Nuevo Laredo is like Baghdad

I have posted before about how the immigration debate is simply a red herring issue. Well it is and it isn't. It is a real issue for people in Laredo Texas.


This is the real problem imo on the Southern border - criminal gangs.


http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/3935277.html

June 5, 2006, 1:01PM
Texas man gunned down in violent Nuevo Laredo

Associated Press

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico -- Assailants gunned down a Texas man while he was parking his sport utility vehicle outside his mother-in-law's house in this violent border city, authorities said.

Juan de Dios Garcia, 30, was shot multiple times Sunday night as he sat in his SUV with his two children and wife, who were not hurt in the attack, police spokesman Ricardo Mancillas said.
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Police were investigating but had made no arrests.

Garcia was a U.S. citizen who lived in Laredo, Texas, across the Rio Grande from Nuevo Laredo.

He is the 126th person to be killed this year in this Mexican city of 350,000, which is caught in the midst of a war between drug lords battling for its lucrative routes into the United States.

http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/nation/14698076.htm

Violent drug cartels - not immigrants - threaten border cities
BY PAUL NUSSBAUM
Knight Ridder Newspapers

LAREDO, Texas - As the United States debates how to protect its border, Sergio Martinez ponders how to protect his life.

Martinez lives just across the muddy Rio Grande in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, where competing drug cartels are killing people at the rate of nearly one a day.

"I can't go out at night. There is no law," said Martinez, 28, standing in the doorway of his small bodega on the main street just south of the border. His business has dwindled by half, as frightened Americans stay away from once-popular Mexican shops, restaurants and clubs.

At least 115 people have been killed this year in the Mexican city of 330,000. There have been no arrests. And the escalating violence has occasionally spilled across the border into booming Laredo, increasing tensions between the two countries as border security takes center stage in Washington.

It's all along the border. René Izaguirre was abducted, tortured, shot, and then thrown by the side of the road. He was a childhood friend of mine.

Posted on 01/05/2005 5:24:34 PM PST by SwinneySwitch

Travel warning still in effect for border

McALLEN — The murder of the new Reynosa police chief shouldn’t hurt or slow down tourism in the city, Mexican officials said Tuesday.

Late Monday, a passerby discovered the contorted body of René Izaguirre along the highway to Monterrey. Izaguirre’s head and face were shot seven times.

Izaguirre was set to take over as the deputy director for public safety in Reynosa for the new city administration under the helm of its new mayor, Lic. Francisco Javier Garcia Cabeza de Vaca. Shortly after, he was reported missing.

http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1314885/posts

Vinnie el Zorro, that is. I used to have to travel to Laredo on business back during the Big Dawg years, and going over to Nuevo Laredo for dinner and drinks was no biggie. You had to watch your back, but no more so than in a semi-crummy hood in New York City or New Orleans.