THE BORDER REPORT

Here’s a story I did on the situation in Tubutama for the Nogales International.

By now, the entire border world, from Nogales, Sonora, cops to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to the radio stations to me, now know that a convoy of some 30 vehicles pulled into Nogales late Wednesday night. Everybody seems to know this except the Calderón and Padrés Administrations, apparently.

According to a source at the FBI, nobody’s sure whether the convoy is there to back the Sinaloans who got stomped trying to take out Gilo in the hills or whether these are Gilo’s reinforcements.

Read the full post

THE BORDER REPORT

Justice Department officials in Arizona are now saying the tally of the dead in northern Sonora is 21, and possibly included in those, Raúl “El Negro” Sabori Cisneros.

Meanwhile, a source within CISEN, the Mexican intelligence agency, and a cartel familymember I talk to in Tucson are both reporting at least another ten dead in Altar, Sonora. The hospital in Caborca, the closest hospital to the area, is filled with wounded. My guy in Tucson says an additional 40 people were wounded, enough that the wounded in Altar are being taken to houses to recover, there’s simply no room for them in Caborca.

Read the full post

THE BORDER REPORT

A high-level official in the U.S. Border Patrol was removed from his position after carrying on an affair with a subordinate’s wife. The official, one of the highest-ranking agents working along the Southwest border is apparently facing reassignment elsewhere. Infidelity doesn’t seem to be a punishable offense in the Homeland Security Department but lying to investigators who ask you about it, apparently is. Naming the guy would be no fun, so let’s just leave it at that.

Messy, messy, messy but that’s how we like it here.

THE BORDER REPORT

Is La Barbie, Edgar Valdez Villareal, dead? The rumor’s been circulating for about two hours now. Thank you, Doroteo Arango, for bringing the chisme to our attention.

Here is the rumor (ni descartado hasta el momento) que murio el Muñeco. But another rumor has been circulating, that Barbie was arrested which is equally rich. Both rumors have him in Taxco, in the state of Guerrero, where 15 gunmen were killed in a gunfight earlier today.

Mexican media have sources in the area telling them the gunmen worked for Barbie so it’s entirely possible that the rumors started there. We will see.

THE BORDER REPORT

Is a founder of the Juarez Cartel now in talks with the Sinaloa Federation to take over Ciudad Juarez? It’s a chisme that’s come across my desk recently, and if true, opens the way for some fascinating negotiations for the border city.

Gilberto Greñas Ontiveros was released from Jalisco’s Puente Grande prison in 2007 and since that time, hasn’t been the least bit shy in making his new-found freedom known to the world.

Read the full post