Well hunt anyone we think might know you. Then his cellphone rang: It was Teo. Another was Pariente, an older gangster who ran guns to the AFO. Because we were quote-unquote Immigration, we could sack up bad guys no one else could touch, he says. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Thanks for contacting us. obsessed over the top-of-org-chart types the kingpins, lieutenants, and logistics wizards of the cartels Vargas went after their murderous gunsels on the streets of San Diego. Editors picks The buildings in National City are old and stooped. The killings make the month the states most violent of 2018. Thousands murdered since 2007; dozens of cops assassinated by his goons; Mexican-army checkpoints in every barrio. Each morning dawned on fresh atrocities: corpses hung from the balustrades of bridges; cops beheaded and their bodies arrayed to spell out Teos nickname: 3L. No suspects were named. Through those durable holes pour billions of dollars a year in fentanyl, methamphetamine, and the tainted pharmaceuticals that kill U.S. teens on campuses every day. (AP Photo), The body of an alleged drug dealer is seen covered by a sheet after being shot to death in front of his house in Tijuana, Mexico, in this Sept. 6, 2009 file photo. Pines and jacarandas shade the rutless roads that jog by ivy walls of gated enclaves. She was then filmed being carried by a soldier to a waiting helicopter, but later died of her wounds. Secret lair holding clues was uncovered in case linked to JonBent, Author's husband wanted her to stop writing before 'faking her death for years', Putin readying 700k troops for new offensive in weeks to cut off Ukraine', Baby among 6 festival-goers sliced to death by glass-encrusted kite strings, 2020 THE SUN, US, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED | TERMS OF USE | PRIVACY | YOUR AD CHOICES | SITEMAP, Twenty alleged La Bandera cartel members are lined up to be executed, Video was posted online as a warning by rival gang Los Tlacos, Footage shows the mobsters being forced to identify themselves at gunpoint, A voice says the cartel members are 'trash that terrorised this beautiful city', Mexican drug cartel threatens to kill TV anchor over 'unfair' coverage. Teo told me this Teo told me that. On this side, the ones who worked their tails off after school; on that side, the ones who flaked in 10th grade and wound up on the yard. From that day forward, the streets ran dark with blood. I speak to Vargas shortly after the Tijuana burnings. Hed go on to make CRIM Squad in his image: six guys whod show up, no questions asked, to tail a narcos car at 3 a.m. His men jumped onto task-force units with the FBI and DEA. Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion and encourage all readers to share their views on our articles. Texas law enforcement apprehended Marciano Chano Millan Vasquez in 2015. Umpteen murders and no time served. It was his wide-lens view of the War on Drugs that made Vargas a brilliant cop: the ability to see patterns, not pointless depravity, in the crooks coming over from Tijuana. A Mexican navy official said that alleged drug cartel chief Arturo Beltran Leyva and three members of his cartel were slain Wednesday inside the apartment during a shootout with sailors. Well put trackers on your moms car and tail her to church, if thats what it takes to find you., For months, CRIM Squad members worked lead after lead, sitting on addresses from East Lake to Poway on tips from Vargas informants. Nota Editorial: Breitbart Texas viaj a los estados Mexicanos de Tamaulipas, Coahuila y Nuevo Len para reclutar a ciudadanos periodistas dispuestos a arriesgar sus vidas para exhibir a los carteles que amordazan a sus comunidades. Finally, on May 1, 2009, 40 cops and feds including CRIM Squad agents kicked down the doors at five addresses. Theyll still be fighting that one when the sea floods San Diego, and the waves raise all the dead in Mexicali. Local media reports that the attorney general of Guanajuato state is investigating the matter, but none of the victims have yet been officially named. No one knew Timmy was on U.S. soil till Vargas called his sources in Mexico. The brothers were the nephews of Ismael (El Mayel) Higuera-Guerrero, the chief of operations for the Arellano-Flix Organization. In 2010, CRIM Squad joined a bigger unit, the Border Crime Suppression Team. The grim scene, shocking even by recent standards in the crime-battered country, played out at Our Lady of San Juan church in Celaya in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, the Sun and Daily Mail report. Even if they had a legal right to be here, we had tools to take them off the chessboard. Homicide 11 hours ago. He picked up tricks for poking holes in statements from the felons theyd arrested for smuggling. Line watch was the mission of most of its agents: waiting in their Broncos for illegals to cross, then chasing them down and cuffing them for deportation. The kidnap wasnt the story, but its punchline was: The victim wound up captive in Tijuana. And to be honest, I was fried when we split up., Late last summer, Vargas convenes the crew at a cantina in Otay Mesa. Theyd thought that was him in the Caddy. The biggest cheers were from Tijuanas cops: He killed 60, 70 police in two years., 1,000 Dogs Are Put Down Every Day. He pumped them for ways to mine national-security databases, looking for felons whod been jailed and deported, but whod snuck back in with false papers. In cities that host a major port of entry Laredo and El Paso, Texas, and Nogales, Arizona, for starters theres a complex balance between commerce and crime for cops to confront. Till one drunken night in 2003, when a Palillo punched an AFO in-law. His name rang a bell; he was connected to Los Palillos, the gang that was shooting up San Diego. According to police at the scene gunmen shot against four men outside a house, killing three and injuring one. Feds with long guns swarmed both cars. When the hitman removed the blindfold, the drug associate saw a family - a couple and their 6-year-old daughter - standing near a flaming barrel. Copyright 2023 Penske Business Media, LLC. Lisa Marie Presley, Singer and the Only Child of Elvis, Dead at 54 At least one of them was a minor, reports infobae. Its a shock for a minute, but at least you see your kids. Meanwhile, under the border, dozens of narco tunnels link warehouse districts on either side of the fence. They arrested 21 suspects and seized 14 guns that day, and confiscated 60 keys of coke and methamphetamine over the course of the operation. Evelyne Nyairo was inspired to create her skincare line Ellie Bianca following an experience with the wild mango trees of Chad. The trash that terrorised this beautiful city. Picture taken June 16, 2010. Hes sitting on the veranda of his very handsome house, a few miles north of the border fence. GOP House Oversight Chair Can't Explain Why He's Investigating Biden Classified Docs But Not Trump's Jan. 16, 2023. Which Animated Disney Movie Should Get A Horror Adaptation Next? (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images), A soldier stands guard inside an apartment complex in Cuernavaca, Mexico, Thursday, Dec. 17, 2009. Debriefing every collar to get the next guy up the ladder, then doing surveils for five days straight., Yeah, the hours were just stupid but he worked em same as we did: four in the morning till whenever, says Guru, the workout fanatic and know-it-all gun nut who could fieldstrip an M-4 blindfolded. Back at the precinct, Vargas walked in and wasted no time on the niceties. A recent banner or narcomanta reportedly left by the group in Salamanca, Guanajuato is said to have ordered the president to take his security forces out of the area, or else innocent people would die. El Marro denied placing the banner, InSight Crime reports, and instead blamed El Menchos crew for setting up the stunt to make him look bad. A scene from near Saturdays wedding shooting in which a bride was killed at the altar. Dave Contreras, a boss with the Gang Suppression Team of the San Diego PD, asked for CRIM Squads help with Operation Stampede, a massive, task-force takedown of the Southeast Locos. They were narco-juniors working their way up the line: moving loads across for AFO, Vargas says. Tigres face went pale as he listened to Teo talk. The chief instructors: Vargas and his squad. The perp was some dude called Furcio.. Dozens of men in armor crashed his door; Blackhawk gunships circled overhead, anticipating a shootout with his men. Drive-by shooter empties shotgun at British funeral mourners; girls, 7 and 12, among six wounded. Most victims' bodies were never found in a case that has haunted Mexico for seven years. We apologize, but this video has failed to load. The body was found in the same place where eight others were executed a few weeks ago. These Trainers Are Trying to Save Them, He Spent 25 Years Infiltrating Nazis, the Klan, and Biker Gangs. My kids know:If something happens to me, the first call isto these guys. The 100 Best Albums of 2022. Instead, its one investigator in the back seat of his car, laying under a sheet perfectly still. The group has expanded rapidly across Mexico and is now one of the country's most Within hours, Vargas CRIM Squad was handing off the brothers to their Mexican counterparts at the border. Each morning, before work, he would cold-call different shops, chatting up the point man on an anti-gang task force or a higher-up at the FBIs off-site. We were soldiers bagging soldiers, he says. The video, posted to social media by members of Los Tlacos, shows about 20 doomed men who are purported members of La Bandera, part of the Guerreros Unidos cartel, according to El Pas, a Spanish language publication. Backed by a tactical unit, Vargas squad approached the door. The cops found his corpse wrapped in a garden hose; his crew hastily fled to San Diego. JUST WEEKS AFTER clocking in as CRIM Squad chief, Vargas got pinged by an FBI buddy about a very odd kidnap in San Diego. Lists about punishments, penalties, systemic harm, and execution methods used then, now, here, and all around the world. The country has been plagued by gang violence, with more than 300,000 murders since 2006. One of them was a capo called Timmy. He lived part time in San Diego, worked in Tijuana and killed several TJ cops on Teos behalf. No one told them how those captures linked to El Teo or his enemy, Fernandito, of the AFO. Released, he melted into the Tijuana streets literally, per one experts guess. From those patterns and a set of underutilized laws Vargas built a web to catch cartel killers before they killed again, in the U.S. The assassins who carried out the savagery are believed to have come from the Jalisco New Generation Cartel led by the feared El Mencho. To prove it, Vargas showed him Teos org chart. He wasnt just friending cops and fishing for cases. Soldiers returned fire, killing the assailants in a 40-minute gunfight, the defense ministry said in a statement. . But Vargas brought more than a grinders grit: He was also, by nature, a connector. Three men with rifles opened fire. Y But Furcio, a short, slight man in his thirties, didnt even blink through rounds of grilling. Mexican authorities claim El Chapo's Sinaloa Cartel was behind the killings after video footage showed them interrogating rival members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (JNGC) days earlier. That stonewall was standard procedure, says Herrod. Not that Im blaming the job for that. (AP Photo/Antonio Sierra), The body of a man lies dead on the street covered with a plastic sheet after being shot by unknown gunmen on the outskirts of Tijuana, Mexico, Friday, July 9, 2010. Weeks before that dinner, Tijuana went up in flames: Men in balaclavas stormed buses and vans and put them to the torch all over town. At the bottom was a phone number. DISTURBING video shows Mexican cartel hitmen lining up 20 rival gangsters in a forest before executing them one by one. The Mexican Drug War - a sustained, violent conflict between powerful drug cartels and the Mexican government - has claimed an estimated 164,000 lives over the past decade. A BRUTAL drug runner dubbed Cartel Queen has been captured by the Mexican army after allegedly kidnapping five people. They left the cash to show that this was vengeance, not money, says Vargas. Hours before the video was released, a car with four corpses in the boot was dumped outside the mayor-elect's campaign office in Iguala. It remains unclear if Poblete Ramos worked with a particular cartel. The United States attorney in the Southern District of California failed to indict Teo for mass murder. The only gang I respect is Sombra Negra. According to the police a message to an alleged rival gang was found next to the body. The key was sifting through traces, then putting in the time, sitting vigil on suspects houses after-hours. There was El Yeyo, the sad-sack TJ cop conscripted by Teo to fetch corpses to a guy called El Pozolero, whod melt the bodies at his ranch. I guess thats what [sicarios] do for therapy.. Teo, untouchable, paraded through town in his convoy of SUVs, while his crews snatched innocents off the streets and tortured them to squeeze money from their families. Its an article of faith among the men and women who patrol our southwest flank: What happens in Mexico doesnt stay there. They Hunt Cartel Killers. We flipped on our wig-wags [dome lights] to tell them, Dont even try us tonight. The next thing Vargas heard was a fusillade of bullets blasting out the windows of his partners truck. Nowhere is that riddle harder to solve than in greater San Diego. Eight men in armor poured out of a van with rifles. It was the bust of the decade in San Diego, wiping the Southeast Locos off the gangland map and liberating the blocks theyd held by force. While sitting and drinking beer at the brothers house, the buyer remarked on the shrine theyd erected to their imprisoned Uncle Mayel, the cartel capo. Police say they found She and her team were hunting El Teo and his merry band of sadists in Tijuana. In fact, they werent even told that the arrests theyd made were material to his capture. Vargas, a hand-to-hand combatant of that war, is taking me on a tour of his biggest busts in San Diego. Journalists, police chiefs, women, and tourists: Everyones in the crosshairs these days. They never told us more than we had to know.. Among those goodies was something called TECS an exclusive database of every person, vehicle, boat, plane, or shipment entering the United States through a port of entry. A man narrating the disturbing footage says, This plaza already has an owner, El Pas reported. One of the friends fell dead. He killed doctors and the middle class, even when they paid the ransom, says a Mexican official well call Seven. 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