Gunfight at the AZ corral

Gunfights in the area between police and lawbreakers are increasing in frequency, cops there agree. It’s largely involving criminals from south of the border. The Sinaloa Cartel and Zeta Cartel are fed up with their drug shipments being confiscated by gringo cops, and some informants say cartel leaders have told the drug mules that if they allow the dope to be snagged by Yank LEOs, they can expect reprisals upon their loved ones and death for themselves. This has upped the likelihood of homicidal armed resistance by drug runners stopped by our police. Cartel-sponsored dopers are also believed to have been behind the recent murder of an Arizona rancher who tipped the local law to one of their drug caches...

In Huachuca City, Arizona – 16 miles from the border – Chief Dennis Grey, Lt. Jennifer Fuller, and Officer R. Thomas Allen showed me their current inventory of confiscated “human traffic” vehicles, enough to stock a good-sized used car and truck lot. They told me that the self-styled “coyotes” who smuggle their human cargo across the border charge from $1,000 for ordinary Mexican citizens up to $35,000 for members of the Russian Mafia, and the coyotes tend to carry AK47s to keep their “cargo” in line, but are fully prepared to use their weaponry against US police. They’ve stopped Chevy Suburbans and Ford Excursions with 15 or more people packed on board, compact sedans with three people stuffed in the trunk trying to breathe, and sixty illegal immigrants packed like sardines in a relatively small Freightliner. A 15-passenger van carries twice that human payload when smuggling people across the border. It’s about the money.

The coyotes are bringing in people far more dangerous than undocumented fruit-pickers trying to feed their families...

NO TIME FOR SNORIN’ IN THE SONORAN