Shootout Closes US Mexico Border Crossing Near San Diego

U.S. authorities have closed the San Ysidro Port of Entry in San Diego, on the border with Mexico, after a shootout earlier today. San Ysidro is the nation’s busiest border crossing with roughly 40,000 vehicles cross there daily from Mexico.

Three vans loaded with suspected illegal immigrants tried to speed through the crossing Tuesday afternoon, drawing gunfire from at least two U.S. agents, authorities said.

“The port is closed and will remain closed for several hours,” U.S. Customs and Border Patrol spokeswoman Angelica Decima said after the incident at the congested San Ysidro crossing between the Mexican city of Tijuana and San Diego.

The suspected smugglers shot across busy lines of traffic at U.S. agents when they tried to stop three vans packed with about 70 illegal immigrants from crossing into the United States, the officials said.

The agents returned fire, and three people in the vans and a motorist were wounded, said Lauren Mack, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Mexico’s violent drug gangs are increasingly moving into the lucrative people-smuggling business, but tight U.S. border security is forcing them to take bigger risks to get narcotics and illegal immigrants into the United States.

Tuesday’s brazen attempt was unprecedented at the heavily guarded crossing where helicopters circle overhead and armed agents with dogs keep watch at a series of staggered checkpoints.

All the illegal immigrants were arrested and taken into custody and the crossing, a major smuggling corridor for narcotics and illegal immigrants, was shut while police carried out the investigation.

via Read Article.

From Sign On San Diego – Union Tribune

A preliminary investigation indicated there was no return fire, said San Diego police homicide Lt. Kevin Rooney.

[...]

Rooney said the incident began about 3:30 p.m. when three full-sized vans, two with California plates and one with Mexico plates, were in line at the port to cross into the U.S.

The lead van was stopped and the driver was speaking to a U.S. agent at a booth when the agent stepped inside the booth and the driver sped off in an attempt to run the border, Rooney said. Drivers of the two vans that were next in line also tried to run the border.

The lead van became trapped in traffic and the driver tried to head to the west exit. The drivers of the other two vans put their vehicles in reverse and tried to head to the east exit.

Two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and one U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent then opened fire, Rooney said. He said he did not yet know how many shots were fired.

Rooney said that two people were shot and suffered non-life-threatening injuries; one was injured in a crash.

Read Full Article

17 Charged With Brutal Kidnappings, Slayings In San Diego

Authorities announced charges Thursday against a Mexican gang that took Tijuana-style violence to the upscale suburbs of San Diego County, kidnapping, torturing and killing well-to-do residents, even after some families paid large ransoms.

The gang, a rogue cell of the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix drug cartel, moved across the border in 2002 and posed as U.S. law enforcement, donning FBI and police uniforms and caps while snatching victims outside homes and public places, said San Diego County prosecutors.

Nine victims were killed from 2004 to 2007, and the bodies of two of them were dissolved in chemicals at a rented house in San Diego. Gang members were also charged with trying to murder a Chula Vista police officer in September 2005, peppering his car with high-caliber bullets before fleeing in a car.

The gang targeted people it suspected of having links to organized crime, although some victims had no known ties, authorities said. Prosecutors charged 17 defendants, including gang leader Jorge Rojas Lopez, who is serving a life sentence for one of the abductions. Eight of those charged Thursday remain at large. The others are in custody on previous charges.

“This rogue group of individuals is responsible for a string of brutal murders and kidnappings that demonstrate the ugly reality of cross-border violence,” said San Diego County Dist. Atty. Bonnie M. Dumanis.

Spillover crime from Tijuana’s gang wars is relatively small, given the scale and brutality of the violence there. Nevertheless, the gang’s migration to the San Diego area reinforces concern that border vigilance is no match for Mexican organized crime.

via 17 charged in string of brutal kidnappings and slayings in San Diego suburbs — latimes.com.

Border Patrol Agent Shot, Killed Near San Diego

A U.S. Border Patrol Agent was shot and killed in the Campo area Thursday night while investigating a group of people presumed to have crossed into the country illegally.

An agent on patrol spotted the group sometime between 8:30 and 9 p.m. in the remote and rocky terrain south of state Route 94 off Shockey Truck Trail not far from the border, Agent Daryl Reed said.

He called for other agents who split up and began to trail the group, Reed said.

At about 9:15 p.m. agents, who had lost radio contact with their fellow agent, heard multiple gunshots and rushed to the area where they found the agent had been shot, Reed said. He was pronounced dead at the scene. San Diego police said the agent was shot in the head.

Several agencies responded to the shooting including the Sheriff’s Department, the FBI and Cal Fire. A large-scale search by land and air was conducted but no one in the group was found, Reed said.

Mexican authorities also were notified and conducted a search on their side of the border, Reed said. It’s unknown if the group was smuggling humans or drugs or if the people fled back into Mexico.

A FBI press conference is scheduled for later today.

Read Full ARticle & Updates

Drug Gangs Threaten Tijuana Cops On Radio, Then Kill Them

The situation along the border continues to deteriorate.

Mexican drug gangs are breaking into Tijuana police radio frequencies to issue chilling death threats to cops which they then carry out, demoralizing security forces in a worsening drug war.

“You’re next, bastard … We’re going to get you,” an unidentified drug gang member said over the police radio in the city of Tijuana after naming a policeman.

The man also threatened a second cop by name and played foot-stomping “narcocorrido” music, popular with drug cartels, over the airwaves.

“No one can help them,” an officer named Jorge said of his threatened colleagues as he heard the threats in his patrol car.

Sure enough, two hours later the dead bodies of the two named policemen were found dumped on the edge of the city, their hands tied and bullet wounds in their heads.

Cartels killed some 530 police in Mexico last year, some of them corrupt officers who were working for rival gangs. Others were killed in shoot-outs or murdered for working against the gangs or refusing to turn a blind eye to drug shipments.

Violence has hit shocking levels in Tijuana, over the border from San Diego, since President Felipe Calderon launched an army crackdown on traffickers in late 2006, stirring up new wars between rival cartels over smuggling routes.

The drug war is scaring tourists and investors away from northern Mexico, forcing some businesses to shutter just as the country heads into recession this year.

Badly-paid Tijuana municipal police, often accused of collaborating with rival wings of the local Arellano Felix cartel, are badly demoralized, senior officers say.

“These death threats are part of the psychological warfare that organized crime is using against officers,” said Tijuana police chief Gustavo Huerta.

“Before, the gangs began infiltrating the radio after a police execution, which was bad enough, but now they are doing it beforehand and the force feels terrorized,” he said.

Source

Explosives Found – Apartment Complex Evacuated – San Diego

A Spring Valley apartment complex was evacuated Saturday night after a cache of military-style explosives was found nearby.

A man is jailed, but investigators are not saying much about the explosives found in a storage building that apparently prompted the arrest.

The ordnance was discovered in a concrete block storage room in the 9700 block of Dale Avenue around 7 p.m. Saturday, San Diego County sheriff’s Lt. Larry Nesbit said.

A nearby apartment complex was evacuated for nearly three hours while members of the sheriff’s Bomb-Arson Unit cleared the explosives, Nesbit said.

The lieutenant was unable to provide details about what kind ofexplosives were in the storage room, or how the man in custody was connected to them.

Source