THE BORDER REPORT

This is probably going to turn out to be nothing, but a bulletin hit federal officials in southern Arizona late last night that a cell of paramilitary contract killers for the Gulf Cartel had arrived in Agua Prieta and were staging for a fight with the Sinaloan narco-factions who control that area. Details from the Americans are still sketchy, but Customs and Border Protection and the Drug Enforcement Administration were worried enough that they contacted Mexican and Sonoran officials to ask them of the threat advisory. Mexican law enforcement sources tell me they don’t feel the threat is credible; still everyone is waiting to see what happens. Nobody, well, somebody, wants a repeat of the attack in Cananea last May. A group of killers from the Gulf Cartel had raided the city at midnight, storming a police station in a nearby town and kidnapping 12 police officers and civilians. The Sonoran government reacted with a vengeance, calling in every state police officer in northern Sonora and dispatching a sniper in a helicopter. Of the 19 dead killers that I saw the photos of, nearly every one was taken down with a head shot. The killers had holed up in a home in Hermosillo, then moved to a ranch outside Santa Ana where they trained and prepared for the midnight raid. On May 16, they moved in, crossing Highway 2 in a convoy of Jeep Liberties, Hummers, Ford F250s and Chevy Suburbans, all heavily armored, to take over the town. The killers were a cell of the Gulf Cartel, though I never believed it was done to dominate a drug route. Judging from some of the victims and the way the operation went down, it was a revenge hit. Since then, things have been hinky in nearby Agua Prieta. An associate of the narco-trafficker, Marco Antonio Paredes-Machado, was gunned down walking into his restaurant, La Reforma, last November. And the El Paso-based Adán Salazar Zamorano narco-family brokered a peace with the Paredes family late last year. So, we'll wait and see what pans out from this latest information. Silvia Otero, federal security reporter for El Universal reports this morning that the leaders of the Zetas are holed up in Tamaulipas. As a result, Mexican troops are circling them from the south, while the Hidalgo County Sheriff's SWAT waits in the north. Meanwhile, the Zetas, the enforcement arm of the Gulf Cartel, have been actively recruiting U.S. citizens. In a shootout in Rio Bravo, Tamaulipas, Monday, two U.S. citizens from Detroit and a third from Texas were arrested by Mexican federal officers, Mexico correspondent Laurence Iliff of the Dallas Morning News reported. Three Zetas and two police were gunned down in that attack. The Mexican Army troop surge, nearly an annual event for the past five years, will have an efecto cucaracha on Sonoran citizens, Sonora Gov. Eduardo Bours said yesterday. I guess that's the way it is these days. The Gulf Cartel are cockroaches that must be hunted down by everyone from border county SWAT units to Mexican Federal troops. The Sinaloans, meanwhile, are left alone to conduct their business.

-- Michel Marizco