Around The Borderland Beat

Policemen take notes next to the dead body of a woman shot by unknown gunmen at the border city of Ciudad Juarez March 29, 2010. Nearly 19,000 people have been killed since Mexican President Felipe Calderon took office in late 2006 and deployed tens of thousands of troops to drug hot spots across the country, sparking new turf wars between rival cartels.

Ventura County Sheriff Bob Brooks shows Mexican tar heroin and methamphetamine seized in different raid operations at a news conference at the Ventura County Sheriff's Department Jail Annex Building, in Ventura, Calif. on Monday, March 29, 2010. Ventura County officials say the arrest of a man dubbed Mexico's 'King of Heroin' has removed a half-million doses of the drug from California streets. Authorities said a regional task force spent more than two years working its way up the chain of dealers until the arrest of Jose Antonio Medina, AKA Don Pepe, last week in Mexico.

In this March 26, 2010 photo, school children prepare to raise the U.S. and Texas flags in front of the elementary school in Fort Hancock, Texas. Fear has settled over this border town of 1,700, about 50 miles southeast of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, epicenter of that country's bloody drug war. Mexican families fleeing the violence have moved here or just sent their children, and authorities and residents say gangsters have followed them across the Rio Grande to apply terrifying, though so far subtle, intimidation.

In this March 25, 2010 photo, Hudspeth County Sheriff's Lt. Robert Wilson scans the nearby border at Fort Hancock, Texas.

In this March 24, 2010 photo, Modesta Morales, right, prays with her husband Moises Morales at their church in Fort Hancock, Texas, a border town of 1,700, about 50 miles southeast of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, epicenter of that country's bloody drug war. Mexican drug gangs have not fired a single shot in Fort Hancock, and no one has disappeared. But as drug violence continues unabated in and around Ciudad Juarez, residents of Texas border towns fear it will spread their way. 'A lot of time your family is involved,' said Modesta Morales. 'Some of the killings that happen, it's not because of the people that were killed, it's because they're trying to reach someone. If they can't find that someone, they're going to get their brothers, their sisters, their nephews, their fathers, whoever they can to try and bring that person out.

Mexicans demonstrate at 'United for peace in Nuevo Leon' against violence and crime in Monterrey, on March 28, 2010. Five people were killed in a shootout with soldiers near Monterrey, officials said, shortly after thousands held the protest march in the northern Mexican city against the growing drug-related violence in their region.

Categories: around the borderland beat, Mexican Crime