Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives under pressure to turn over documents on anti-gun-trafficking strategies

America's Third War: Two Americans Killed at Mexico Border Crossing

Lajeunesse & Laura Prabucki

Published April 05, 2011

| FoxNews.com

Police are investigating the shooting deaths of two American citizens, gunned down while waiting to come into the U.S. at a border crossing near San Diego.

According to the Baja, Calif., attorney general’s office, the two men were waiting in a white pickup truck at the San Ysidro border crossing on the Tijuana side when an unidentified man walked through the lanes of traffic and boldly unloaded five rounds from a 9-mm. handgun. 

The men were shot in the head, chest and arms. The shooting happened on Monday at 2:40 a.m. Customs and Border protection agents say it appears the shooting was too far away from surveillance cameras, which point southbound into Mexico, for investigators to use for clues.

The victims were identified as 25-year-old Sergio Salcido Luna and 28-year-old Kevin Joel Romero. It’s believed the pair, who may have dual citizenship, were on their way to work at the West Coast Beverage Maintenance, a company that services draft beer equipment for bars and restaurants.

Both men were described by those who knew them as “hardworking, good guys” who worked as much overtime as possible and lived on the Mexican side of the border to save money.

Luna was a mixed martial arts fighter and friends say he was training for a fight in June.

"He was a cage fighter who went by the name Sergio 'Suave' Salcido. He's a really tough fighter, old school type fighter, old school brawler, hard nose, real tough guy," fellow fighter Evan Anthony told KSWB.

Law enforcement tells Fox News neither man had a criminal record, although Mexican police say a small amount of drugs were found on one victim.

While shootings like this are rare, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who spoke with Fox News on the condition of anonymity doubt this was a random shooting or a case of mistaken identity. 

Agents say it’s possible these men were moving loads of drugs and didn’t pay their debts, ripped off one of the cartels or tried to cheat someone on a drug deal. Another possibility is that the cartels believed these men to be confidential informants for American law enforcement.

In the past, Americans were seen as off limits by the cartels, but not anymore. Along with the recent killings of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and ICE special agent Jaime Zapata, cartels have also targeted U.S. citizens who they believe have cheated them. In October, a Chandler, Ariz., man was beheaded after stealing 400 pounds of marijuana.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/04/05/americas-war-americans-killed-mexico-border-crossing/#ixzz1IgAJsnTCBy William 

Texas farmers say drug war making job dangerous !!!

LA JOYA, Texas | As Texas farmhands prepared this winter to burn stalks of sugarcane for harvest along the Rio Grande, four masked men on ATVs suddenly surrounded the crew members and ordered them to leave.

Farmer Dale Murden has little doubt they were Mexican drug traffickers.

“They hide stuff in there,” Mr. Murden said of the dense sugarcane crops, some as high as 14 feet. “It was very intimidating for my guys. You got men dressed in black, looking like thugs and telling them to get back.”

Texas farmers and ranchers say confrontations like these are quietly adding up. This month the Texas Department of Agriculture, going beyond its usual purview that includes school lunches and regulating gas pumps, launched a website publicizing what it calls a worsening situation “threatening the lives of our fellow citizens and jeopardizing our nation’s food supply.”

However, some Texas Democratic lawmakers say the danger is being wildly overstated, and U.S. Border Patrol officials said they are not aware of landowners in the Rio Grande Valley facing increasing threats.

Texas agriculture official Todd Staples says more federal help to fight drugs is needed. (Associated Press)

The launch last week of ProtectYourTexasBorder.com also left the state somewhat embarrassed after the site’s message board quickly filled with postings calling for vigilante justice and the killing of illegal immigrants. The postings have since been removed.

Texas Agriculture CommissionerTodd Staples, a Republican in the job once held by Gov. Rick Perry, condemned those postings Thursday. But he said they shouldn’t detract from the site’s goal of getting more federal resources to the Texas border.

“The website demonstrates in undeniable form that greater federal government presence is needed. We need to keep this as a lookout post,” Mr. Staples said.

But Texas state Sen. Jose Rodriguez said the site is misleading, lacking any data that puts the incidents or danger in context.

“For the site to convey the impression that we are under a serious threat and that there’s all this concern, including to the food supply, it’s just total exaggeration of reality,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “It’s unacceptable.

Still, there is little doubt of increased unease on Texas border farms.

Most brazen among the reported confrontations occurred earlier this year on the sugarcane field near Rio Grande City. In February, a Hidalgo County employee was similarly threatened by three men along the border river to stop clearing brush near a canal, said Troy Allen, general manager of the Delta Lake Irrigation District.

Mr. Allen said another of his workers has taken to locking himself inside the water pump houses along the Rio Grande. If someone knocks, Mr. Allen said, he doesn’t answer.

“Five years ago, if someone wanted a drink of water we’d give it to them,”Mr. Allen said of illegal immigrants passing through. “We have a situation that’s getting pretty serious in my opinion.”

Recently, on a ranch adjacent to land owned by country music star George Strait, authorities said a ranch foreman was shot at by men inside a pickup truck who were found trespassing. The foreman returned fire, and no one was hurt.

Mr. Staples pointed out the bullet holes as proof of the escalating threat along the border. Webb County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Maru De La Paz, however, said there was no evidence tying the shooting to suspected drug traffickers.

Several growers and ranchers say their jobs started becoming more dangerous about two years ago.

An Arizona rancher was gunned down in 2009 while checking water lines on his property, in what authorities suspect was a killing carried out by a scout for drug smugglers. No arrests have been made. Apart from that incident, Arizona agricultural leaders say they’ve heard of no direct threats toward their farmers and ranchers.

In Texas, the run-ins with traffickers are largely anecdotal. Border Patrol spokesman Mark Qualia said any confrontations would be investigated by local law enforcement, but added that landowners “haven’t been expressing those feelings to us.”

Mr. Staples said farmers are scared to speak out. Two weeks ago, a 2½-hour meeting between Mr. Staples and about 20 farmers was closed to reporters over concern farmers wouldn’t otherwise attend.

“I told [farmers] we have to tell this story so our policymakers understand the critical nature of what’s being said,” he said. “It is a process that we have to continue to tell it until we get the help we need.”

2nd Mexican Police Chief Seeks Asylum, in USA.

Oct. 20, 2010: Twenty-year-old Marisol Valles Garcia listens to a question during a news conference after her swearing-in ceremony as the new police chief of the border town of Praxedis G. Guerrero, near Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. (AP)

A young police chief who fled a violent Mexican border town is now seeking asylum in the United States, FoxNews.com has learned.

Marisol Valles-Garcia, 20, made international headlines last year when she accepted the post as top law enforcement official of Praxedis G. Guerrero in October. The town had been without a police chief since her predecessor was shot to death in July 2009.

Garcia was granted a leave of absence from March 2-7 to travel to the U.S. for personal matters, but she failed to return as agreed, city officials said. The town's mayor removed her from the post on Monday.

Officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Garcia is now seeking asylum in the United States following death threats she received in Mexico.

"Marisol Valles-Garcia is in the United States and she will have the opportunity to present the facts of her case before an impartial immigration judge," a statement to FoxNews.com from DHS officials read. "Absent a signed privacy waiver, there are no additional details."

A local official accompanied the police chief last week to the international bridge connecting El Porvenir to Fort Hancock, Tex., according to Human Rights Commission official Gustavo de la Rosa Hickerson.

De la Rosa Hickerson said Monday that he still had not been able to reach her and did not know where she was. He added that he would ask officials to retract their dismissal of the young chief.

"I have the impression that this position by the mayor is a bit hasty," he said. "Because right now Marisol needs support, and one way to be supportive is to leave her in office."

De la Rosa Hickerson said residents of Praxedis told him Valles-Garcia had received threats against her life, and there may even have been an attempt to kidnap her.

Drug violence has transformed the township of about 8,500 people from a string of quiet farming communities into a lawless no man's land. Two rival gangs -- the Juarez and Sinaloa drug cartels -- are battling over control of its single highway, a lucrative drug-trafficking route along the Texas border.

Police will answer to the mayor until a new chief is appointed, the city government's statement said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.