Crossing the border: Mexico's deadly drug war
Posted: Tuesday, January 13, 2009 3:57 PM by Daily Nightly Editor
By Mark Potter, NBC News Correspondent
While reporting on the vicious drug war inside Mexico, which claimed more than 5,000 lives there last year, we were shown a U.S. map that really put us on alert.
The map showed all the United States cities where federal law enforcement officials believe Mexican traffickers have set up smuggling operations. Each of these American cities was marked in red and together they filled the country, from South to North, West Coast to East Coast.
As one official put it, when it comes to drugs, weapons and violence, "Our southwest border has now moved to Chicago, Atlanta and New York."
For many people, Atlanta is the real shocker. News that Mexican traffickers have spilled over into Phoenix, El Paso and other border towns is more easily understood, given their locations. But drug agents talking about Atlanta becoming a major illicit drug distribution hub for Mexican cartels supplying the entire U.S. eastern seaboard is a different story.
Slowly, the traffickers moved into Atlanta and other towns in recent years by hiding among the already established immigrant communities. The drug trafficking business model they put together is quite sophisticated and hard to crack.
Smugglers work in cells to ensure security, answer directly to the drug cartel leadership in Mexico and use the same trucks which bring cocaine, methamphetamines, marijuana and heroin into the United States to sneak billions of dollars in cash from drug sales back into Mexico.
In a radical departure from legitimate business practices, the cartels establish loyalty and efficiency among suppliers and distributors through the use of threats and violence. (Atlanta and other cities are seeing a rise now in drug-related kidnappings, torture and murders.)
Tonight on NBC Nightly News we'll take a look at this serious problem and hear from some of the officials at the DEA and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms who are trying to fight it.
And as you watch, remember what officials from President Bush and Mexican President Felipe Calderon to agents and police on the mean streets have all pointed out. The buyers of all those narcotics who are sending $11-billion a year to Mexican drug lords are American citizens. Almost all the powerful weapons the traffickers use also come from the United States.
As an ATF official told us, "This is a problem not just in Mexico. This is our problem."
Click here to watch the related video report from NBC's Mark Potter.
