Monday, August 27, 2018

Sinaloa cartel well embedded in Alabama. Drug cartels established in 7 Alabama cities. Sinaloa influence in US is even greater than it is in Mexico per Alabama DEA official-AL.com

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7/23/2018, Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel leaving deadly mark on Alabama, AL.com, Carol Robinson

A 13-year-old Huntsville girl is beheaded – after her cartel-connected grandmother was stabbed and left to die before her eyes.

In Birmingham the same week news of that horrific death was detailed by authorities, two cartel-connected meth dealers are sentenced to long federal prison terms.

Earlier in the year, a cartel-connected man claimed he had killed three dozen people, and planned a hit on an Alabama cop.

The connection? The Sinaloa Cartel, a Mexican drug gang with one of the largest U.S. footprints – including just about everything east of the Mississippi — of all the cartels. Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Loera – better known as El Chapo – led the Sinaloa cartel until his 2014 capture.

But there is nothing, police insist, to panic about. The cartel has been in America for decades, smuggling meth and cocaine and other drugs.The Sinaloa cartel has been around forever. It is probably the most pervasive and extensive-reaching cartel in the U.S.,” said Bret Hamilton, assistant special agent in charge for Alabama’s Drug Enforcement Administration. “They control about one-fourth of the Mexican region, but when it comes to the U.S., their reach is huge.”

“Typically, their MO (method of operation) is to embed themselves in Mexican national communities, typically the immigrant community working on peach farms, chick plants, and other farm areas,” Hamilton said. “They’re basically hiding in plain sight.”

“They try to maintain a low profile,’‘ he said. “They’re not going to conduct any type of violence unless they’ve been double-crossed. If they’ve been double-crossed by one of their distributors or someone who has purchased dope from them, they’re going to take care of business. And, they’re going to make a statement when they do it.”

Recent Alabama cases

Mariah Lopez, a 13-year-old special needs middle school student was killed [beheaded] in north Alabama in June after she witnessed her grandmother assaulted with a knife and left to die on the ground in a cemetery. The grandmother, Oralia Mendoza, was associated with the Sinaloa Cartel, a drug-trafficking organization, according to Madison County sheriff’s investigators.

Just days before [grandmother] Mendoza and [granddaughter] Mariah were killed, Mendoza and three others went to pick up a batch of methamphetamine, Investigator testified that one of her drug cohorts became suspicious, the situation turned deadly. Their bodies weren’t found until later in the month.

Israel Palomino, 34, and Yoni Aguilar, 26, are charged with two counts each of capital murder in the slayings of Mendoza and Lopez. [Authorities say Aguilar was an illegal alien and Palomino was in the US on a green card.].

The same week that the grisly details of those killings were made public, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District also announced that two Birmingham brothers – Diontez Jamel Moore, 31, and Daeshuan Nathaniel Moore, 28, were sentenced to prison on meth distribution charges.

The investigation began when U.S. Postal inspectors and Alabama State Bureau of Investigation agents began investigating mailings of dozens of packages from Phoenix, Arizona to the Birmingham area in December 2016, according to court documents. The investigation began after postal inspectors in Arizona contacted inspectors in Alabama about a package they had intercepted and found to contain more than three pounds of methamphetamine. The package was addressed to a Birmingham-area home.

Agents identified the person who mailed that package as Deron Lee Green, a former Alabama resident with family in Birmingham who was living in Phoenix. Green pleaded guilty to the trafficking conspiracy in October. Postal Inspector John Bailey testified during Diontez Moore’s sentencing hearing that Green was responsible for shipping the methamphetamine to Alabama and for the “day-to-day contact with the cartel in Arizona.” Green told investigators that the Mexican-based Sinoloa Cartel supplied the methamphetamine, Bailey testified.

Late last year, an AL.com story featuring a drug task force operating in Greene, Marengo and Sumter counties – collectively, Alabama’s 17th Judicial Circuit – talked about how the group had taken millions of dollars worth of cash, drugs and other property off the street in recent years, much of which they say they have seized from Mexican cartels like the Sinaloa and Los Zetas.

And, earlier this year, a man who confessed to Alabama authorities that he killed about three dozen people in multiple states, confessed to a national news site that he planned to kill a north Alabama investigator. Jose Manuel Martinez in 2014 pleaded guilty to killing Jose Ruiz in rural Lawrence County, Alabama. But before that, he confessed to killing about three dozen people while working for the Mexican drug cartel. His confessions, which came during a 2013 interrogation with Lawrence County Chief Investigator Tim McWhorter, thrust Martinez into national headlines.

The thought of Mexican drug cartels in Alabama cities and communities draws shock and fear among some, but Hamilton said it’s nothing new. “This is one of those times that I’m surprised everybody else is so surprised,’‘ he said, “but I do this every day.”

Cartels presence grew after 5 Shelby County murders in 2008... 

In 2008, five men were shocked, beaten, bound and their throats slashed in a Shelby County apartment. The slayings at the Cahaba Lakes complex were linked to a feud over money between Birmingham and Atlanta factions of Mexican drug cartels. Authorities said they don’t want to publicly name the cartel involved in that brutal case, but said it was not the Sinaloa cartel.

Even 10 years ago [2008]– at the time of the Cahaba Lakes killings, the National Drug Intelligence Center listed [7] Alabama cities reporting the presence of Mexican drug organizations as Albertville, Birmingham, Decatur, Dothan, Huntsville, Mobile and Montgomery. The major Mexican drug cartels are the Sinaloa cartel, the Gulf cartel, Los Zetas, Los Cabaileros Templarios, Cartel Jalisco, Nueva Generacion, the Juarez cartel, as well as several others.

Over time, federal officials say, they’ve received intelligence about the presence of the Gulf Cartel and Juarez Cartel and Los Zetas, as well as the Sinaloa cartel, in Alabama.

Hamilton said Sinaloa is one of the oldest, and most historically recognized. It’s birthplace is in Sinaloa which is in the pacific Mexican region. “They control a huge portion of Mexico,” he said. “Their influence in the U.S. is even greater.”

The Sinaloa cartel has been especially prevalent since the 1980s. “They started off mainly trafficking in marijuana in the 70s and early 80s but obviously since then they’ve moved into everything from methamphetamine, heroin and fentanyl,” Hamilton said. “They are also involved in human trafficking, but meth is their biggest thing.”

Hamilton said drug agents typically gauge the level of cartel activity in Alabama – as well as elsewhere – by the availability of drugs and the price of drugs. “The greater availability, the lower the price. For example, five years ago an ounce of methamphetamine cost $1,000,” he said. “Today if we’re paying more than $450 an ounce, we’re getting ripped off. It’s less than half of what it was just five years ago.”

Though the Mexican drug cartels are notoriously violent, most of the overt violence takes place south of the border, unless somebody north of the border crosses them. That, Hamilton said, is for obvious reasons. “They know they’re not going to be able to pay off law enforcement officials here [in the US] like they can south of the border,” he said.

More drugs crossing the border

Hamilton said there has been a significant increase in the amount of drugs trafficked across the southern border.

“In states like Alabama, it is not uncommon to see transshipment sales meaning they’ll have a group of individuals responsible for bringing in the drugs, and I mean large quantities – anywhere from 100 pounds of meth to 50 kilos of cocaine,” he said. “From that transshipment area, they divvy it out to different places like North Carolina or Chicago.”

He said one of the last cases he worked as a street agent was a transshipment case. The cartel was bring multiple kilos of cocaine into Clanton, and then it would be shipped elsewhere. “Alabama is no different than anywhere else,” he said….

Asked if Alabamans should fear the presence of the Sinaloa cartel, or any others, Hamilton said this: “Afraid? No. Concerned or pissed off? Yes. These are foreign nationals committing crimes throughout the U.S. that our affecting our kids with poison,” he said. “It’s not going to change either. Unless we do something drastically different than what we’re doing now, it’s going to stay the same.” Map above from AL.com

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Added: US political class forces US citizens to participate in their own genocide:

In 2011 Obama sued Alabama to prevent it from trying to save its own citizens. Federal gov. won’t enforce existing laws and forbid Alabama from improving its immigration laws. Previously Obama sued the state of Arizona for its attempt to save its citizens by improving immigration laws.

8/2/2011, “DOJ sues Ala. over immigration law, Politico, Reid Epstein

“Arguing that the federal government sets immigration policy, the Justice Department has filed a lawsuit to stop Alabama’s toughest-in-the-nation law before it takes effect on Sept. 1 [2011].

The lawsuit, filed Monday in federal court in Birmingham, is the third major legal challenge to the Alabama law, which would, among other things, make it illegal for undocumented immigrants to apply for work, require law enforcement to determine the legal status of people they arrest, transport or “conceal” undocumented people in the state, and force public schools to determine the citizenship status of their students….

Attorney General Eric Holder, in a statement released by the Justice Department, said states cannot set their own immigration laws.

“Today’s action makes clear that setting immigration policy and enforcing immigration laws is a national responsibility that cannot be addressed through a patchwork of state immigration laws,” Holder said. “The department is committed to evaluating each state immigration law and making decisions based on the facts and the law. To the extent we find state laws that interfere with the federal government’s enforcement of immigration law, we are prepared to bring suit, as we did in Arizona.”

The Obama administration suit is the second major legal challenge to the Alabama law, which Gov. Robert Bentley signed in June. The American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center and other groups filed a joint suit last month arguing, like the federal government, that the Alabama law unlawfully claims federal immigration authority for the state.

A federal judge in Birmingham is scheduled to hear arguments on that suit Aug. 24, according to the Associated Press.

The civil rights groups also said the state law violates the Fourth Amendment’s search-and-seizure provisions, deters immigrants from enrolling their children in public schools and unlawfully forbids legal immigrants from attending state colleges and universities.

And also Monday, a coalition of Alabama religious leaders filed another separate suit challenging the law, saying it “”makes it a crime to follow God’s command to be Good Samaritans.”

That suit claims the state’s “bishops have reason to fear that administering of religious sacraments, which are central to the Christian faith, to known undocumented persons may be criminalized under this law,” according to the Birmingham News.

The Alabama law’s chief legislative sponsor told the AP the Justice Department lawsuit is an infringement on Alabama’s sovereignty.

“The Obama administration and the federal bureaucrats have turned a blind eye toward the immigration issue and refuse to fulfill their constitutional duty to enforce laws already on the books,” said state House Majority Leader Micky Hammon, a Decatur Republican. “Now, they want to block our efforts to secure Alabama’s borders and prevent our jobs and taxpayer dollars from disappearing into the abyss that illegal immigration causes.”

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Added: 2011, Mexico and 15 other countries say right on, Obama, join his lawsuit against Alabama citizens, seek to ensure “fairness” for foreign nationals. Mexico has much stronger immigration laws than the US. To Calderon: Mexico is a country, not a race. Nationality isn’t race.

8/5/2011, Mexico and 15 Other Countries Suing Alabama Over Immigration Law,” Katie Pavlich, Townhall

“Mexico and 15 other countries want to make sure their citizens are treated “fairly” in the state of Alabama and have filed briefs with the Obama Justice Department law suit against the state for their new immigration law. The new law allows police officers to inquire about immigration status after an individual has committed a crime and also requires schools to inquire about legal status before children are able to enroll.

“Mexico has an interest in protecting its citizens and ensuring that their ethnicity is not used as basis for state-sanctioned acts of bias and discrimination,” the brief said, according to the paper. 

A 16-nation brief is different from a lawsuit and in many respects is symbolic without much legal weight.
 
Argentina, Boliva, Brazil and Colombia among other Central and South American countries are also named on the brief.


If Mexico, and the 15 other countries suing Alabama were really concerned about their citizens being treated fairly, government officials in those countries would take steps to improve their citizens’ situation at home so they don’t have to come to America for economic opportunity. Mexico specifically has vast natural resources including oil, gas and gold, yet the government has not created the economic environment for people to create jobs and prosper in the country.

Also, hypocrisy comes into play here considering Mexico has much harsher immigration laws than the United States. The Washington Times pointed this out back when Arizona’s SB 1070 was signed in 2010.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon denounced as “racial discrimination” an Arizona law giving state and local police the authority to arrest suspected illegal immigrants and vowed to use all means at his disposal to defend Mexican nationals against a law he called a “violation of human rights.”

But the legislation, signed April 23 by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, is similar to Reglamento de la Ley General de Poblacion — the General Law on Population enacted in Mexico in April 2000, which mandates that federal, local and municipal police cooperate with federal immigration authorities in that country in the arrests of illegal immigrants.

Under the Mexican law, illegal immigration is a felony, punishable by up to two years in prison. Immigrants who are deported and attempt to re-enter can be imprisoned for 10 years. Visa violators can be sentenced to six-year terms. Mexicans who help illegal immigrants are considered criminals.


The law also says Mexico can deport foreigners who are deemed detrimental to “economic or national interests,” violate Mexican law, are not “physically or mentally healthy” or lack the “necessary funds for their sustenance” and for their dependents.


“This sounds like the kind of law that a rational nation would have to protect itself against illegal immigrants — that would stop and punish the very people who are violating the law,” said Rep. Steve King of Iowa, ranking Republican on the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, citizenship, refugees, border security and international law.


“Why would Mr. Calderon have any objections to an Arizona law that is less draconian than his own, one he has pledged to enforce?” Mr. King said.


Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on terrorism and homeland security, described Mr. Calderon’s comments as “hypocritical to say the least.” 




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