicious activity."

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, whose county lies at the center of major drug and alien smuggling routes to Phoenix and cities east and west, attests to the violence. He said his deputies are outmanned and outgunned by drug traffickers in the rough-hewn desert stretches of his own county.

"Mexican drug cartels literally do control parts of Arizona," he said. "They literally have scouts on the high points in the mountains and in the hills and they literally control movement. They have radios, they have optics, they have night-vision goggles as good as anything law enforcement has.

"This is going on here in Arizona," he said. "This is 70 to 80 miles from the border - 30 miles from the fifth-largest city in the United States."  He said he asked the Obama administration for 3,000 National Guard soldiers to patrol the border, but what he got were 15 signs.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer condemned what she called the federal government's "continued failure to secure our international border," saying the lack of security has resulted in important natural recreational areas in her state being declared too dangerous to visit.

In a recent campaign video posted to YouTube, Mrs. Brewer - standing in front of one of the BLM signs - attacked the administration over the signs, calling them "an outrage" and telling President Obama to "Do your job. Secure our borders."

BLM spokesman Dennis Godfrey in Arizona said agency officials were surprised by the reaction the signs generated when they were put up this summer.  No kidding---drug criminals in control of portions of AZ....

The below 10 facts about crime across America is related to our unsecured borders for over 30 years.  The drug cartels and criminals are now running rampant across the United States. 

Many Americans are already painfully aware that violent crime is experiencing a massive upsurge in the United States.  As the U.S. economy has tanked and as unemployment has skyrocketed and the illegal alien issue has not been addressed, many Americans have found themselves becoming increasingly desperate.  Hard economic times usually lead to an increase in crime, but what is happening across the U.S. now is absolutely stunning.  Mexican drug gangs are running unchecked across America.

In fact, there are many communities in the United States where it is simply not safe to go out at night anymore--parts of Washington, DC, Chicago, New York, and even small towns across the U.S.  Millions of Americans find themselves prisoners in their own homes as they lock themselves in their houses in an attempt to keep the crime out.  The truth is that it is really hard to live the American Dream when there is a raging crime wave going on right outside your door.

The truly frightening thing is that crime is almost certainly going to get even worse as economic conditions continue to deteriorate and the government allows our borders to be unsecured.  

The following are ten facts about crime in the United States that will blow your mind....

#1) The city of Detroit , Michigan literally looks like a war zone and violent crime is thriving.  So far this year in Detroit , car thefts are up 83%, robberies are up 50%, burglaries are up 20% and property destruction is up 42%.  There has been a white flight and the liberal Democrats who run the city are not doing their job.

#2) Lawmakers in Illinois say that violence has become so rampant in Chicago that the National Guard needs to be sent in.  In just one night last week seven people were killed and 18 were wounded - mostly by gunfire.  In fact, there have already been 113 murders in Chicago this year.  Chicago is a city that welcomes illegals.

#3) The city of Phoenix , Arizona has become the car theft capital of the world as millions of illegal aliens who can't get work have found that stealing cars can be very profitable indeed.  This is why the Governor signed legislation to crack down on illegal aliens.

#4) There are approximately 12 million crimes committed in the United States every single year.  That is by far the worst in the world.  No other nation has more than about 6 million reported crimes per year.  Crime from drugs account for over 50%.

#5) In New York City, the number of homicides in the first quarter of the year had shot up by approximately 22 percent compared with 2009. Do you miss Rudy yet?

#6) U.S. prisons are already bursting at the seams.  As you read this, there are over 2.2 million people in prison in the United States .  In fact, America leads the world in the number of prisoners and in the percentage of the population in prison. The United States has 5% of the world's population, but 25% of the world's incarcerated population.  The number of illegal aliens and drug offenders account for 60%.

#7) U.S. law enforcement authorities claim that there are now over 1 million members of criminal gangs inside the country. These 1 million gang members are responsible for up to 80% of the crimes committed in the United States each year.  This is a direct result of unsecured borders and allowing the criminals from Mexico to push drugs all across America.

#8) There are over 100,000 rapes in the United States every single year.  That is the highest number for any of the countries in the United Nations.  This is not surprising when you have so many gang members in just about every community due to our unsecured borders.

#9) According to USA Today, 58% of state and local law enforcement agencies in the United States reported that violent criminal gangs were active in their areas in 2008.  That was up from 45% in 2004.  So why do the local and state police agencies refuse to work with ICE and other federal law enforcement agencies?  Is it called liberal politics?

#10) Every year, one out of every five people is a victim of a crime in the United States. No other nation on earth has a rate that is higher.  We cannot continue to allow this to happen.  

The number one job of any U.S. President is to protect the nation and its citizens-----Obama get a "F" in security.

We have been saying for years that our southern border is as unsecured and dangerous as the border between Iraq and Iran.  Now that Senator McCain is in a real primary race with J.D. Hayworth, he has changed his opinion of border security with illegal aliens and drug runners. 

The Mexican drug violence is all across the United States and due to limited drug routes, more and more people across our southern border are being threatened and killed.  With border violence flaring again, the two U.S. senators from Arizona on Monday called on President Obama to deploy 3,000 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border in their state, saying the borders must be secured before the White House pursues a broader immigration bill.

Due to Senator McCain's "open border comprehensive immigration reform", he wants to show us that he is tough on illegal immigrants before he gives them US rights and allow these law-breakers a path to our citizenship so they vote with the liberal Democrats against us.

The call from Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl, both Republicans, was made the same day Arizona's Legislature approved a bill to make it a state crime to be an illegal immigrant. The measure now goes to Gov. Jan Brewer, who has not taken a position on the measure.  We are glad that the current DHS Secretary is not in Arizona so the state legislatures can finally pass legislation that will target the illegals with breaking current laws.

"It's a very important step forward," said Mr. McCain, who in the past had fought for a broad bill legalizing illegal immigrants but who on Monday said illegal immigration has led to deteriorating security in Arizona.

The senators said they want Mr. Obama to deploy 3,000 National Guard troops until Arizona's governor certifies that the government has operational control. They also said an additional 3,000 Border Patrol agents should be sent to the state over the next five years.

Mr. McCain and Mr. Kyl called on the Justice Department to expand a program that guarantees illegal immigrants serve time in jail, rather than being immediately sent back across the border. Mr. Kyl said the program has shown great promise where it's been used. A Homeland Security spokesman said the administration is evaluating law enforcement options, including using the National Guard, but pointed to strides made over the past five years to boost the U.S. Border Patrol.

"The Border Patrol is better staffed today than at any time in its 85-year history," said spokesman Matt Chandler, pointing to the more than 4,000 agents in Arizona and 20,000 total across the country, or more than twice the number compared with six years ago.

Security along the border has become a national issue again after a rancher was killed on the U.S. side of the border in what authorities say could have been related to a drug cartel, and after two U.S. citizens and a Mexican employee of the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, were killed. Both incidents happened last month.

"Things are out of control. We need the help of troops that are deployed along the border," said Paul R. Babeu, sheriff of Pinal County in central Arizona, who appeared with Cochise County Sheriff Larry A. Dever and the two senators at a news conference at the Capitol.

Sheriff Babeu said he has seen a marked increase in the past four months in the aggressiveness of those crossing the border illegally and that they are more frequently armed.

He said illegal immigrants have figured out that police rules require officers to stop pursuits if citizens are endangered. That has led to illegal immigrants intentionally trying to run other drivers off the road in an effort to force police to give up the chase.

Republicans' push to highlight border security could hurt Mr. Obama's efforts to pass an immigration bill this year. Last year, Ms. Napolitano, who was governor of Arizona until joining the Obama administration, said the U.S. border was secure enough that Congress should enact a bill to legalize the estimated 20 million illegal immigrants already in the U.S. and provide a way for more foreign workers.

But Republicans are questioning that idea after the recent killings, including that of Rob Krentz, a rancher near the U.S.-Mexico border who may have been targeted by drug cartels.

In the wake of that killing, the Arizona Legislature has acted. The bill sent Monday to the governor would require police to conduct immigration-status checks when they find someone they think might be in the country illegally, and it makes it a state crime to be there without authorization.

It also makes it illegal to knowingly hire or transport illegal immigrants.

"Most of us in law enforcement welcome this legislation," said Sheriff Babeu. He said it brings uniformity to the state, so all police know what's expected of them, and illegal immigrants know the penalties.  For Mr. McCain, who is now involved in a tough primary battle with former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, Monday's embrace of a security bill was controversial.

He was a key author of an immigration-reform bill a few years ago and was a chief backer of efforts in 2006 and 2007 to pass a measure through the Senate. But after that 2007 bill failed, Mr. McCain said voters need to be convinced that the borders are secure before they will accept any action on legalizing illegal immigrants.

Mr. Hayworth called Mr. McCain's move an "election-year gimmick," while immigrant rights groups said they felt betrayed by a former ally.  "What a sad day," said Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, a leading advocacy group. "Obviously, John McCain is fighting for his political life in Arizona. I sure miss the days when he fought for his principles."

I hope the voters of Arizona do not give McCain a free pass on this issue---vote for J.D.

Again, we have an American citizen and federal border agent killed by an illegal alien.  Our southern border is as dangerous as the Iraq-Iran border.  We must have Mexican and US troops on the border along with the double fence authorized by the US Congress.

FBI Special Agent Keith Slotter said Friday investigators are checking hospitals and other medical facilities in hopes of tracking down the suspect or suspects who killed agent Robert Wilmer Rosas late Thursday after he responded to a Border Patrol call near Campo, a remote area of San Diego County.

The agent was killed by drug smugglers who are illegal immigrants trying to cross the border.  "I am deeply saddened by the tragic death of one of our own," said Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.  The Secretary has weakened the enforcement of the CBP since she took over the Department of Homeland Security.  Ms. Napolitano said she had directed the department to use its full resources to aid in the murder investigation.

The agent spotted a suspicious group of people Thursday night in the Campo area near the Mexican border and called for additional agents to help track them, U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Daryl Reed said.  When the suspicious group split up, the agent followed some of the suspects on his own, Mr. Reed said.

Other agents lost radio contact with him shortly after 9 p.m. then heard gunshots. They found Mr. Rosas, who was pronounced dead at the scene.  The San Diego County Sheriff's Department said he was shot in the head.

The president of the union representing 17,000 Border Patrol agents declined to discuss the details of the shooting but said his organization has long been concerned about staffing levels and situations in which agents work alone in the field.  He said such situations are not uncommon, even in the roughly 60 miles of border covered by the San Diego sector.  "It's fairly common for our agents throughout San Diego County and the rest of the country to work without a partner," said T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council. "They each have separate vehicles, and it's a matter of concern with us."
 
The Border Patrol said the agent was 30 and was a three-year veteran who is survived by his wife, a 2-year-old son and an 11-month-old daughter.  Our support goes out to his family.

We can use high-tech geospatial solutions to assist the border agents and help prevent deaths due to illegal aliens.

I have been writing and warning all Americans about the war on our southern border with Mexico.  We have a national crisis with drugs, gang members, and thousands of illegals streaming across our border every day.  This must stop and we will have to put our military on our southern border.   Elected officials must put the rule of law ahead of politics and new votes.

The U.S. Defense Department thinks Mexico's two most deadly drug cartels together have fielded more than 100,000 foot soldiers - an army that rivals Mexico's armed forces and threatens to turn the country into a narco-state.  "It's moving to crisis proportions," a senior U.S. defense official told The Washington Times. The official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named because of the sensitive nature of his work, said the cartels' "foot soldiers" are on a par with Mexico's army of about 130,000.

The disclosure underlines the enormity of the challenge Mexico and the United States face as they struggle to contain what is increasingly looking like a civil war or an insurgency along the U.S.-Mexico border. In the past year, about 7,000 people have died - more than 1,000 in January alone. The conflict has become increasingly brutal, with victims beheaded and bodies dissolved in vats of acid.

The death toll dwarfs that in Afghanistan, where about 200 fatalities, including 29 U.S. troops, were reported in the first two months of 2009. About 400 people, including 31 U.S. military personnel, died in Iraq during the same period.  The biggest and most violent combatants are the Sinaloa cartel, known by U.S. and Mexican federal law enforcement officials as the "Federation" or "Golden Triangle," and its main rival, "Los Zetas" or the Gulf Cartel, whose territory runs along the Laredo,Texas, borderlands.

As a result, Mexico is behind only Pakistan and Iran as a top U.S. national security concern, ranking above Afghanistan and Iraq, the defense official added.  Michael V. Hayden, who left as CIA director in January, put Mexico second to Iran as a top national security threat to the United States. His successor, Leon E. Panetta, told reporters at his first news conference that the agency is "paying ... a lot of attention to" Mexico.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told CBS' "60 Minutes" on Sunday that "the stakes are high for the safety of many, many citizens of Mexico and the stakes are high for the United States no doubt."  A State Department travel advisory last month seemed timed to caution U.S. students contemplating spring breaks south of the border.

When will the Obama administration acknowledge this crisis and meet this challenge with securing our borders?  Drugs, gangs, and illegal immigration are tearing our country apart and destroying American lives.  Our southern border is the most dangerous border in the world.

Before President Bush leaves office, he is doing everything he can to snub the Border Patrol agents.  He put two agents in jail while providing cover to a Mexican drug runner.  Now the President has awarded a $61,200 bonus to Border Patrol Chief David V. Aguilar.  Mr. Aguilar has not done a good job and has not protected his agents.  He is the cause of the delays in a $20 million fence project and for an accelerated hiring program that auditors said threatens to reduce qualified field supervisors.

The chief also has been criticized by his own rank and file for not supporting two agents sent to prison for shooting a drug smuggler in the buttocks as he fled back to Mexico, and greeted with a unanimous "no confidence" vote by the union representing non-supervisory agents.

The presidential merit award, equal to 35 percent of Chief Aguilar's $172,000 annual pay, is 1.7 times larger than the base starting salary of $36,658 for a Border Patrol agent. The bonus has angered many field agents, some of whom told the chief in a terse, unsigned letter that the agency has been damaged and field agents jeopardized by his "politically expedient decisions."

The letter, a copy which was obtained by The Washington Times, challenged Chief Aguilar's job performance since his May 2004 appointment, saying there had "never been a time when our chief has been so out of touch with the field, or a time when our chief has become a politician and lost sight of his most important responsibility: to be an advocate for the agency and its mission."

Jeffrey C. Robertson, assistant commissioner for public affairs at U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which oversees the Border Patrol, acknowledged that the chief had received the letter but declined to comment publicly on what action, if any, had been taken on it.

Mr. Robertson said, however, that decisions concerning the border fence project and the academy classes were made "corporately and ultimately" by CBP and the Department of Homeland Security, not Chief Aguilar, whom he described as a "zealous advocate" for the Border Patrol's front-line agents

The agents' four-page letter focuses on two major topics: a virtual fence project along the Arizona-Mexico border that it called "ineffective and too costly," and changes at the Border Patrol Academy to meet a presidential mandate of hiring 6,000 more agents by the end of 2008.

President Bush---pardon the two Border Patrol agents and stop being the "open-border" Commander in Chief.