Gulf Cartel Weapons and Narcotics Way Station Raided — In Texas

BROWNSVILLE, Texas — County authorities in this border region raided a Mexican drug cartel weapons, cash, and narcotics way station that was being used to store ammunition and weapons that would be sent to drug cartels in Mexico and narcotics moving north. The raid took place Tuesday night in Brownsville when investigators with the Cameron County District Attorney’s Office served a search warrant at an undisclosed location, information provided to Breitbart Texas by the DA’s office revealed.

At the building, authorities found 4,000 ammunition rounds, two sets of body armor and 16 pounds of marijuana. The ammunition was .40 caliber, which is used for handguns and 7.62×39 which is used in the popular AK-47 rifles.

Investigators with the DA’s office described the Brownsville location as a cartel way station for drugs going north as well as for cash and weapons going south. The information provided by the DA’s office does not mention other agencies like Cameron County Sheriff’s Office or Brownsville Police.

The border city of Brownsville is directly north form the Mexican city of Matamoros which has long been considered a stronghold for Mexico’s Gulf Cartel.  As previously reported by Breitbart Texas, early last year the Gulf cartel faction from Matamoros went to war with the faction in the nearby city of Reynosa setting off a series of large scale gun battles throughout the city. While tensions between the two factions appear to have come to an impasse of sort, the Gulf cartel continues to terrorize the border area.

The criminal organization is responsible for the drug trafficking and human smuggling in this area of the border. As previously reported by Breitbart Texas, during the summer of 2014, the Gulf cartel made $38 million in a few months off human smuggling alone setting off a humanitarian crisis where authorities ran out of room to house the thousands of women and children being left at the border.

As Breitbart Texas has reported in the past, the Gulf cartel has been carrying out a kidnapping and extortion campaign in Matamoros as a way to supplement drug trafficking and human smuggling.

Brownsville, Texas, was also the location of a recent incident involving Breitbart Texas and suspected Gulf cartel associates. In that matter, men in multiple vehicles attempted to ambush us as we were on a late-night assignment in the Galaxia neighborhood that sits immediately on the Texas-Mexico border. The border fence in the area was left unfinished and the western Brownsville neighborhood has traditionally been a smuggling stronghold for factions of the Mexican Gulf cartel.

Ildefonso Ortiz is an award winning journalist with Breitbart Texas you can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.

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