THE BORDER REPORT

The U.S. Border Patrol went to high alert last night after receiving undisclosed threats along the Arizona border during the Mexican Independence Day celebrations, sources say.

Myself, I can't fathom what they'd consider a "threat" given the context of the border these days. Last week, there was a rumor that someone had taken out a deuce and a half with an RPG round in Matamoros. I also don't know that the threat isn't merely a speculative threat after last year's grenade attacks in Morelia that murdered eight people.

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THE BORDER REPORT

A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official who headed a major Arizona office and then was assigned to work in Guadalajara for three years was arraigned in federal court Friday morning, accused of trafficking cocaine and selling information about law enforcement operations to a drug cartel.

Richard Padilla Cramer was a federal agent for nearly thirty years, first joining the U.S. Customs Service in 1981. He is accused of negotiating cocaine shipments from Panama to Spain while he was working for ICE out of the Guadalajara office, according to the criminal complaint filed against him by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami.

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THE BORDER REPORT

Assuming everyone was in on the job, you can imagine the back-end dealings that went into this quiet negotiation. The Space Shuttle Discovery that's set to launch will be carrying at least two flags onboard, the green, blue and yellow of the U.S. Border Patrol and the red, white and green of México.

The Border Patrol, that golden-haired child of the American federal law enforcement agencies, is riding high, shipping its colors off into outer space onboard the Space Shuttle Discovery, then sending the returning flag to the Border Patrol museum.

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THE BORDER REPORT

The Mexican government is trying to get the United States to drop its charges on a Phoenix kidnapper and send the man back to Mexico to stand trial there. It's a bit of a reverse extradition and it grabbed my attention when I started looking at this case a few months ago.

Then I found who the guy supposedly worked for in Mexico, the Tijuana area to be precise, and suddenly there's a whole new level of story to tell here.

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THE BORDER REPORT

Just came across a year old CISEN report on the Beltrán Leyvas:

"Los hermanos Alfredo, Amberto y Carlos Beltrán Leyva utilizan los seudónimos “Arturo”, “Marco Arturo” y “Arturo de Culiacán”, bajo los cuales son buscados por la DEA por la introducción de droga a Estados Unidos a través de aviones .... "

Really? Alfredo, Amberto and Carlos are known as Arturo, Marco Arturo and Arturo de Culiacán? So who's Amberto and is Carlos, Botas Blancas or isn't he?