Local men arrested in connection with transnational gang activity

[brokenarrow]

A five-day law enforcement operation targeting suspected members of transnational gangs has reportedly resulted in the arrests of 22 men in Bolingbrook, Joliet, Glendale Heights and Melrose Park.

Operation Community Shield, which partners local and state law enforcement officers with agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations unit, began the local effort on April 17.

The arrestees, who range in age from 18 to 40, were being held today in ICE custody on administrative immigration charges, pending deportation, according to a prepared statement from the federal agency. ICE privacy policies prohibit releasing the names of persons arrested on administrative immigration charges.

Transnational street gangs are targeted because they have significant numbers of foreign-born members and are frequently involved in human and contraband smuggling, immigration violations and other crimes with a connection to the border.

As part of this effort, Homeland Security’s National Gang Unit identifies violent street gangs and develops intelligence on their membership, associates, criminal activities and international movements to deter, disrupt and dismantle gang operations.
The latest roundup took in 18 Mexican nationals, two of whom were previously deported. Two other arrestees are from Guatemala, and one is from Ghana.

Read the rest at
Local men arrested in connection with transnational gang activity — Joliet news, photos and events — TribLocal.com

Photos of gang tattoos from suspects arrested following a five-day law enforcement operation targeting alleged members of transnational gangs. A Vice Lords tattoo (left), and a Latin Kings tattoo. (ICE photos)



Customs raids net 22 'transnational' gang members - chicagotribune.com


As long as they will be hard working cheap labor, who cares!

Thank you Washington!

 

[Tank]

Ah, the wonderful Hispanic culture

 

[Mad Scientist]

Ah, the wonderful Hispanic culture

When the paper describes them as "local men" or "transnational" you know they're minorities or illegals. Never fails.

 

[brokenarrow]

Ah, the wonderful Hispanic culture

When the paper describes them as "local men" or "transnational" you know they're minorities or illegals. Never fails.

You couldn't really describe them as "fun-loving Americans" now could you.

 

[Angelhair]

Ah, the wonderful Hispanic culture

When the paper describes them as "local men" or "transnational" you know they're minorities or illegals. Never fails.

You couldn't really describe them as "fun-loving Americans" now could you.

But how about describing them as illegals OR by race? Why the game playing? Oops, forgot - we have to be politically correct lest we insult the gang member.

 

[brokenarrow]

When the paper describes them as "local men" or "transnational" you know they're minorities or illegals. Never fails.

You couldn't really describe them as "fun-loving Americans" now could you.

But how about describing them as illegals OR by race? Why the game playing? Oops, forgot - we have to be politically correct lest we insult the gang member.

I once asked a police officer who worked at the county jail: Why don't you just put rival gangs inside the same cells? Let them kill each other!!

He said: Because we (jail guards) are supposed to protect the criminals from killing each other even though your idea would be protecting the innocent citizens from gangs.

 

[editec]

Yup.

Crime goes where crime can make money.

And we Americans have made it EASY for criminals, have we not?

Reap what you sow, Americans.

 

[waltky]

Coyote cartels intimidating Guatemala...

Guatemalan Woman Decapitated As Extortion Gangs Hit Back
Wednesday, 11 May 2011 - The brutal killing of a young woman in Guatemala City has been linked to criminal gangs seeking to warn the government against curbing illegal transport rackets, according to the authorities in the central American country.

The victim's head was discovered inside a phone booth in the notorious Zone 18 area of the Guatemalan capital's Colombia district over the weekend, less than a week after President Alvaro Colom unveiled extensions to the new Transurbano bus network in the same neighbourhood. The grim discovery revealed evidence of prolonged torture, according to Guatemalan police who believe the woman was aged between 18 and 20. According to the Spero news website, authorities found the rest of the victim's remains separately, accompanied by a note which read: "The truth is that if Transurbano does not co-operate, this is what is going to happen to the owners and partners; I have a lot of information and I know where they live."

For more than a decade, gangs have preyed on Guatemala's only public transport system, creating a lucrative extortion racket by demanding protection "tax" from the owners, drivers and passengers of buses travelling through gang-controlled neighbourhoods. If the "tax" is not paid, the consequences are often bloody. More than 600 bus drivers have been killed in disputes with gang members since 2006, with 93 drivers slain in the first six months of last year alone. In an attempt to increase safety levels, the government introduced Transurbano buses on a handful of trial routes in July last year. Featuring surveillance cameras, GPS devices and panic buttons, the buses are also manned by two armed guards. But it is the fact that passengers can only board using prepaid fare cards – not cash – which has hit gangs the hardest.

So far, the Transurbano system appears to have been a success. More than 460,000 city residents signed up for prepaid cards before trials started last year, and only three minor incidents have been reported on the routes since they were first introduced, according to Guatemala's Interior Minister, Carlos Menocal, in a statement last week. However, as the success prompted the government to extend Transurbano lines across Guatemala City, it may also trigger violence aimed at halting this extension. In addition to the young woman's murder, a drive-by shooting targeting the offices of the private security firm which provides bus guards also resulted in three deaths last week.

Source

 

[percysunshine]

Ya know ... One slip up of a Tribune editor could have resulted in a headline about transexuals...

 

[LilOlLady]

Illegal immigrants account for 10% of Nevada state prison budget
RGJ Special Report: Immigration in Northern Nevada

The Gang Unit's reports show that most of the Truckee Meadows' 35 criminal street gangs have predominantly Hispanic members. Some illegal immigrants or their American-citizen children are involved in such gangs, but there are no statistics on gang members' immigration status or the immigration status of gang members' parents, police said.

Illegal immigrants account for 10% of Nevada state prison budget | Reno Gazette-Journal | rgj.com

There are more problem with illegal immigratin than amnesty can fix. Denial of theses problems wiill not fix the problem. Most crimes in Nevada are illegal immigration related.Refusing the recognize these proplems will only excerbate the problems. Our law enforcement is in denial.
We need to bombard our representives with our opposition to amnesty and the presence of ilegal aliens in this country.

 

[waltky]

Zetas drug cartel terrorism in Guatemala...

Mexican Cartel Beheaded 29--Including Women and Children--In Saturday Night Massacre
Monday, May 16, 2011 — One of Guatemala's worst massacres since the end of the country's decades-long civil war was the work of the brutal Mexican drug cartel the Zetas, Guatemalan officials said Monday.

The gang's violent signature could be seen in the manner and style in which the 29 bodies were found: bound, beheaded and strewn across a grassy field near their cut-off heads, said Guatemalan Interior Minister Carlos Menocal. Two children and two women were among the dead, most of whom worked on the dairy ranch where the bodies were found, according to Luis Armando Garcia, 23, a survivor of the bloodbath, who talked to The Associated Press in the hospital in San Benito. "I don't know how I survived," Armando Garcia said. He said he lay bound in the grass and pretended he was dead during the late Saturday attack until police arrived early the next morning.

A message written in blood on one of the ranch building's walls said the killers were looking for ranch owner Otto Salguero. Menocal said authorities were trying to find out more about Salguero, whose whereabouts were unknown. Armando Garcia had worked only a month at the ranch in the rural northern province of Peten, a jungle region that has long been a popular transport route for drugs moving north from South America. Garcia said he didn't know Salguero, but said the ranch produced milk and cheese in the township of La Libertad near the Mexican border.

A large group of armed men showed up late Saturday and rounded up the workers, he said. He was bound like the others and suffered machete wounds. The killers didn't identify themselves but said they would be back, Garcia said. President Alvaro Colom arrived in Peten on Monday and planned to tour the massacre site, which is a collection of abandoned-looking buildings and corrals set in a green valley.

Last December, Colom launched a two-month-long military state of siege in neighboring Alta Verapaz province in an attempt to reclaim cities taken over by the Zetas. The gang was founded by ex-soldiers who worked as hit men for Mexico's Gulf drug cartel before breaking off on their own and becoming one of Mexico's most violent organized crime groups. The Zetas are blamed for two recent mass killings in Mexico: 183 bodies found in mass graves last month and a massacre of 72 migrants last August, both in the state of Tamaulipas bordering Texas.

MORE

 

[waltky]

Granny says, "Now, dump his sorry butt inna ocean...

Mexican Drug Boss Arrested at Birthday Party
May 21, 2011 - Mexican police say they have captured a suspected drug kingpin.

Authorities say Gilberto Barragan Balderas was arrested Friday in the border town of Reynosa, across from McAllen, in the U.S. state of Texas, at what appears to have been his birthday party.

Police say Barragan was a leading member of the Gulf drug cartel who was in charge of defending some of the gang's main smuggling routes into the United States from the rival Zeta cartel.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had offered a $5 million reward for information leading to Barragan's capture. Mexican officials say two of Barragan's alleged associates were also arrested Friday.

The Zetas split from the Gulf cartel last year. The two groups are now fierce rivals. More than 37,000 people have been killed in Mexico's drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon took office in late 2006 and began cracking down on the nation's cartels.

Source

 

[waltky]

Victims of Colombian drug war being identified...

Colombia identifies thousands buried in unmarked graves
May 27, 2011 - It is part of an effort by the government of Juan Manuel Santos to bring closure to decades of civil conflict, even though it rages on in some parts of the country.

In Colombian cemeteries, whole sections are reserved for “NNs” (which stands for “ningun nombre” or “no name”), bodies found with no identification and no one to mourn them. Being buried as an NN used to mean the deceased were condemned to perpetual anonymity and the families of the missing to eternal questions about their fate.

But a mammoth effort by the government of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has identified nearly 10,000 bodies buried as NNs in cemeteries across the country or from recently uncovered clandestine graves. By comparing morgue fingerprint records to a national ID registry, officials have been able to put a name to 9,968 unidentified corpses. Many are presumed to be victims of the country’s four-decade-old conflict, dying at the hands of leftist guerrillas, rightwing paramilitaries, or rogue government forces. But only 445 of those identified are among the 57,854 reported disappeared, meaning there are at least 9,523 more unreported missing persons in the country.

Identifying the bodies was the good news. The bad news is that it was less than half of all the fingerprint records studied. Of the 22,689 unidentified persons studied in this effort, 12,724 could not be identified either because the print record was incomplete or smudged or the persons were not on the national registry. This led officials to conclude that as many as 4,210 were under 18, the age at which Colombians must register for a national identity card.

Officials will now attempt to contact the families of the newly identified corpses while investigators try to determine the cause of death. It is part of a government effort to put some sort of closure to civil conflict, which, although continues, has diminished considerably. Colombia this week paved the way for displaced Colombians, numbering over 3 million, to receive compensation and millions of acres of land taken from them.

Source