violence and crime at the U.S.-Mexico border continues unabated.

In yet another example of violence spreading north of the border, a deadly Mexican gang is actively plotting to kill U.S. law enforcement officers and their families in Texas, according to a Department of Homeland Security alert that warns U.S. cops to wear body armor and vary routes to avoid being tracked.The U.S. government has spent billions of dollars to fight Mexican drug cartels yet they continue to be the nation’s largest supplier of illicit narcotics and violent Mexican gangs have expanded into every region of the country, including idyllic rural areas.

"This is hardly earth-shattering news since Mexico has long represented the single greatest drug trafficking threat to the U.S., despite Uncle Sam's multi billion-dollar effort to halt the northbound flow of narcotics. The costly investment has failed miserably, according to a federal report that reveals Mexican heroin production has actually doubled in the last year," state officials from the public-interest group Judicial Watch.

Thousands of metric tons of heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana and cocaine were smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico in the last year and tens of billions of dollars in drug proceeds flowed back south, according to the Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center. The cargo is usually transported in private or commercial vehicles, through cross-border tunnels or subterranean passageways and low-flying ultra light aircraft. Much of it is smuggled across the Southwest border through the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation in Arizona. Once in the U.S. the drugs are distributed by feared street and prison gangs, which have spread from urban cities to suburban areas once thought to be impenetrable by such corruption. Nearly 1 million criminally active gangbangers representing about 20,000 street gangs in more than 2,500 cities sold drugs in the U.S. for Mexican cartels last year. Issued this week, a government directive instructs area law enforcement officers -- local and federal -- in El Paso to be extra vigilant because the Mexican-based Barrio Azteca gang is retaliating for a recent sweep targeting its thugs for murdering two Americans at the U.S. Consulate Juarez, according Judicial Watch. Dubbed “Operation Knock Down," the huge crackdown focused on the lethal Barrio Azteca gang, which operates in El Paso jails, and its counterpart in Mexico, which is allied with the renowned Juarez drug cartel. In all, 54 gang members and their criminal associates were arrested in El Paso’s largest law enforcement operation which involved more than 200 officers from 21 agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)."This annoyed the gang’s hierarchy, so its military-style leadership quickly issued a “green light" authorizing the murder of El Paso area law enforcement officers," according to the Homeland Security alert.
The notoriously violent gang was founded three decades ago and its leader appears on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list. It’s not uncommon for Mexican drug cartels to openly issue hits on law enforcement officers who may interfere with their lucrative enterprise, though it doesn’t happen as often in the U.S. as south of the border.
A few years ago Mexican drug traffickers offered a $200,000 bounty for the deaths of U.S. federal agents along the border as well as bounties on drug-sniffing dogs, according to Judicial Watch officials. A principal "player" in the Mexican drug-trafficking enterprise is Los Zetas. Los Zetas were originally a security force used by the Gulf Cartel in their trafficking operations. The Zetas, whose origin includes former members of the Air Mobile Special Forces Group of the Mexican military, have evolved into not only a security force but a drug trafficking organization in their own right.