Mexican federal forces announced the arrest of top leaders of the Gulf Cartel and La Resistencia crime network—as another mass grave was discovered along the Texas border.
Colombia’s FARC guerillas released a YouTube rap video to announce peace talks with the government. The talks are to open next month in Oslo, with Cuban mediation.
The Mexican daily La Jornada reports that the two US agents wounded in a roadside ambush by federal police were from the Central Intelligence Agency, not the DEA.
Relatives of victims of drug-related violence in Mexico protested lax US gun control laws by destroying two US-purchased firearms in a public park in Houston.
A group of Mexican federal police agents attacked a US embassy car. Mexican authorities attributed the incident to “confusion”: the US embassy called it an “ambush.”
Two US Congress members say there’s evidence that Wal-Mart Stores didn’t take legally required steps to prevent money laundering and tax evasion through its Mexican subsidiary.
The US is investigating possible money laundering through a Las Vegas casino company owned by US billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a major donor to the Republican Party.
Brazil has mobilized nearly 9,000 military troops to its borders with four neighboring countries as part of an operation aimed at interrupting narco-trafficking networks.
Colombian National Police arrested one top cartel kingpin, “Sebastian,” and extradited another, “Nano.” But a new paramilitary network linked to the cartels is fast consolidating.
The US government has determined that Bolivia now has fewer coca plantations but it is producing more cocaine because traffickers are using a more “efficient” process known as the “Colombian method,” according to an interview with a diplomat in La… Read moreBolivia: coca production down, cocaine production up?
A 16-state coalition filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, requesting the court to issue a judicial determination that Trump's national emergency declaration over the southern border wall is unconstitutional. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced the lawsuit, stating: "Unlawful southern border entries are at their lowest point in 20 years, immigrants are less likely than native-born citizens to commit crimes, and illegal drugs are more likely to come through official ports of entry. There is no credible evidence to suggest that a border wall would decrease crime rates." (Photo via Jurist)
Under pressure to address the ongoing wave of targeted assassinations in Colombia, President Iván Duque for the first time spoke before the National Commission to Guarantee Security, formed by the previous government to address continuing violence in the country—which has only worsened since he took office last year. Duque said 4,000 people are now under the government's protection program for threatened citizens. But his office implied that the narco trade is entirely behind the growing violence. Interior Minister Nancy Patricia Gutiérrez told the meeting: "This great problem is derived from the 200,000 hectares of illicit crops that we have in Colombia." However, it is clear that the narco economy is but part of a greater nexus of forces that fuel the relentless terror—all related to protecting rural land empires and intimidating the peasantry. (Photo via Contagio Radio)
