Texas DPS: Mexican Cartels Committing Murders in the U.S.

Drug cartel gunmen are crossing the border to commit murders in Texas, authorities claim. The statements by officials from the Texas Department of Public Safety directly clash with longstanding claims by local police chiefs who routinely say that border cities are safe.

“These criminal organizations come across from Mexico to the U.S. side and they kill individuals. they murder individuals,” Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman Lieutenant Chris Olivarez told Sara Carter with Fox News. “We have had several incidents that have taken place along the border using professional-type weapons the way they carry out these killings, very professional, very methodical.”

The statements by Olivarez come at a time when both DPS and the Texas National Guard increased their law enforcement presence along the border in response to record-breaking human and drug smuggling activity by criminal organizations like the Gulf Cartel and the Cartel Del Noreste faction of Los Zetas.

The statements made by Olivarez clash with the longstanding narrative by several politicians, local police chiefs, and sheriffs who claim that border cities are safe. Those claims are usually backed up by statistics from the FBI Uniform Crime Report. However as Breitbart Texas has reported, the UCR only looks at seven specific crimes and does not account for criminal activity that is specific to border cities such as kidnappings, extortion, drug trafficking, human smuggling, and human trafficking.

Additionally, the terminology used by police departments for the UCR report allows them to hide the severity of certain crimes. One example particular to border cities deals with home invasions, where teams of gunmen storm into a house looking for drugs or cash. As Breitbart Texas has reported, home invasions are reported in the UCR report only as robberies.

Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com. 

Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.