Bloodshed On the Border

True enough, but the United States is less insulated than some might think. According to the NDIC report, the increased bloodshed in Juárez "could spill into the [West Texas] region," since it raises the threat that drug-trafficking organizations will "confront law-enforcement officers in the United States who seek to disrupt these DTOs' smuggling operations." (The report cites several armed encounters that took place on the American side in 2006.) The cartels' tentacles already reach deep into El Paso. Local banks are full of drug money, says Claudio Morales, who heads special operations at the El Paso County Sheriff's Office. "We're one of the poorest regions along the border, yet El Paso has some of the largest cash transactions" in the country. Many cartel henchmen are known to have moved their families to the Texas city to insulate them from the carnage back home—though that still leaves the families vulnerable to kidnappers. Kids whose relatives have been killed in the violence are showing up at the Children's Grief Center of El Paso. "We have a lot of kids that are really traumatized," says executive director Laura Olague. "There's a lot of secrecy, or fear, that whoever killed their parents or loved ones would come look for them."

Authorities, too, worry that narco leaders could order hits on city residents. "We've had that type of intel," says Kozak. Among the prime targets could be Mexican cops, who are fleeing the violence in greater numbers and seeking political asylum in the United States (such requests are rarely granted, since the laws are aimed at victims of state-sponsored persecution). For now, drug organizations prefer to abduct their quarry in the United States and spirit them across the border before harming or killing them. Kozak says that in the past year, a half-dozen kidnappings tied to narcotraffickers have taken place in El Paso. One of them involved Miguel Rueda, a convicted smuggler who failed to pay a drug debt. According to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. district court, Rueda was told to meet a former accomplice, Ricardo Calleros-Godinez, at a gas station in El Paso in February. After picking up Rueda, Calleros-Godinez allegedly pulled a gun on him, duct-taped his eyes, mouth, hands and legs, and drove him to a house in Juárez. Four or five days later, Rueda reportedly settled the debt through a transfer of family land and was freed. (He's now in Texas state prison serving a sentence on cocaine charges.)

The criminal group that perhaps best illustrates the porousness of the border is the Barrio Azteca gang. Founded in the 1980s in state prison in El Paso, the organization now counts thousands of members in Mexico and the United States and is believed to be affiliated with the Juárez cartel. Authorities say the gang has a penchant for brutality and engages in everything from extortion to trafficking to assassination. The Barrio Aztecas are "the wild card in all this," says Samuel Camargo, a supervisory special agent with the FBI in El Paso. "That probably has the most potential for violence here"—and it's an American creation. In January, the U.S. Attorney's Office brought racketeering charges against more than a dozen of the gang's members, and a trial began in early November.

All the talk of bloodletting has made El Pasoans warier than ever of their southern neighbors. Amity has given way to division. The turn of events anguishes Veronica Escobar, an El Paso County commissioner. Her office window overlooks Juárez, where she used to buy Christmas presents as a child and where, until this year, she used to celebrate her birthday. "I feel so sad that our sister city is struggling through this period in their history that's horrific." Just a few miles across the river in Juárez, a carpenter named Francisco (who wouldn't give his last name) lives on a hill from which he can see the lights of downtown El Paso twinkle at night. He yearns to take his children north one day. "I've had enough of this," he says. "Enough with these gangs and their ruthless rats." Residents on both sides of the border share his disgust—and his dread that the violence will never let up.

© 2008