SECRETO A VOCES

For sheer balls, the guy's strategy was unmatched.

For more than a year, Luis Camacho Pasos, a Sinaloan, would infiltrate rival smuggler gangs in Phoenix, pretending to be an illegal immigrant in need of a coyote. Once the smugglers moved him into Phoenix, he would tell the smugglers that they needed to call his wife to get the rest of the fee. They'd place the call and that's when his own gang would get the drop on them, over-powering the smugglers, out-gunning them, out-thinking them on their own turf, west Phoenix.

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THE BORDER REPORT

I don't know why this video amuses me and some of my readers so much.

Maybe it's the utter look of astonishment on the Canadian's face when he tells the Mexican federal agents, "I'm on holiday."

Maybe it's the puppy-like blinking of his eyes. Police say Mr. Pavel Kulisek wasn't on holiday; rather, he'd been linked to Gustavo Martinez Rivera, El Licenciado, henchman of the Arellano Felix family. Kulisek had a profile written about him in a Canadian newspaper recently. Amusing, but maybe I'm just twisted that way. Gracias mi estimado for passing this one along.

-- Michel Marizco

THE BORDER REPORT

This just came in off the tipline, it seems the husband of a U.S. citizen has gone missing somewhere on that magical highway between Naco and Cananea, Sonora. Lots and lots of things happen on that 35 mile stretch of road, many of them terrible, none of them clear.

If it bears out, and so far it seems to, this isn't good. Last week, the Mexican Army uncovered a grave with what they said were four bodies inside. Others, including a Cananea law enforcement source, tell me it was actually 11 bodies in that grave.

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THE BORDER REPORT

Here's a story I wrote for The News over the weekend.

AGUA PRIETA, SONORA – Elena Matuz wasn’t worried when she talked to her husband José Luis for the last time.

The 37-year-old cop was set to resign from the Agua Prieta police force on July 20 and he promised her he’d be extra careful in the coming days. After all, two local officers had been shot at a taqueria downtown a couple weeks before, and a little over a year before that, Police Chief Ramón Tacho Verdugo was taken out in front of the police station.

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THE BORDER REPORT

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