Alleged enforcers for a Mexican cartel were reportedly involved in the kidnapping and torture of U.S. teenagers over methamphetamine in St. Paul, Minnesota, according to the local St. Paul Pioneer Press. The U.S. Attorney’s office omitted Mexican cartel involvement in their official press release on the case.
The official press release was titled, “Four Indicted for Drug Trafficking Crimes Involving a Violent Kidnapping in St. Paul” and only identified the perpetrators as being from U.S. cities. There were no mentions of Mexico, cartels, or even a transnational criminal organization–the DOJ agency simply omitted the vital information amid national discussions of immigration reform and debates regarding the importance of border security. The U.S. Attorney’s office described the men as having “roles in a large-scale methamphetamine trafficking organization.” The particulars of the case–even without knowledge of alleged Mexican cartel involvement–reveal a brutal underworld in the northernmost U.S. states, similar to what routinely occurs in Mexico’s own drug war.
The official press release from the DOJ agency described the horrid alleged crimes and wrote:
On April 14, 2014, defendants Ramirez and Alvarez flew from Los Angeles, California to Minnesota in response to a report that approximately 30 pounds of methamphetamine had been stolen from the stash house two days earlier. On the evening of April 14, the four defendants kidnapped two victims at gunpoint and held them captive against their will at the stash house. The defendants bound and beat the victims and made violent threats against their lives and the lives of their family members, while demanding information about the missing methamphetamine. According to the indictment, Villalvazo cut one of the victim’s fingers, nearly severing it, while Ramirez held the victim down.
The local St. Paul Pioneer Press claims wrote, “A Mexican drug cartel had a ‘stash house’ in St. Paul, and when drugs and money were stolen from it last month, several people thought to be involved were kidnapped and tortured, according to charges filed in Ramsey County District Court.” The local paper added, “In addition, a woman said she was taken to the house in the West Seventh neighborhood, questioned and raped, a search warrant affidavit said.”
The reach of Mexican cartels and their operations inside of the U.S. has been widely reported by Breitbart News, however heavily downplayed by numerous agencies under the DOJ umbrella–especially in their documents released to the American public. In fact, this is not the first time the DOJ agency has omitted or obscured a Mexican organization’s leadership in major crimes on U.S. soil. One such matter involved a Chicago case Breitbart News broke regarding the kidnapping of a mother and children over Mexican narcotics.
The Chicago kidnapping case involved U.S. gang members in Chicago operating under the orders of a leader residing in Mexico. In that instance, a Mexican cartel’s drugs were stolen and an order came from Mexico via telephone for the mother and children of the alleged thief to be kidnapped at gunpoint. The order was carried out. However, the official press release from the U.S. Attorney’s office did not mention that the narcotics belonged to a Mexican cartel. That detail was buried and only discovered by hours of research into court documents.
Another press release from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington State was headlined, “Southwest Washington Man Who Operated Shingle Mill as Cover for Drug Dealing Gets 10-Year Prison Term.” Once again, after further research, Breitbart News discovered that the “Southwest Washington man” was actually a Mexican national and the U.S. Attorney’s office went on record and finally admitted that the man was working for a Mexican cartel–though they omitted this vital detail in their initial public statement on the case.
The trend is clear: Mexican nationals are leading large-scale methamphetamine operations across the U.S. and agencies under the DOJ umbrella are failing to mention the details in their public statements or press releases. Only after searching through court documents can one find the fact that a large methamphetamine operation was led by someone from Mexico, much less that Mexican cartels were running the operations.
Breitbart Texas Contributing Editor and Border Security Expert Sylvia Longmire stated, “This kind of cartel violence happens across America much more often than we are led to believe–in Las Vegas, outside Atlanta and northern Alabama are just a few examples. Not only are we led to believe that our borders are safer and more secure than at any time in history, but the level and frequency of violent Mexican cartel activity across the US is repeatedly downplayed or relegated to local media reports that never see the national light of day.” Longmire added, “Department of Homeland Security officials have stated in congressional testimony that they don’t keep track of cartel violence in the US, which allows them plausible deniability of its existence. If America saw this story and so many others like it played out on major TV networks during even one news cycle, they would be horrified, and rightly so. This is probably what the DOJ and DHS are trying to prevent: citizens learning the truth about the real reach of Mexican cartels into our nation’s heartland.”
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(Disclosure: The author previously worked undercover with the Ramsey County Sheriff’s office on the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and has testified in federal court for the U.S. Attorney’s office mentioned in this article.)
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