Most Americans have no idea that the most dangerous place on earth is just across the United States border. The city of Juarez, Mexico is nestled right next to El Paso, Texas and it is the murder capital of the world. So far this year, more than 2,000 people have been murdered in the city. The Mexican government has been trying to get a handle on the situation, but corruption is so rampant on all levels of government in Mexico and the drug cartels are so incredibly powerful that it just seems to be a losing battle. But it is not just Juarez that is a crisis point. The truth is that vast stretches of the U.S. border with Mexico have become war zones and yet the mainstream media in the United States is strangely silent about the whole thing.
The truth is that it is far safer to go to Iraq or Afghanistan today than it is to go to cities like Juarez. Freelance journalist Jeff Antebi recently described to CNN what he experienced when he went to Juarez....
"When I arrived in Juarez," says Antebi, "within an hour, over the police scanners, a body has been found. And maybe 30 minutes later, another body.
"And then another body. And by the end of the day, it was 10. The next day, 10. The next day, 10."
The Mexican government says that as many as 28,000 people have been slaughtered by the drug cartels since 2007. The drug cartels are constantly at war with each other and with Mexican authorities. In the video posted below, one reporter went to Juarez to try to get a sense of what is happening to that city....
It would be really hard to understate what a disaster zone Juarez has become. In an interview with Democracy Now, author Charles Bowden described how a once very prosperous city has become a literal hellhole as a result of all this violence....
So what you have is about 10,000 federal troops and federal police agents all marauding. You have a city where no one goes out at night; where small businesses all pay extortion; where 20,000 cars were officially stolen last year; where 2,600-plus people were officially murdered last year; where nobody keeps track of the people who have been kidnapped and never come back; where nobody counts the people buried in secret burying grounds, and they, in an unseemly way, claw out of the earth from time to time. You’ve got a disaster. And you have a million people, too poor to leave, imprisoned in it.
It doesn't matter if you are an American either. The drug cartels will gun you down and gut you like a fish in a heartbeat. For example, NPR recently described one horrific incident in the Juarez Valley that involved American citizens....
A couple of weeks ago, gunmen in the Juarez Valley killed the Mexican relative of a Fort Hancock high school student. When the student's family in Fort Hancock heard about it, they crossed the border at 10 a.m. to see the body, and took the student with them.
"By 10:30, they had stabbed the relatives that went with him, which included his grandparents, with an ice pick," says school superintendent Jose Franco. "My understanding is that the gentleman is like 90 years old, and they poked his eyes out with an ice pick. I believe those people are still in intensive care here in a hospital in the U.S."
Are you starting to get an idea of just how brutal these drug cartels actually are? They are not playing games.
The horrific drug war raging on the U.S. border has created a huge demand for hitmen and acid baths. In January, authorities arrested Santiago Meza Lopez. Known as "the soupmaker", the 45 year old man has confessed that he made about 300 bodies disappear by dissolving them in acid baths.
So why is all of this violence happening?
Well, it is all for control over the sale of drugs to Americans.
The United States is the biggest market for drugs in the world, and there is a ton of money at stake.
The drug cartels will go to great lengths to get their goods into the United States. This point was illustrated recently when U.S. officials raided a southern California warehouse and discovered a lighted, ventilated passageway 4 feet high and 1,800 feet long crossing into Mexico. The tunnel was approximately six football fields in length. During that operation, authorities seized about 25 tons of marijuana.
But this tunnel is nothing new. The truth is that approximately 75 tunnels along the border with Mexico have been discovered by authorities in the last four years alone.
Unfortunately, most Mexicans don't even need a tunnel. Security on the U.S. border with Mexico is a complete and total joke, and illegal aliens come over almost at will.
According to some estimates, there are as many as 30 million illegal aliens in the United States today. Nobody has any idea how many of them are gang members or are working directly for the drug cartels.
But one thing is for certain - the gang problem in the United States is rapidly getting worse. Once young illegal aliens arrive in our cities, they quickly find that their employment options are extremely limited. Large numbers of them end up getting sucked into Spanish-speaking gangs.
U.S. authorities say that there are now over 1 million members of criminal gangs operating inside the United States. According to federal statistics, these 1 million gang members are responsible for up to 80% of the violent crimes committed in the U.S. each year.
Not all of this gang violence is caused by illegal aliens, but a growing percentage of it is. Spanish-speaking gangs are rapidly becoming the dominant gangs in cities all over the United States.
But it is not just gang violence that is the problem. The reality is that the Mexican drug cartels are now openly conducting organized military operations inside the United States. Federal border officials say that Mexican drug cartels have not only set up shop on U.S. soil, but they are actually maintaining lookout bases in strategic locations in the hills of southern Arizona.
From those "forward bases", the armed drug cartel scouts monitor every move that U.S. border agents make. In fact, it has been reported that drivers regularly bring these drug cartel scouts food, water, batteries for their radios and everything else that they need to stay in the wilderness for long periods of time.
Yes, this is really happening.
In fact, there is one stretch of Arizona that the U.S. federal government has conceded control of to the drug cartels. It is a drug smuggling corridor that extends from the Mexican border all the way up to Phoenix, Arizona.
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu made national headlines when he told the media what is really going on down there. The following are just a few quotes from what Babeu told the press....
-"Drug cartels control this area."
-"Local law enforcement cannot handle and stop this on our own."
-"We are outgunned, we are outmanned and we don't have the resources here locally for us to fight this."
The video news report posted below features Babeu and discusses how the U.S. government has actually made some parts of Arizona off limits to U.S. citizens because of the threat of violence from Mexican drug smugglers....
Yes, things have really gotten that bizarre. One border agent who wished to remain anonymous told Fox News the following earlier this year....
"To say that this area is out of control is an understatement."
A different federal agent put it this way in an email to Fox News....
"Every night we’re getting beaten like a pinata at a birthday party by drug, alien smugglers."
Things have gotten very, very serious along the border and both the Bush and the Obama administrations have refused to do anything to fix the problem. Today, Arizona police are being openly told that if they try to interfere with all of this drug traffic they will be "taken out" by drug cartel snipers.
Is that how we want our police officers to live?
This is a national disgrace.
The U.S. federal government refuses to secure our border, and drug violence is spilling over onto our soil and into our cities.
For over 50 years, the U.S. military has completely and totally secured the border between South Korea and North Korea. We have spent millions upon millions of dollars to do this and during that time there has not been a single unauthorized entry into South Korea across that border.
But the U.S. government says that it cannot secure our border with Mexico. In fact, there are many in the Obama administration that believe that it would be "a violation of human rights" to put up a fence or to implement extra security on the border.
Meanwhile, drug traffic and drug violence continues to come across the border into the United States. Already, many U.S. border towns are turning into nightmares. It would be very difficult to understate the threat that we are facing.
So what do you think about the Mexican drug war and the crisis on the border? Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion....
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