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NAFTA
OPERATION RANCH ROAD 13
Latest round of talks sputter
Marijuana felony charges
By Josh Wingrove, Eric Martin and Andrew Mayeda B L OOMBE RG NEWS
The latest round of NAFTA talks wrapped up without major breakthroughs, the latest signal talks have bogged down on controversial proposals from U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration. Negotiators fell short of finishing work on any individual section of the agreement during this round, according to two people familiar with the discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity. A senior U.S. official briefing reporters on NAFTA on Tuesday didn’t identify any specific areas or indicate that agreement was reached on any new chapters. While the U.S. has presented the bulk of its proposals, it’d like to see counteroffers and more engagement, including on vehicles, according to the American
Several men indicted, including a Zapata resident SPECIAL TO THE TIME S
The District Attorney’s Office said Tuesday that several men, including a Zapata resident, have been indicted in connection with a drug trafficking organization responsible for transporting marijuana from South Texas to Houston. In 2014, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Border Patrol initiated an investigation targeting a significant drug trafficking organization responsible for transporting marijuana. During the operation, dubbed Ranch Road 13, it
was discovered that two members of the group, Miguel Angel Mendoza, of Zapata, and Eliberto “Blackie” Vela Vela, of Oilton, were responsible for planning, organizing, supervising, coordinating and directing the transport of approximately 3 tons of marijuana, the District Attorney’s Office said in a news release. Mendoza and Vela allegedly arranged for other members of the drug trafficking organiza-
tion to transport marijuana through certain Webb County area ranches in order to navigate around and avoid Mendoza Border Patrol checkpoints, according to authorities. It is alleged that between Aug. 28, 2014 to Oct. 23, 2014, Mendoza and Vela, along with Oscar Ivan Avila, Luis Gerardo Retana-Escobedo, Edgar AguileraEspinoza and Egladimer Aguilera-Pineda, carefully transported the marijuana using
several vehicles. All members communicated with each other through cellphones and other means of communication to provide descriptions of the ranches, directions, routes, entry gates, gate locks and other information to execute the transport of the marijuana, the District Attorney’s Office said. During the course of the investigation, DEA and Border Patrol made three seizures totaling over 6,000 pounds of marijuana from members of the organization. Charges continues on A9
PIEDRAS NEGRAS, COAHUILA MEXICO
REPORT DETAILS ZETAS TOTAL CONTROL OVER MEXICAN PRISON
NAFTA continues on A8
SANCTUARY CITIES
Judge blocks Trump’s order Efforts violate amendments
Adriana Alvarado / AP
Soldiers guard an entrance to the state prison in Piedras Negras, Mexico in 2012. Officially it was a prison, but inside it was a center of operations for the Zetas drug cartel, according to a College of Mexico report released Tuesday.
Cartel members used facility as center of operations
By Eli Rosenberg
By Maria Verza
WA S H INGT ON P O ST
ASSOCIATED PRE SS
A federal judge issued an injunction to permanently block President Donald Trump’s executive order to deny funding to cities that refused to cooperate with federal immigration officials, after finding the order unconstitutional. The ruling by District Judge William H. Orrick in San Francisco comes in response to a lawsuit filed by the city of San Francisco and nearby Santa Clara County, and follows a temporary halt on the order that the judge issued in April. Orrick, in his summary of
MEXICO CITY — Officially it was a Mexican prison, but inside it hid another reality: a center of operations where the Zetas drug cartel modified vehicles, manufactured uniforms, locked up kidnapped victims and cremated bodies using diesel fuel. Some details of the case were previously known. But a report released Tuesday by two university professors who specialize in human rights sheds new light on how one of Mexico’s bloodiest criminal organizations took complete control of the state prison in 2010 and 2011 in Piedras Negras, just across the border from Texas, without any
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resistance from Coahuila state officials. The report is based on witness statements, official documents and public data and takes a closer look at the use of the Piedras Negras prison as “key to the business and terror framework” of the Zetas. The investigation, which was conducted by Sergio Aguayo of the College of Mexico and Jacobo Dayan at Iberoamericana University, includes more than 1,500 pages and describes surreal life inside the prison’s walls. For some Zeta leaders, the prison served as a hideout and a place to host parties where cows would be slaughtered to feed attendees. According to the report, the prison’s Zeta boss, a former
municipal policeman who was not identified in the report, regularly left the prison escorted by guards to have coffee, shoot at people “just for fun” and have sex with the wives of other prisoners. He had 34 close associates inside the prison and another 58 inmates making uniforms and modifying vehicles, the report said. But at its most gruesome, the prison also served as a chilling “extermination” site. According to witnesses, some victims arrived alive and were killed on site with a shot or hammer blow to the head. Others were dismembered and burned immediately below a guard tower, which was controlled by the Zetas through threats and punishments.
The most sensitive job — and also the best paid at $300 a night — was disposing of the bodies in fuel. “When they cooked up people they would get smaller and they would hit them with a metal bar until there was nothing left ... (later) they would tip over the barrel to dump what was left on the ground ... and the truth is there was very little,” the unidentified Zeta boss is quoted as saying in December 2014. Overall, testimony from recent trials of Zeta members in Texas suggests about 150 bodies were disposed of inside the prison. Remains were dumped at nearby locations, including a river and a soccer field. Zetas continues on A5