Los Zetas Drug Cartel Linked to US Helicopter Downing

Border patrol helo hit by gunfire

A shooting incident last month that forced a U.S. border patrol helicopter to make an emergency landing near Laredo, Texas, was the work of Mexican drug traffickers, and analysts say the attack highlights growing narcotics trafficking across porous U.S. borders.

According to U.S. officials familiar with an investigation of the June 5 incident, members of the Los Zetas drug cartel were crossing back into Mexico from the United States when they were spotted by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (USCBP) helicopter along the Rio Grande River near Laredo.

Mexican cartels using new countersurveillance tech against U.S.

The U.S. has for years been flying surveillance drones along the Mexican border. Now Mexico’s drug cartels are as well. / Vocativ

 

Senior drug enforcement officials in Washington and along the U.S. southwest border have spotted new technologies used by Mexican drug cartels to track their trackers in U.S. law.

Holder seeks legal team for children on border

Known as unaccompanied alien children, they are generally from Central America, are escaping poverty, abuse or dangerous gangs back home, and make the harrowing trek through Mexico and across the U.S. border.

The government expects more than 90,000 of the children to be apprehended on the U.S. side of the border this year and more than 140,000 to be caught next year. That doesn’t include the tens of thousands more who avoid capture.

N4T Investigators: Rogue Mexican Army troops crossing the line

This small group has attacked U.S. citizens, and even challenged U.S. federal agents within the U.S. A News 4 Tucson investigation into the dangerous world of rogue soldiers in Mexico’s military.

In January, soldiers from this lonely outpost of the Mexican Army drew their guns on U.S. Border Patrol agents just 50 yards into the United States. Then in March, they opened fire on Javier Jose Rodriguez, a young Tucson man visiting family in Sásabe when he was driving around the town early on a Saturday morning after drinking beers with friends. Rodriguez was shot in the arm and in the side, he spent three weeks at University of Arizona Medical Center.

The United States’ reaction has been tepid, angering people who live and patrol along the Arizona border.