Feds raid El Paso gang looking for clues in consular murders

NY Times:

Some 200 American law enforcement agents cracked down Thursday morning on a notorious gang in El Paso, Tex., in an attempt to determine whether its heavily armed members were behind the shooting deaths of three people connected to the American consulate in Ciudad Juarez over the weekend.

The raids involved agents from several federal agencies, and about 50 members of the Barrio Azteca gang were taken in for questioning, according to Andrea Simmons, a spokeswoman for the F.B.I. field office in El Paso.

The gang operates on both sides of the United States-Mexico border, and Mexican soldiers were also conducting operations, according to a spokesman for the Mexican military, Enrique Torres.

Mexican law enforcement officials have said that the Barrio Azteca gang, which supplies hit men for the drug traffickers who operate in Ciudad Juarez, is one of those that may have been responsible for killing the husband of a consulate employee and, minutes later in a separate shooting, a consulate employee and her husband.

One of the people being sought was Eduardo Ravelo, 41, a leader of the Barrio Aztecas in Ciudad Juarez, who was put on the F.B.I.’s Most Wanted list last year. He is accused of ordering killings in Ciudad Juarez as well as carrying out killings, the F.B.I. said.

American law enforcement officials said they were following several lines of investigation in the hunt for the killers. The consulate employee, Lesley A. Enriquez, and her husband, Arthur H. Redelfs, were shot Saturday afternoon as they left a children’s birthday party. Jorge Alberto Salcido, the husband of a Mexican employee of the consulate, who was on his way home from the same party, was the other victim. There were children in both vehicles.

“Everything is on the table until we get further information,” said Ms. Simmons. “At this point we don’t have any information that they were targeted because of their connection to the consulate.”

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Made up of Mexican nationals and Mexican-Americans, its members move back and forth across the border and earn money smuggling heroin, cocaine and marijuana from Mexico to the United States. “Barrio Azteca members also are involved in alien smuggling, arson, assault, auto theft, burglary, extortion, intimidation, kidnapping, robbery, and weapons violations,” the report said.

It sounds like they needed to be rounded up anyway. The US needs to find out who is facilitating the transfer of narcotics from Juarez to the I-10 corridor where it is shipped all across the US. The killings may have finally motivated the government to take action that needed to be taken. What the is looking for is evidence of involvement with the Mexican criminal insurgency.