A "major gunbattle" between drug traffickers and Mexican federal police broke out Saturday evening in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, just 30 yards from the U.S. border at El Paso, Texas, causing U.S. authorities to cordon off a section of the city, according to a U.S. Border Patrol spokesman. Three police officers were injured and one armed suspect was killed, federal police spokesman Ramon Salinas said. First reports of gunshots came in from border agents around 7 p.m. (9 p.m. ET), U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Ramiro Cordero told CNN. "The gunbattle is still going on right now," Cordero said 30 minutes after the incident began, just south of the University of Texas at El Paso. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries on the U.S. side of the border, Cordero said. U.S. authorities blocked off a section of Paisano Street, which runs parallel to the Rio Grande. The incident comes less than two months after shots fired from a gunbattle originating in Juarez crossed into El Paso and hit City Hall, damaging the building...more

A bullet that flew through a building at the University of Texas at El Paso may have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border during a shootout between drug traffickers and Mexican federal police, authorities said. University President Diana Natalicio said Sunday a bullet struck Bell Hall sometime Saturday evening. No injuries were reported at the building. Natalicio said campus police determined a bullet went through the glass panel of the building's door and lodged in an office door frame. "This appears to be the only stray bullet to have struck the campus," Natalicio said. "There is no evidence to suggest that UTEP was specifically targeted." Natalicio said the university will consult with law enforcement and government officials about possible further security precautions...more

El Pasoans living on the border are looking nervously at their neighbors in Juarez tonight. They're wondering when the next gun battle will send them ducking for cover. Jesus Delgado has lived in his home on Portifio Diaz street for 38 years and he says he is the most scared he's ever been for himself and his family. "I have grandchildren coming every weekend. It's becoming a concern now. I'll try to keep them out of my backyard and keep them inside," says Delgado who enjoys family barbecues in his front yard every Sunday. Arlene Contreras has a message for those committing crimes in Juarez. "You've taken a one time family environment to now where people are afraid to come out of their homes and you're wrong to do that to that neighborhood, to your country and to mine."...more 

Residents in some areas of West El Paso remained on edge Sunday after witnessing a massive gunfight just yards away, across the border near the UTEP campus. "I've never experienced anything like this. It's kind of shocking, but its reality and it's a sad thing going on over there,” said Ray Campos, a West El Paso resident. El Paso police and Border Patrol officials have said no rounds have been discovered on the U.S. side. No injuries were reported in El Paso. UTEP political science professor and border expert Tony Payan said the incident likely will not be the last. "West of Ciudad Juarez overlooking downtown and UTEP are some of the most dangerous areas in Ciudad Juarez," Payan said. The incident comes just months after bullets riddled El Paso’s City Hall Complex. Those stray bullets came from a gunfight just blocks from where Saturday’s incident took place. No injuries were reported on the U.S. side. "I think the next step, and presumably a very bad one, if someone were hit on this side, and there would be nothing you could do," Payan said...more

Two Juárez maquiladora workers were shot to death Saturday afternoon in front of their assembly plant, Mexican authorities said. The employees, both men, worked for Eaton Inc. in the Omega Industrial Park, west of Elias Plutarco Calles street. Authorities identified one of them as Aaron Aguilar Salazar, 35. The second victim was not been identified. Police said the two men were about to enter their workplace when unidentified armed suspects suddenly opened fire on them...more

More than a half-million dollars was found this week stuffed into the spare tire of a truck headed into Mexico from El Paso, federal agents said Thursday. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents on Wednesday were inspecting cars crossing the border into Ciudad Juarez, just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, when they found $530,170 hidden in the spare tire of a Chevy 2500 truck, CBP spokesman Roger Maier said. The driver, Francisco Castaneda Castillo, was arrested on a charge of currency smuggling for failing to report that he had more than $10,000 in cash. Maier said the case is being investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Castaneda, 40, a Mexican national from Juarez, is being held in the El Paso County jail...more

They could have been videos from the Middle East or Central Asia. But the images flashed to the crowd at Texas Congressman Silvestre Reyes' annual border security conference at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) showed graphic scenes from the so-called narco war in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. After giving a content advisory, the presenter, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official Alonzo Peña, started the show. In rapid succession, viewers variously saw a pre-decapitation interrogation of one presumed cartel member by rivals, a convoy of 50 vehicles with CDG (Gulf Cartel) insignias calmly passing through a highway toll booth, a squad of gunmen armed with a grenade-launcher and a rocket-launcher carrying out an attack in the town of Camargo, and the body of assassinated 2010 gubernatorial candidate Rodolfo Torre laying on the ground next to his likewise unfortunate companions. "It's barbaric and it's extreme," summed up Peña, who serves as ICE's Deputy Assistant Secretary for Operations...more

Few issues can be counted on to exacerbate raw feelings as reliably as illegal immigration, and, for reasons no one has to be told, never more so than now. That fact has everything to do with the power of the National Geographic Channel's "Border Wars" series, soon to begin its second season, and the source of the high tension that accompanies every action and word in these documentary close-ups of U.S. law-enforcement agents battling drug and arms traffic and, unforgettably, the smugglers with their steady flow of human cargo. The series kicks off with a special preview on Aug. 29th (9-10 p.m. ET) called "Death on the Rio Grande," then moves to its regular slot (Wednesdays, 9-10 pm) beginning Sept. 1, with an episode titled "Checkpoint Texas."...more

Four decapitated and mutilated corpses were strung from a bridge in a popular getaway outside the Mexican capital on Sunday, the latest atrocity as the country battles an escalating drug war. The bodies of the four young men were discovered early on Sunday, hung upside down by their feet from a bridge near a wealthy area of Cuernavaca, a leafy city about an hour outside Mexico City, where many of the nation's elite own homes. The victims' genitals, index fingers and heads had been cut off, according to a statement from the attorney general's office in Morelos state, which includes Cuernavaca...more

Six city police officers were arrested Friday in the killing of a mayor in northern Mexico, as the country's escalating drug violence targets more public officials. The suspects included the officer who guarded the house where Santiago Mayor Edelmiro Cavazos was seized on Sunday. The officer had said he was kidnapped with the mayor and later freed unharmed. Adrian de la Garza, head of the police investigations agency in Nuevo Leon state, told a news conference that the police officers received 6,000 pesos ($700) per month to cooperate with criminals "in different ways and different affairs," with some allegedly acting as lookouts. "They were employees" of a criminal gang, De la Garza said at a news conference where he displayed security-camera footage from Cavazo's house, showing armed kidnappers arriving at the home on Sunday night in five SUVs. Nuevo Leon state Attorney General Alejandro Garza y Garza said the officers confessed to being involved in the Cavazos' killing, though some declared their innocence while being presented to the press. "We are still looking for others who were involved as well," Garza y Garza said...more

On each side of a towering West Texas stretch of the $2.4 billion border fence designed to block people from illegally entering the country, there are two metal footbridges, clear paths into the United States from Mexico. The footpaths that could easily guide illegal immigrants and smugglers across the Rio Grande without getting wet seem to be there because of what amounts to federal linguistics. While just about anyone would call them bridges, the U.S.-Mexico group that owns them calls them something else. "Technically speaking it's not a bridge, it's a grade control structure," said Sally Spener, spokeswoman for the International Boundary and Water Commission, which maintains the integrity of the 1,200-mile river border between the U.S. and Mexico. The structures under the spans help prevent the river -- and therefore the international border -- from shifting. Whatever they're called, there are fresh sneaker tracks on the structures -- indicating they're being used as passages into the country. In a border tour with the Hudspeth County Sheriff's Office in March, Associated Press journalists happened upon the bridge moments after a man with a bicycle used the bridge to cross the river from Mexico. The border crosser, who told authorities he was only trying to fish from the north side of the river, was promptly arrested. "If he can do it, so can drug cartels with loads of narcotics of any kind," Hudspeth County Sheriff's Lt. Robert Wilson said. "Even a terrorist could pass here with weapons of mass destruction and be in the United States and up on the interstate and gone in a short time." It's unclear how often the bridge is used, but it's common to see people on the Mexican side lingering around the crossing or others playing in the river in the area...more

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