Troubled times in Mexico - the government is suffering horrific consequences because of the President's policies.

 

Tough days ahead for ‘La Presidenta’

By Silvio Canto, Jr. www.americanthinker.com

It happens too often, as my Mexican friends tell me.  They are talking about the number of mayors and journalists shot down by what they call “crimen organizado” or organized crime.  Cartels or “crimen organizado” — the result is the same.  More dead in Mexico.

The story this time is tragic.  A popular young mayor with a wife and little kids; a mayor super critical of President-a Sheinbaum’s continuation of “hugs not bullets.”  Well, the bad guys are not hugging, but they are doing a lot of shooting, killing, and pushing their weight around.

This is the story:

Security consultant David Saucedo described the brazen assassination as a ‘kamikaze attack.’

[Mayor] Manzo gained fame as head of the city of 300,000 when he stood up to the bloody cartels that have terrorized Mexico for decades — and acknowledged the risk he was taking.

‘I don’t want to be just another murdered mayor,’ he said in a haunting statement last month. ‘But it is important not to let fear control us.’

His assassination sparked outrage in Mexico City as well as in Washington, DC.

‘On this All Souls’ Day, my thoughts are with the family and friends of Carlos Manzo, mayor of Uruapan, Michoacán, Mexico, who was assassinated at a public Day of the Dead celebration last night,’ US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, a former ambassador to Mexico, wrote on X.

‘The US stands ready to deepen security cooperation with Mexico to wipe out organized crime on both sides of the border,’ he said. ‘Here’s Carlos holding his young son at the celebration just moments before the attack. May his soul rest in peace and may his memory inspire prompt and effective action.’

Yes, he was holding his son when the shooting happened.  Ugly stuff!

The reaction in Mexico has been very harsh.  President Sheinbaum had lots of questions about the murder, but couldn’t say much about it.  There are protests planned around Mexico.

A friend in Mexico, a rancher in central Mexico, called me asking:  “What’s Trump waiting for?”  He was referring to reports of the Trump administration taking out cartel installations.  He added:  “Why Venezuela and not Mexico?”  I told my friend that I don’t see military action in Mexico unless it is in conjunction with Mexican troops.  I also confessed that I could be wrong.

More importantly, the Mexican people are getting angry.  They complain of corruption, shortage of medicine in public hospitals, mayors and journalists getting shot, and lots of other things.  I should add that a lot of the murders are in smaller towns where “crimen organizado” feels that it can operate easier.

“La President-a” is in the middle of this, torn between the reality of crime and her allegiance to the previous (leftist) president who got her elected.  I don’t see happy days for President Sheinbaum.

 

It has always been this way - government and business in 'ca-hoots' with eachother. Government get taxes, Democrats get voters, Republicans get cheap labor. It flourishes with impunity!

 

Blame Government for Businesses Hiring Illegal Aliens

By John Conlin www.americanthinker.com

There is a lot of chatter these days about holding those evil companies that hire illegals to some type of legal retribution. Let me explain why this is the willful failure of government, not the actions of some greaseball company owners.

There are certainly bad actors in any area, but let me enlighten you about how things work out there in the real world. For this we’ll use the construction trades as an example, as over the past decades they have almost completely been taken over by illegal alien workers. 

My buddy was a builder of custom homes and through him I met many general contractors. They all talked of a similar trajectory. Most initially held the line against hiring illegals. They were generally good friends with their work crews -- working alongside them, partying with them, getting to know their spouses and families. And they tried to stick with their employees rather than hiring much cheaper illegal labor and victimizing their present employees.

But not everyone did so. Some unscrupulous contractors saw illegal workers as the way to win every job they bid on. And it worked.

Think of the situation. A good rule of thumb in many things is labor will be around 50% of the cost on a job with materials being the other 50%. Illegals would work for at least 30% less than the present American workers. Assuming material costs are the basically the same for all bidders, taking 30% off labor costs can reduce the bid amount by 15%. 

If you have ever operated in a competitive bid environment, 15% is huge. Materials are basically the same for all and assuming the work quality is about the same -- or at least close enough -- then these folks will seldom, if ever lose a bid.

Some contractors refused and in effect left the industry while others stayed and one-by-one replaced their American workers with far cheaper illegal aliens. And thus, the primary language on most job sites across the country -- big or small -- is now Spanish.

Everyone knew this was happening, and you can’t really blame most of the contractors for ultimately relenting.

But it was government action -- or lack thereof -- that drove this entire process. When the first unscrupulous contractors started working with illegal aliens, they generally paid cash under the table. No payroll taxes or anything like that were paid. 

When this percolated up to the powers that be, there was an outcry. About hiring illegal aliens and putting hard working American citizens out of work? Not a chance.

They came down hard on these contractors and pushed them to take out payroll taxes, Social Security, etc. But that was it! It was clear the problem the government had with this was not the hiring of illegal aliens -- people who have no right even being in the country, let alone working here.

No, the problem was the government wanted “their” money. As long as the contractors did this, government knowingly looked the other way about hiring illegals.

Think of that. You can hire all the illegals you want, but you better damn well pay taxes on their wages! With this acceptance, the entire construction trade abandoned American workers by the millions. All with government's very clear approval.

So let us not be too fast blaming unscrupulous employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens. And trust me, everybody knew then and they know now. What are they to do if the government won’t enforce the law? Just happily go out of business as others take their work and income? Would you do that?

E-verify? A freaking joke. A government-provided “get-out-of-jail-free card” to give cover to those hiring illegal aliens -- and to show government is actually doing something about it. And again, everyone knows it.

Think of the “issue” of using stolen Social Security numbers to show you are eligible to work in the country. Why can’t the government do something to stop it? Because they don’t want to.

Many of you have some experience with spreadsheets. One of the first things you were taught was how to do a data sort. It is very simple.

So how difficult would it be for the Social Security Administration to do a data sort for any and all Social Security numbers, looking for those with more than one person associated with them? You wouldn’t need to be an expert sleuth to quickly identify those probably using stolen Social Security numbers.

Let’s see, one person associated with this number is an 80-year-old woman from Iowa who looks like she never moved more than 40 miles from where she was born and started working when she was 16. The other person with this number appeared only 10 years ago -- out of nowhere. Which do you think is using a stolen Social Security number?

It would be quite easy to identify the illegal alien, along with contact information, etc. and remove him from the country. This is supposedly a criminal act. But government gives it a wink-wink, nod-nod approval.

And if you are an owner or manager in any of these industries, what are you to do if the government quite clearly doesn’t mind hiring illegal aliens -- and paying them far less than their American counterparts -- as long as payroll taxes are paid?

Sooner or later, you end up going along with the charade, all thanks to government knowingly looking the other way. And over the decades this has been a bipartisan effort -- both Republicans and Democrats are to blame.

So, if you want anyone to blame for these things, blame government. By allowing the first unscrupulous players to take hold, market forces drive all the rest.

Want it to end? Only government can do this. Blaming employers is just a useful distraction for government and politicians alike. The government has the power to greatly reduce this but they simply don’t try. They like all those extra dollars flowing into their tax coffers -- regardless where it comes from or the damage it does to the very fabric of America.

Once government truly enforces sanctions against hiring illegal aliens, then you can go after the handful of bad actors who try to scam the system.

This is a relatively easy problem to solve. Why hasn’t it been? Because they don’t want to.

 

Historic work accomplished by the HSTF in such a short period of time!

 

Trump Task Force Catches 3,000 Cartel and Gang Members, 1,000 Guns, 91 Tons of Drugs in Weeks

Judicialwatch.org 11-3-25

A Homeland Security Task Force (HSTF) established by President Trump on the day of his inauguration to tackle a pandemic of transnational organized crime created by the Biden administration’s “disgraceful” open border policies has made thousands of arrests in recent weeks and seized over 1,000 illegal firearms, 91 tons of drugs and $3 million in currency. The special HSTF teams combine agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), a premier federal law enforcement agency within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as well as officers from other federal, local and state agencies to crackdown on an unprecedented wave of violent crimes committed by foreign drug cartels, gangs and other transnational criminal organizations (TCO). This includes sophisticated human and drug trafficking operations nationwide that often involve minors.

In a recent White House roundtable with law enforcement and administration officials, the president revealed that the HSTF operations represent the largest coordinated effort against cartels in U.S. history. The event also included Attorney General Pam Bondi, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and FBI Director Kash Patel. They confirmed that in just a few weeks the taskforce arrested more than 3,000 foreign drug cartel operatives and gang members and seized enormous amounts of narcotics. The illicit drugs include 2.1 million fentanyl pills, 58,000 kilos of cocaine, 2,300 kilos of fentanyl powder, over 7,000 kilos of methamphetamine and nearly 600 kilos of heroin. To put it in perspective Bondi said the drugs confiscated in just a few weeks could fill four 18-wheeler trucks. The recent operations targeted members of some of the most violent TCOs, including the Sinaloa, Jalisco Generacion and La Nueva Familia Michoacana (LNFM) cartels as well as the notoriously vicious Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Tren de Aragua gangs. The Trump administration says it has arrested more than 120,000 criminal aliens since January 20, purging communities throughout the country of dangerous offenders.

The commander-in-chief created the HSTF, which has been fully operational for only a month, to work in every state as part of a broader initiative to mitigate the damage caused by the record-breaking 7.6 million illegal aliens who entered the country under Biden, including hundreds of thousands with serious criminal records and over 1.7 million from countries DHS says pose a national security threat to the U.S. “Many of these aliens unlawfully within the United States present significant threats to national security and public safety, committing vile and heinous acts against innocent Americans,” the president’s January order, titled “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” states. “Others are engaged in hostile activities, including espionage, economic espionage, and preparations for terror-related activities. Many have abused the generosity of the American people, and their presence in the United States has cost taxpayers billions of dollars at the Federal, State, and local levels.”

A key part of the president’s plan is enforcing the nation’s immigration laws, but ridding communities of criminal aliens is also a fundamental component. That is where the HSTF comes in, to end the presence of criminal cartels, foreign gangs, and transnational criminal organizations throughout the United States, according to the January order. The units are also tasked with dismantling cross-border human smuggling and trafficking networks with a particular focus on those involving children and ensure the use of all available law enforcement tools to execute U.S. immigration laws. The administration assures it is targeting the “worst of the worst,” for arrest and removal even as most media outlets spin the narrative to focus exclusively on polices open border groups claim separate families and victimize hard-working migrants. In the last few months federal authorities have arrested thousands criminal aliens with serious felony convictions throughout the U.S., including gang members, child predators, and murderers.

In Houston, Texas alone hundreds of violent gang members with a combined 1,700 criminal convictions were apprehended within weeks. In Massachusetts, over 1,400 criminal aliens were arrested in just three weeks in September, including hundreds with significant criminal convictions for offenses committed in the U.S. Many are known foreign fugitives and others are members of the MS-13, Tren de Aragua and 18th Street gangs. All have “significant criminality in the United States or abroad,” according to the Boston-based DHS official who led that recent operation.

 

The word 'assassination' is not reserved for just the USA - Mexican Cartels use it with impunity!

 

Mexican Mayor who fought cartels assassinated

By Monica Showalter www.americanthinker.com

Assassinations, horribly enough, aren't just confined to the U.S.

But they're done by the same types of evil people, and yesterday, the mayor or Uruapan, in Mexico's Michoacan state, driving distance from Guadalajara, was assassinated in cold blood by Mexico's notorious cartel thugs.

According to the New York Times:

An outspoken mayor in western Mexico who had repeatedly called for a harder line against organized crime was shot and killed on Saturday night while attending a Day of the Dead celebration.

Carlos Manzo, the mayor of Uruapan, had become a thorn in the side of cartels in Michoacán State, where violence among rival criminal groups and with state and federal security forces has exploded.

He often denounced criminal groups for extorting the avocado and lime producers in his city, an economic engine in Michoacán, even vowing to take lethal action against local cartels.

Mr. Manzo was also an uncomfortable figure for Mexico’s federal government. He had criticized President Claudia Sheinbaum’s strategy to curb cartel violence as a failure and demanded more power to fight back.

Mexican press reports say he had repeatedly asked the government for more protection against these monsters and the government refused to give it. The Times report says he did have a 14-person National Guard contingent, which even if it was the requested security, didn't do him much good.

Now he's dead and a message has been sent -- to not cross the cartels, and to not criticize the government. That's ugly stuff.

The Times report says he did make the cartels' lives miserable -- it's a good report full of context which gives us this list of the things he did and the atmosphere in which he operated:

Periodic meetings between military personnel and Mr. Manzo, General Trevilla Trejo said, had resulted in the arrest of dozens of suspects — as well as the seizure of dozens of firearms, more than 50 armored monster trucks and nearly 840 mines, drones and other explosive devices used by cartels.

Michoacán has become a battleground for some of Mexico’s most powerful criminal groups as they fight for control of the drug trade and other criminal enterprises.

Last year, a journalist was fatally shot moments after he interviewed Mr. Manzo in Uruapan. Last month, a prominent lime grower was found dead after denouncing extortion rackets. Mr. García Harfuch said during the news conference that at least one Mexican soldier had been killed during a recent confrontation with cartel members and that two police investigators had been kidnapped.

It's a sad and dismaying story, which one hopes, will discourage Mexican voters from voting for the leftist ruling party until they can end their policies of 'hugs, not bullets' for Mexican cartel members.

The Times notes that Manza criticized the ruling party on these grounds:

Mr. Manzo had been a loud critic of Ms. Sheinbaum’s approach against organized crime and had demanded more help from federal authorities.

His criticism mostly focused on the strategy she has pushed for: prioritizing the use of intelligence and investigation over directly combating crime, as well as ensuring strong coordination among security agencies and addressing the root causes of violence.

Which sounds pretty Kamala-Harris-y, and more to the point, indicates what cartels don't fear and what cartels do fear -- enough to strike back at like cornered rats.

He was nicknamed 'Mexican Bukele' for it, and obviously, the Trump administration would have liked his approach, as undoubtedly, the Mexican public did, too. 

There's one relevant reason why we should care here in the states at this terrible picture: The cartel scum have similarly threatened U.S. federal agents enforcing immigration and drug laws, placing bounties on heads of U.S. agents and keeping databases, quite possibly in alliance with some of their leftist friends.

This is what they do, in atmospheres where no consequences are feared. Do they have that same perception in the U.S. If so, we are in for a rough ride, and President Trump's idea to bomb cartel targets in Mexico suddenly needs a fresh look.