US-Mexico Border Tightened on Drug Cartel Warning

Associated Press -EL PASO, Texas -- Security is being heightened along the southern U.S. border because of a threat that warring Mexican cartels may send hit men into the United States, authorities said Monday.

Law enforcement officials would not discuss specific security measures being taken at the ports of entry, along the border or in the city of El Paso.

"We received credible information that drug cartels in Mexico have given permission to hit targets on the U.S. side of the border," El Paso police spokesman Officer Chris Mears said.

.... Drug cartel violence has claimed thousands of lives in Mexico this year. Nearly 800 people have been killed in Ciudad Juarez, a hardscrabble city of about 1.3 million people across the Rio Grande from El Paso.

The cartels, battling one another and the Mexican government for supremacy and control of lucrative drug and human smuggling routes, have become brazen in their attacks in recent months.

....The deadly wave of shootings and a rise in kidnappings for ransom in Mexico has prompted some of its citizens, including police officers and a prosecutor, to seek asylum in the U.S.

While the ongoing cartel war has been largely contained in Mexico, more than two dozen gunshot victims have been taken for medical treatment in El Paso, prompting security lockdowns at the county hospital.

Lopez said agents working at the ports, where those gunshot victims have been taken before coming into the U.S., are taking extra security precautions. Ambulances transporting gunshot victims are already being escorted by local law enforcement to the hospital, he said.