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U.S./MEXICO BORDER
MS-13 gang members’ arrest up Apprehensions increase by more than 200 percent after years of decline By Paul J. Weber A S S OCIAT E D PRE SS
AUSTIN — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is emphasizing the menace of the transnational MS-13 gang in explaining why the National Guard troops requested by President Donald Trump are needed at the border with Mexico. Trump has justified his call
for a border wall and crackdown on illegal immigration in part on the need to stop MS-13, a vicious gang held responsible for murders in cities across the U.S. But sealing the border completely would not eliminate the gang. It was founded in the U.S. in the 1980s by Salvadoran immigrants and has sunk roots in the country. MS-13 continues on A5
John Mone / Associated Press
A National Guard troop watches over the Rio Grande River on the border in Roma on April 10, 2018.
GUADALAJARA, MEXICO
STUDENTS ALLEGEDLY DISSOLVED IN ACID
CENTRAL AMERICAN CARAVAN
Guillermo Arias / AFP/Getty Images
Central American migrants travelling gather outisde a soup kitchen for breakfast and legal counseling in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico on Friday.
Ulises Ruiz / AFP/Getty Images
A student holds a sign, "Nowadays, Your Dreams are Dissolved in Acid," as she takes part in a protest against violence and the murder of three film students. A Mexican rapper confessed to dissolving the bodies of three missing film students in acid.
Rapper confesses and is under special protection in prison By Mark Stevenson A S S OCIAT E D PRE SS
MEXICO CITY — When three film students went to tape a college project in the western Mexico city of Guadalajara, they wound up crossing paths with another young man with dreams of celebrity, a 24year-old rapper who had built a YouTube channel with more than a halfmillion views based on songs describing an anguished, violent life of drugs and crime. The students, who hoped one day to join the wave of Mexican directors who have swept the Oscars in recent years, instead stumbled into the hands of a drug gang that employed the aspiring rapper. Investigators say that his job,
in this case, was to dump their bodies in sulfuric acid and dispose of the remains. The gang duties were a sort of day job for Christian Omar Palma Gutierrez, a rapper who went by the handle “Qba.” He had 50,000 followers on his social media accounts, and 670,000 views on his YouTube music videos . He had been scheduled to appear at a rap festival in Tijuana on April 29. The man who produced Palma Gutierrez’s videos said the performer would dub his voice over instrumental tracks downloaded from the internet. He had bragged about making between 3,000 and 6,000 pesos ($155 to $310) per month from his YouTube videos — not terrible for a
high-school dropout in Mexico but hardly enough to support his wife and children. “He had dreams of growing, of making a living from this, so his parents wouldn’t have to struggle any more so his family could get ahead,” said the producer, who goes by the name “Sismo” Garduno. The heavily tattooed Palma Gutierrez — he favored baggy shirts and shorts, Los Angeles Dodgers and Oakland Raiders baseball caps, and called himself “modefukka” — made videos depicting a life hanging out with his “homies,” drinking and taking drugs. In one, he croons, “My voice will be the house where they rest in peace, so they are tormented in darkness, but they’ll like it,” as he simulates beating and kicking a tied-up man with a bloody bag over his head, eventually lighting his body on fire with gasoline.
Asylum seekers gather at the border U.S. lawyers offer free immigration advice
Garduno said the image was just metaphorical. “In Qba’s case, regarding the video of the tied-up man, it was symbolic, saying he was killing them with his music,” Garduno said. But there was nothing symbolic about Palma Gutierrez’s work for the Jalisco New Generation drug cartel, Mexico’s fastest-growing and most violent gang. As part of one of the cartel’s Guadalajara cells, Palma Gutierrez would sometimes help kidnap or torture rivals, according to sources close to the investigation who have seen the case file and are not authorized to be quoted by name. But his main job was serving as what the gang calls a “cook.” For 3,000 pesos per week, he dumped bodies head-first into acid baths set up in water tanks in the yard of a cartel safe-house. He would come back after two days — after the
TIJUANA, Mexico — About 170 migrants in a caravan of Central American asylum-seekers have arrived in Tijuana, joining about nearly 200 others on their final stop before entering the United States. Three tourist buses were guarded by a Mexican police escort on a curvy, mountainous road from the Mexican border city of Mexicali. Lawyers planned free workshops on the U.S. immigration system on Friday and Saturday in Tijuana. Many planned to seek asylum starting Sunday at San Diego’s San Ysidro border crossing, the nation’s busiest. Migrant shelters in Tijuana’s Zona Norte neighborhood, home to the many of the city’s seedy bars and bordellos, were full. That forced organizers to look elsewhere for temporary housing, said Leonard Olsen of Pueblos Sin Fronteras, a group leading the effort. Migrants who stayed overnight at a shelter in Mexicali were tired from the long journey and nervous about the possibility of being detained in the U.S. but also knowledgeable about their rights to seek protection from persecution in their home countries, Olsen said. Many Central American asylum seekers say they face death threats by criminal gangs in their homelands. “This is a moment that will change their lives,”
Rapper continues on A5
Caravan continues on A5
By Gerardo Carrillo and Elliot Spagat ASSOCIATED PRE SS