The Mexican soldiers are armed with combat American supplied M-16 fully automatic rifles. This latest action by Mexican President Calderon now places Mexican armed soldiers on the U.S. Border with Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

This latest Mexican troop movement places more than 30,000 Mexican troops combating the Mexican cartels throughout the country. This operation, dubbed Operación Conjunta Chihuahua, by the Mexican army is expected to provoke a violent response from Mexican drug cartels, officials said.

 A convoy of newly arrived Mexican soldiers in a variety of military vehicles traveled along Barranca Azul street to a military installation in South of Juarez.

This show of force is designed to overpower the well armed and equipped warring Mexican drug cartels and their operating gang soldiers some officials have estimated there numbers at more than 100,000. Dangerous gun battles between traffickers and soldiers are predicted by many scared citizens.

The El Paso Journal has learned that the Mexican drug cartels that are armed with powerful weapons and angered by a nationwide military crackdown are going to strike back, and are threatening to start killing soldiers in bold, daily attacks that are designed to discourage the one force perhaps strong enough to take on the rich and powerful drug cartels. Many Mexicans fear even the army is outgunned.

U.S. State Department reinstated its earlier alert that travelers should be careful when visiting Mexico. In light of these new developments in Juarez the State Department will reassess and decide whether that alert should be upgraded to a more serious "warning.  "We are always looking at the situation in Mexico and want to give Americans the best information (about) Juárez," said Steve Royster, spokesman for consular affairs at the U.S. Department of State. "As events warrant, we'll make changes as needed."

This is not the first time Mexico has been placed on alert, which is meant to help travelers make their own decisions, he said.

The drug trade is all-powerful in Mexico. Analysts estimate Mexican cartels make between $30 billion and $100 billion selling cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine to the hungry U.S. market and through robbery, smuggling humans and drugs, kidnapping, and extortion of businesses and would-be migrants. This criminal activity rivals Mexico's revenues from oil exports and tourism. 

The Laguna Journal on March 13, 2008 reported that the U.S. are sending or preparing to send troops to our southern border and reported that “The Laguna Journal has learned that a special U.S. Military Task Force has been created to protect our southern border with Mexico. Members of this task force is preparing to secure the border by responding with specially trained fast response U.S. Army task force military units. These forces are already in place with the heart of the power being concentrated in El Paso and Southern New Mexico with a far reaching responsibility from East Texas to Southern California”.

They are being staged and immediately available as emergency  "on call" units for use against terrorist threats on the nation's border and local disasters, said Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., commander of United States Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Commander.

As previously reported in the Journal the federal government acknowledged that the United States-Mexican border region has been experiencing an alarming rise in the level of criminal cartel activity, including drug and human smuggling, which has placed significant additional burdens on Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies.

Renuart, who visited Joint Task Force-North, which is under his command, declined to discuss any details of threats uncovered along the border with Mexico, but he said many agencies, including JTF-North, have made "it a very difficult border for someone to take advantage of." That would explain why there have been recent reports of U.S. military being seen on the border.  See U.S. Command Denies Military Task Force Exists

The U.S. border with Mexico extends nearly 2,000 miles along the southern borders of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. In most areas, the border is located in remote and sparsely populated areas of vast desert and rugged mountain terrain with vast open water of the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific oceans.

The U.S. government admits that the border’s vast length and varied terrain poses significant challenges to U.S. law enforcement efforts to control the entry of individuals and goods into the United States.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the federal agency with primary responsibility to detect and prevent illegal entry into the United States. The latest available data indicates that approximately 11,000 CBP agents patrol the nearly 6,000 miles of international border the United States shares with its neighbors Mexico and Canada.

Dozens of U.S. citizens have been kidnapped, held hostage and killed by their captors in Mexico and many cases remain unsolved. Moreover, new cases of disappearances and kidnap-for-ransom continue to be reported.  See: Americans Being Kidnapped, Held and killed in Mexico

In addition to Federal agents, State, sheriff, and some bordering city police are expected to help patrol the border areas. In remote areas along the border, many sheriffs’ departments are called upon to address border-related criminal matters and serve as a backstop to CBP operations. In many cases, these local law enforcement agencies do not have the resources necessary to patrol the thousands of square miles of border territory under their respective jurisdiction, leaving the security of the U.S. border vulnerable.

Over 200 people have been slain in Juárez so far this year, many of whom were killed execution-style and is attributed to fighting Mexican drug cartels. These gang land styled killings, has reached as many as 10 a day. The escalating violence has caused uneasiness on the U.S. side of the border, and some officials fear that the violence will spill into El Paso and other American border cities.

Mexican federal police have reported discovering mass graves containing numerous unidentified human bodies including two severed heads, three torsos and limbs. Many believed to have been tortured. Locals fear that a fifth of the dead were beheaded or otherwise mutilated.

Most of the victims are indeed attributable to gang rivalry and the driving philosophy of drug war managers Mexican cartels and gangs. The theory was too let the bad guys kill each other off. But innocents are regularly mowed down, caught in urban crossfires or the victims of "mistaken identity" shooting. It has put a serious dent in tourism for Juarez and El Paso according to the Mexican/American Chamber of Commerce.

Juarez police put the number of bodies at 36 for this one event. All the most recent victim remains so far have been found in two clandestine graves in the backyard of a Juarez home in the 1800 block of Cocoyoc Street in the Cuernavaca area of Juarez and in the yard of a home on Pedregal Street in La Cuesta area of the city.

A high ranking law enforcement official in Juarez who will remain anonymous by request believes there will be many more mass graves yet to be discovered. They currently have a new report of a new grave field of death which the informants claim there are more than 50 victims and says they are all woman.

At a news conference in Juárez on Thursday, Gen. Guillermo Galván Galván, Mexico's defense secretary, said 100 soldiers would also be sent to Palomas, across the border from Columbus, N.M. See Mexican Police Chief Requests US Asylum

Juárez Mayor José Reyes Ferriz appealed to residents for their support.

"We know that it may be difficult and that some people may be inconvenienced by the random checkpoints, but this is something that is necessary to make Juarenses safe," he said.

Federal officers will also investigate all city police officers for possible corruption, Mayor Reyes said Thursday. 

The Calderon administration insists the crackdown is working - the government has already detained more than 1,000 gunmen and burned millions of dollars in marijuana plants. And seized tons of cocaine. Traffickers is being extradited to the United States more rapidly than ever before, and police recently made the world's biggest seizure of drug cash, $207 million neatly stacked inside a Mexico City mansion.

"We are not going to give in," Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna said. "In the states where there is most violence, we will be right there to confront the phenomenon."

News Paper Tree is reporting that Juarez, the city most known for its femicides is now getting attention for the killings of men. Confirming that more than 200 murders of men in the past three months have left authorities with no answers. The situation is out of control. Like never before, injustice and impunity have taken over the city. Everyday, murders are expected and the current drug trafficking violence has overshadowed the violence against women. It would be nice to believe that it is a step forward, but unfortunately it is a huge step backwards. Now, Juarez people have to live equally afraid, men and women both unfree and unsafe.

Deadly weekend
20 people were killed over the weekend among them one cop. The killings occurred all over the city. Among the dead was the director of the group “Delta” which is a special force of local police. 31 year-old Juan Manuel Ruiz Flores was killed Sunday going home from work. The ambulance arrived to the crime scene and the killers were still there. The rescue workers waited for the killers to escape because they did not want to get shot.

Since last week, local police have been shriveling the streets undercover. More than 50 cops are expected to go undercover at several banks and schools across the city in the next days.
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