Mexican Drug Cartels Forming Alliances with American Street Gangs

The War on Drugs has become the longest most costly and dangerous war in American history

By Michael Webster: Investigative Reporter

Laguna Journal

As America wages its war on drugs and terror with costs to the tax payer in the billions; organized criminal gangs here in the U.S. have merged with the Mexican drug cartels. The threat to U.S. interests from the emerging international crime cartel grows more serious every day. 35 years after Nixon started the war on drugs the War on Drugs has become the longest and most costly war in American history. The Drug War is a disastrous failure.

The American war on drugs shows how money, power and greed have corrupted not just drug dealers and drug users, but how it can corrupt entire governments like Columbia, South America, Mexico and yes, the U.S. The critical question - what can be done about it? The track record to date is dismal.

Groups like the Sinaloa, Juarez, Tijuana, gulf Cartels, has virtually taken over law enforcement and high ranking Mexican government officials in their host country.

These dangerous and significant players on the international stage, carry out their criminal activities across borders at will and threaten the stability and interests of the United States. In other words they are a big security threat to this nation.

Fresh evidence (Congressional Research Service) of this growing threat comes from the powerful Mexican cartels themselves which is already responsible for up to 80 percent of the cocaine that reaches the United States. They are increasingly able to operate above the law, buying off or even killing the government officials who are supposed to work with U.S. law enforcement agencies to crack down on crime.

What's worse, the cartels have now forged alliances with American street gangs, giving these drug cartels a deep reach into American life. Through these alliances with our gangs, this drug network gives them control over most of the multi-billion dollar American drug trade, the largest in the world. These cartels have become a world-wide crime corporation with an international reach of illegal franchises spanning the globe.

Mexican drug cartels have extended their reach across America through gangs, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). While cartels battle each other and the Mexican government, various Mexican and American gangs are buying drugs directly from foreign producers in places like Peru, Afghanistan, Belize and Bolivia, officials say.

A report two years ago by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) revealed that U.S. gang members were recruited by drug cartels. With their connections, the gangs have become professional criminal organizations not unlike the mafia.

The Mexican army patrolling the streets of the Mexican cities bordering the U.S. report that in the last several weeks, at least 50 criminals and drug traffickers arrested there were members of U.S. street gangs, Mexican cartel gangs and other traditional" prison gangs."

In addition to the "traditional" prison gangs, there are many other lesser known, but none the less dangerous, prison gangs. These gangs frequently align themselves with other gangs who may have similar cultural or criminal beliefs.

In some instances prison gangs (and street gangs) have been known to have truces with rival gangs strictly for the purpose of facilitating their criminal activities; i.e. supply and distribution of narcotics.

Although the following gangs usually have the largest number of members in the corrections system in which they originated, many have spread (through the interstate compact system) to other state departments of corrections as well as the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

The following is a short list of known U.S. gangs involved in drug trafficking and other crimes that are or are suspected of having ties with Mexican cartels and/or Mexican cartel gangs.

Categories: gangs, Mexican Crime, organized crime, war on drugs