BORDER CRIME
Death, Denial, and a Region Under Siege — Part Two
by: Julian Resendiz
Posted: Dec 4, 2023 / 08:00 PM CST
Updated: Dec 4, 2023 / 11:18 PM CST
‘Fentanyl, what fentanyl?’ and ‘I feel safer in Juarez than in Chicago’ illustrate disconnect with reality of working-class neighborhoods
Editor’s note: This is the second part of a three-part series examining how transnational criminal organizations are sowing terror in Juarez, Mexico, and extending their tentacles into West Texas and Southern New Mexico, and challenging the Mexican government’s discourse that 90 percent of the violence is gang-on-gang and does not touch ordinary citizens.
The images are graphic, but that is exactly what the residents of working-class “colonias” and their children are exposed to every day south of the border.
North of the border, the docket in U.S. District Court in West Texas and Southern New Mexico reveals hundreds of cases involving migrant smuggling, migrant kidnapping and extortion, arrests in connection to stash houses, drug couriers and weapons smugglers, and almost daily seizures of narcotics as U.S. ports of entry.
El Paso is a city that prides itself as being one of the safest in America but is being infiltrated by a clever and silent enemy: drug cartels.
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JUAREZ, Mexico (Border Report) – Juarez leaders describe their community of 1.5 million people as hard-working and visitor-friendly. They say their city often gets a bad rap from U.S. news media exaggerating the violence. Some tell Border Report they feel safer here than in U.S. cities like New York or Chicago.
U.S.-run plants here assemble car parts for Detroit automakers and computer motherboards for Asian clients. These factories employ 330,000 locals. Residents of Denver, Albuquerque and San Antonio often make long drives for cheaper dental implants that can be found here or fast-track bariatric surgeries.
American franchises from McDonald’s to Home Depot to Denny’s have multiple stores here.
https://www.borderreport.com/immigration/border-crime/watch-cartels-death-denial-in-a-region-under-siege-part-two/
