2023 National Post, a division of Postmedia Network Inc. All rights reserved. A Mexican who thought he was Mormon! Sito cackles. So when he was promoted, in 2004, to a plainclothes desk job at a station near San Diego, the first thing he did was attach himself to investigators in the Anti-Smuggling Unit of CBP. Seven of us sit there, sipping Don Julio and recalling the demons of yore. They could reach out and touch anyone on this side. The brothers were the nephews of Ismael (El Mayel) Higuera-Guerrero, the chief of operations for the Arellano-Flix Organization. Mexican authorities claim El Chapo's Sinaloa Cartel was behind the killings after video footage showed them interrogating rival members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (JNGC) days earlier. Terry Glavin: Theres a revolution going on in the Mideast. While sitting and drinking beer at the brothers house, the buyer remarked on the shrine theyd erected to their imprisoned Uncle Mayel, the cartel capo. Reportedly, US officials seized a shipment of narcotics, and Chano sought retribution against the man for failure to pay for the lost goods. So it goes for the best part of three hours. Chris Selley: Harper misquote shows why regime change needed in some Canadian newsrooms, Its not safe at all: Iran harassing families of plane crash victims, sources say, We put Fables ceramic dishes, glassware and flatware to the test, Shania Twain, Ed Sheeran, Blink-182 and Depeche Mode are on sale now. A salt breeze scrubs the air a shade of topaz-blue, and the light that hits the roofs of these seven-figure villas gives the low spark of high-heeled money. Eventually, I heard something about wed played a part, but no one ever reached out and said so, says Vargas. Local media reports that the attorney general of Guanajuato state is investigating the matter, but none of the victims have yet been officially named. Tijuanas economy roared back, and so did its nightlife: People werent so scared of being shot, he says. cartel members rape women and children, extort and brutalize the weak, and leave helpless migrants to die in the desert or suffocate in tractor trailers. On K Street stands the complex where the brothers were hiding. Contreras, the task-force chief, wrote CRIM Squad commendations; he calls them the best federal unit Ive ever worked with. That fall, they won the top state honor for cops who bring trafficking cases: the California Narcotics Officers Award. Better still, you could arrest perps without them even knowing that they were part of a larger sting. The Mexican cartels that rose to meet the demand might be new, but they are undeniably vicious. Face peeling has become a common practice in the Mexican Drug War as an effective scare tactic to rivals and would-be informants. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano all visited Mexico on March 23 for discussions centered on Mexico's endemic drug-related violence. And it is where, after the brothers arrests or violent deaths one of them, Ramon, was shot by a cop; a second, Francisco, was shot by a clown at his 64th-birthday party war broke out between a series of butchers who broke the golden rule: Dont kill civilians, especially rich ones. Those pills are mass-produced by the cartels and their chemists dont care about dose strength. Authorities identified one of the four victims as Rey Jose Poblete Ramos, a man with a lengthy criminal history. Vargas, a hand-to-hand combatant of that war, is taking me on a tour of his biggest busts in San Diego. His name rang a bell; he was connected to Los Palillos, the gang that was shooting up San Diego. At least one of them was a minor, reports infobae. The associate later testified against Vasquez, claiming the cartel assassin took him to an undisclosed location where Vasquez was also keeping a family of three. The assassins who carried out the savagery are believed to have come from the Jalisco New Generation Cartel led by the feared El Mencho. In his confession, Yeyo admitted to heinous acts with deadpan indifference. El Teo after the CRIM Squads work led to the cartel leaders arrest in 2010. CRIM Squad sifted through their intel cross-checks, searched every alias linked to Tigre, and found a car connected to a name. Man jailed for cocaine shipment worth 30m sent to him from Mexican cartel. They were the best and worst years of my life, says Sito. MUERE LA CATRINA DEL CARTEL JALISCO EN ENFRENTAMIENTOayer, en El Aguaje Mich. El Ejr Mex Fue Emboscado por sicarios del CJNG ya que se encontraba el M2 con La Catrina y 10 sicarios, el M2 huy abrindose paso sobre sus sicarios atropell a 1 de ellos y dej tirada a La Catrina pic.twitter.com/uM7gCYWSXz. Breitbart News obtained access to the criminal investigation into Poblete Ramos 2011 arrest on the charge of kidnapping. Another says Brito has has profited from construction projects that were awarded to him. One of the thousands of victims of cartel violence in Tijuana. Here, the American dream goes big a class of Mexican strivers who came, saw, and conquered for the right to be soccer moms. (AP Photo/Guillermo Arias), Police and army soldiers inspect the site where a dead man hangs from his wrists handcuffed to a fence in a night club parking lot in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, late Monday, Aug. 31, 2009. Federal agents relayed Lopezs acid bath method: The procedure to dispose of the corpses was to fill a drum with 200 liters of water and then put two sacks of caustic soda, put it over a fire and when it started to boil, put in the bodies. The other feds moved on to fresher cases. He wasnt just friending cops and fishing for cases. He was on his way over to burn down the house of a rival gangster. He cant see the smoke but he can smell it, he says. Teo told me this Teo told me that. Kettlebells here, chinning bar there and every fucking set was a contest.. There were Border Patrol detectives whod used TECS to look out for returned felons wife beaters, child molesters, that kind of thing, says Vargas. Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting. Debriefing every collar to get the next guy up the ladder, then doing surveils for five days straight., Yeah, the hours were just stupid but he worked em same as we did: four in the morning till whenever, says Guru, the workout fanatic and know-it-all gun nut who could fieldstrip an M-4 blindfolded. Hed go on to make CRIM Squad in his image: six guys whod show up, no questions asked, to tail a narcos car at 3 a.m. He expected to track him down in weeks, if not days, because that was how it went with his bloodhound crew. We encountered an issue signing you up. But in the meantime, he had to earn a living in San Diego; reports cropped up about people being plucked off the streets by men in a panel van. Through those durable holes pour billions of dollars a year in fentanyl, methamphetamine, and the tainted pharmaceuticals that kill U.S. teens on campuses every day. According to the army, two suspected hit men were killed during a shootout with soldiers along the highway to Reynosa after refusing to stop at a military checkpoint. But Furcio went to ground after the botched hit, and the trail promptly stopped cold. They all spoke fluent Spanish and could pass for sicarios minus the gold Breitlings and Jesus pieces. (AP Photo/Antonio Sierra), The body of a man lies dead on the street covered with a plastic sheet after being shot by unknown gunmen on the outskirts of Tijuana, Mexico, Friday, July 9, 2010. (AP Photo/Guillermo Arias), A man looks at a body of an unidentified man who found dead with his arms and legs tied together by the side of a dirt road in Zapopan, on the outskirts of Guadalajara, Mexico Monday, May 24, 2010. Beat cops, staties, the Mexican CIA: He built the kind of alliances you could win a war with though not, alas, the War on Drugs. Back at the precinct, Vargas walked in and wasted no time on the niceties. Another was Pariente, an older gangster who ran guns to the AFO. They were narco-juniors working their way up the line: moving loads across for AFO, Vargas says. Its an article of faith among the men and women who patrol our southwest flank: What happens in Mexico doesnt stay there. Till one drunken night in 2003, when a Palillo punched an AFO in-law. Above all, he learned that the great detectives arent solar-driven, i.e., arriving at nine and leaving at five. Of the 14-year-old sicario who beheaded another kid, then casually confessed to the cops, Vargas winces, saying, I talked to his mother. By early 2009, Vargas was getting calls from the other top outfits in town. When the congregation had finished scattering, the bride was dead and the groom was nowhere to be seen. It was a mic-drop moment, Vargas says. (AP Photo), The bodies of two unidentified men hang from a road bridge in Cuernavaca, some 90 kms, 60 miles, south of Mexico City, early Friday, April 9, 2010. Shocking video shows Mexican cartel members lined up on their knees and taunted, moments before they are executed by a rival gang. Second: They were the lucky ones. El Pozolero being arrested; he dissolved bodies in vats of acid for El Teo and the cartels. We dont do like the FBI, where theyre up on a wire forever, says Sito. Vargas stayed on to supervise his section before drifting off to intelligence operations. Once across the border, its a straight shot up I-5 to the distribution hub of Los Angeles. Afterward, the alleged Sinaloa cartel leader removed Hernandezs face. Reportedly, he then affixed the victim's face to a soccer ball to add to his warning intended for the Juarez cartel. ________________________________________ The Palillos, a maniacal squad of sicarios who had turned against the AFO, were gunning for yet a third crew of killers in San Diego. (AP Photo), The bodies of two dead men are seen on a street after gunmen shot at them in Monterrey, June 16, 2010. The Mexican Drug War - a sustained, violent conflict between powerful drug cartels and the Mexican government - has claimed an estimated 164,000 lives over the past The grim scene, shocking even by recent standards in the crime-battered country, played out at Our Lady of San Juan church in Celaya in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, the Sun and Daily Mail report. Cinder blocks crashed through the windshields of their trucks as they prowled the frontage roads looking for smugglers. Three generations of one family were killed in what is described as a "cartel-like execution" at a California residence known to police for drug-related activity. He is accused of many killings in Ciudad Jurez, including the notorious massacre of 18 patients of the rehabilitation center "El Aliviane". They arrested 21 suspects and seized 14 guns that day, and confiscated 60 keys of coke and methamphetamine over the course of the operation. Often, theyre in boxer briefs sweating it out, because the car and its A/C are off all day and theres nothing but window tinting to fade the San Diego sun. Local press reported the victims as being in their 20s and 30s. But Vargas brought more than a grinders grit: He was also, by nature, a connector. We were soldiers bagging soldiers. It was lonely, joyless labor, as Vargas learned. I loved bagging that guy: He was evil.. Vargas, an undersized nose guard in college, still looks like he squats 400 in his fifties. They Hunt Cartel Killers. In hindsight, the certificate felt a tad premature for a crew that hadnt faced its greatest test. Rather than chase migrants, they chased menaces instead, and caught 300 felons in five years. Duncan was assigned to the Group One Task Force, a legendary squad of state and federal agents who broke the AFO after 20 years. They called it walling off: bringing pretext charges while the long-term operation carried on, says Duncan. The PEPOS, or state police, had a file on him that they hadnt bothered to share with Group One. Big Love in Spanish Grande Amor! CRIM Squad revoked Chans B-1 visa and pushed him through the gate at Whiskey Two. Another was abducted. Inside the legendary crew of federal agents who caught them. Which Animated Disney Movie Should Get A Horror Adaptation Next? Those are the ones we should be hunting.. It remains unclear if Poblete Ramos worked with a particular cartel. It was released as a warning on social media by Los Tlacos, who claimed they were cleaning up the city after the other mob robbed and killed innocent civilians. Please try again. Teo dumped them in the street with their fingers off, and bruises all over their body, says Seven. He crumpled, agreeing to spill his guts. At the height of Mexicos drug war, cartel assassins roamed our streets. One of Vargas neighbors was targeted by the Palillos. I brought in CRIM Squad cause those guys were regulators. (AP Photo/Antonio Sierra), Covered by a shirt, the body of Claudia Mora sits on a chair where she was murdered at a race circuit on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez, northern Mexico, late Sunday, April 11, 2010. Picture taken June 16, 2010. The city of Cuernavaca has become a battle ground for control of the Beltran Levya drug cartel, whose leader was killed in a battle with marines in that city in last December. (AP Photo/Carlos Jasso), Police examine the body of a police officer that was slain after unknown gunmen opened fire in the city of Puebla, Mexico Tuesday Oct. 27, 2009. Police say they found Dial it, said Nikki. According to police at the scene gunmen shot against four men outside a house, killing three and injuring one. Dave Contreras, a boss with the Gang Suppression Team of the San Diego PD, asked for CRIM Squads help with Operation Stampede, a massive, task-force takedown of the Southeast Locos. Poblete was part of a three-man crew for Los Zetas who grabbed a worker from Mexicos state-owned oil company Pemex as the man was coming leaving a bar in Coatzacoalcos. Trending Then, one of their members stabbed a Border Patrol agent; Vargas and his men were summoned. First: The brothers got decades in prison. For six weeks, they surveilled gang addresses and caught them out with one thing or another. The response among U.S. cops was rather more restrained. It took months, but CRIM Squad got a fix on its target by way of a gangland slaying. A Mexican navy official said that alleged drug cartel chief Arturo Beltran Leyva and three members of his cartel were slain Wednesday inside the apartment during a shootout with sailors. The 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time We not only got his phone but his total cooperation. By now, half of Mexico was chasing Teo: Hed turned Tijuana and most of the Baja peninsula into an abattoir. Read More Related It climbs the khaki foothills of the Otay Mountains as it takes the eastbound pass out of San Diego. Meanwhile, under the border, dozens of narco tunnels link warehouse districts on either side of the fence. We know who you are and what youve done: You called in a hit on a TJ cop. The AFO retaliated by kidnapping and torturing a Palillo leader. Related Rubn Salazar Vsquez, de 51 aos, fue declarado culpable y pasar ms de 15 aos en la crcel por distribuir cocana en Texas, y formar parte del Crtel del Golfo de Mxico. (AP Photo/Carlos Jasso), A soldier stands behind a body identified by navy officials as that of alleged drug cartel chief Arturo Beltran Leyva in Cuernavaca, Mexico, Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2009. Foothills of the thousands of victims of cartel violence in Tijuana he wasnt just friending and. Still, you could arrest perps without them even knowing that they hadnt bothered to share with one. 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