The Activities of Mexican Drug Cartels are Extending Deep into The United States say Sheriffs

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More Mexican gang and drug related activities are taking place in the United States and Texas is in the front line according to a recent conference.

In a Washington Times report a North Carolina sheriff said a Mexican drug cartel set up a drug warehouse about a mile from his home.

“These men are coming into our county with more firepower than I have,” Sheriff Page said. “I’m literally outgunned.”

Sheriff Page said Rockingham County has jailed 194 illegal immigrants on criminal charges since 2010.

He was one of a number of law enforcement officials who were attending Hold Their Feet to the Fire, an annual two-day radio event in Washington organized by the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

At the same event Rusty Fleming, a spokesman for the Hudspeth County Sheriff’s Office in Texas, warned his county is on the front lines of the border battle and claimed the U.S. is losing to the cartels.

“These cartels are so sophisticated. They’re getting affluent white teenagers to help them encrypt their software; they do digital money-laundering, can hack into government databases and actively recruit our agents to keep one step ahead. The rest of America is just now getting a taste of what we’ve been dealing with for years,” he said.

Fleming suggested Mexican cartels have infiltrated in excess of 3,000 U.S. cities and are actively recruiting local gangs, teenagers and former inmates, to do their work.

Law enforcement officers in Frederick County in Maryland are experiencing firsthand the proliferation of cartels and the issue needed a multi-agency approach.

“It’s a huge problem for our public safety and a growing problem in our jurisdiction,” Frederick County Sheriff Chuck Jenkins said. “The federal government can’t take care of this problem alone.”

Organized drug and gang crimes are among the most complicated offenses investigators and prosecutors deal with in Texas because they can involve a wide range of offenses ranging from money laundering, drug offenses and murder that cross the border between Mexico and the U.S.

The complicated and far reaching nature of these crimes was illustrated recently when the leader of the cross-Bborder Barrio Azteca gang was convicted of numerous offenses including the assassination of two U.S. consulate employees and a Mexican national in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico four years ago.

Arturo Gallegos Castrellón was found guilty of five counts of racketeering, narcotics importation, narcotics trafficking, murder in a foreign country and money laundering at a trial in El Paso, Texas. The court’s charge was 100 pages long.

Often people can be recruited into these gangs without knowing the full extent of what they are getting into. Some gang members can be forcibly recruited and threatened with violence. If you are charged with any type of organized criminal activity you are likely to face a very stiff penalty and should be sure to hire an experienced criminal defense lawyer who is well versed in the complexities of such offenses.

Mick Mickelsen is a nationally recognized criminal trial attorney with more than 30 years of experience defending people charged with white-collar crimes, drug offenses, sex crimes, murder, and other serious state and federal offenses.