New video footage shows agents from Mexican drug cartels hurling explosives as a form of intimidation along the southern border of Texas near the Rio Grande.
The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) identified a group of cartel operators who threw the bombs, and on Wednesday, the Texas Department of Public Safety shared a video on social media.
The DPS claims that cartel operators are engaging in violent and increasingly intimidating behavior across from Fronton Island, which the Texas DPS and the Texas Rangers have been authorized to patrol by Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham.
Because of its location on the international boundary between the United States and Mexico, the little island in the Rio Grande has become a haven for drug traffickers and other criminals. The Texas Department of Public Safety reports that the cartels in Los Guerra, Mexico, are still actively engaged in violent conflict over “lucrative smuggling routes.”
On Monday, Mexico’s president admitted that drug cartel turf fights in the southern state of Chiapas, close to the border with Guatemala, have shut off a string of villages. In a statement, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador claimed that drug traffickers had cut power to specific cities and prevented government technicians from entering the primarily rural area to repair the grid. He claimed the cartels were vying for control of Central American drug smuggling routes into southern Mexico.
Located in the rural, hilly region to the north of the border city of Tapachula, the territory is the site of a turf war between the Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco New Generation cartel. An employee of the Chiapas state prosecutor’s office talked on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to be cited by name about the discovery of the bodies of four individuals, probable members of the Jalisco cartel, over the weekend in a nearby town.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of the area issued a statement over the weekend claiming that drug gangs were forcing locals to join up, shutting down roads, and reducing access to necessities. Forced recruitment, extortion, road blockades, kidnappings, and assassinations were all included in a statement released by the Diocese of San Cristobal de las Casas on Saturday.
The Guatemalan military set up checkpoints along the border with the neighboring country. Following allegations of “multiple” gang roadblocks in the Frontera Comalapa area, the state administration of Chiapas stated on Monday that 800 troops, police, and National Guard members would be sent to the area.
