-By Warner Todd Huston
A few days ago we talked about how Mexican drug cartels are recruiting members of the U.S. military to act as hit men inside and outside the US. But members or former members of our armed forces aren’t the only ones the cartels are hiring. They are also combing through our own criminal base. But, frighteningly, they are hiring American teenagers, too.
We talked about the several members of the U.S. military that have been convicted of murders related to the Mexican drug cartels. The military isn’t the only fertile ground the cartels are finding willing criminal associates.
One recent story reported in August revealed the tale of Rosalio Reta, now 24, who first started killing people for the Los Zetas drug cartel when he was only 13.
Reta grew up in Laredo, Texas and was recruited to the drug cartels along with his friend Gabriel Cardona, now 26.
Both are now in prison facing life sentences for murder.
In 2009, The New York Times also wrote of this growing threat:
According to a New York Times article from 2009, most of the American youths were recruited in a Nuevo Laredo disco called Eclipse, situated in the main square just across one of two bridges that connect the two Laredos.
Teenagers go there to drink and dance, but cartel members lurk there, keeping an eye out for possible recruits.
Detective Roberto Garcia of the Laredo Police Department told the New York Times, “The cartels – they just seduce you. They wave that power, that cash, the cars, the easy money. And these kids all have that romantic notion they are going to live forever.”
The cartels are also recruiting in America’s prisons by enlisting members of prison gangs both inside and outside the prisons.
Brandon Darby has been covering this story for some time.
“The matter should come as no surprise to anyone following the Mexican cartels’ exploitation of the porous and unsecured U.S./Mexico border,” Darby wrote on August 7. “Mexican cartels have been sending their own operatives into the U.S. illegally to run operations; they have begun manufacturing their own methamphetamine within American borders; likely cartel victims’ corpses have been dug up from U.S. soil as far north as Oregon; and U.S.-based prison gangs have been found to be operating as domestic foot soldiers and enforcers in the Mexican cartels’ U.S. operations.”
As Darby noted, one of our problems is the open and porous border. These criminals can merely walk across the border without any repercussions whatever. This will only get worse as amnesty continues among our clueless politicians in Washington.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, MrConservative.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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