Guatemala troops tied to border drug war

Express-News
Aug. 18, 2005

The Homeland Security Department is warning South Texas law enforcement officers, mainly Border Patrol agents, about the possibility of rogue Guatemalan commandos who may be training drug cartel gunmen on a ranch south of McAllen in Mexico.

The July 28 intelligence alert is unsubstantiated, but officials said they now routinely circulate such reports if they can't rule them out.

It states about 30 men once part of the Guatemalan "Kaibiles" special forces unit are reported to be training members of the Zetas, a paramilitary enforcement arm of the Matamoros-based Gulf Cartel, between Rio Bravo and Villa Hermosa in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas.

"The Zetas alone are a formidable group and pose an ominous threat," according to the six-page warning obtained by the San Antonio Express-News. "If this information is substantiated, the addition of former or rogue Guatemala 'Kaibiles' soldiers may only worsen this threat."

It continued: "The purpose of this alert is to inform Border Patrol agents about possible Zeta activities and how it may affect (the patrol's) operations and safety."

The warning was circulated as a precaution, federal officials said. It could be a false alarm, but the far-fetched sometimes has turned out to be real in Mexico's ongoing drug cartel wars, raising uncertainty among law enforcement officials.

In Nuevo Laredo alone, the dead this year include a police chief, a city councilman and so many police officers it's hard to keep count.

In one night, 44 kidnapped people were rescued, then quickly detained on suspicion of working for drug gangs. The entire city police force was suspended and disarmed for a time and 41 officers arrested after a clash with Mexican federal agents.

But rumors sometimes are just that. A suspected mass grave on the outskirts of the city, which is across the border from Laredo, didn't pan out. Nor did a highly publicized FBI warning in February about a threat that 250 members of the Gulf Cartel planned to kidnap and kill two U.S. agents in Texas.

The information couldn't be corroborated and the FBI retracted the warning.

Officials also scurried after a Mexican report said the Zetas had obtained surface-to-air missiles off the Nicaraguan black market.

The latest warning says ex-members of Guatemalan "counter-guerilla special forces" may have been recruited by the Zetas to "aid in the conduct of illegal activities in Mexico and the United States."

The information came from an FBI analyst with the McAllen Intelligence Center, an information clearinghouse run by the FBI with representatives of various law enforcement agencies that monitor the drug trade.

The head of the intelligence center, FBI agent Manuel Perez Jr., declined to reveal the source of the report, but said it was enough to merit an alert.

"It's raw, unverified information, but what was important for us — especially in the wake of 9-11 — any raw, unverified information that we think has some potential officer-safety implications or national security aspects, we get it out to the intelligence community to see whether or not that is going to precipitate other agencies to say, 'We have additional sources here that can confirm that,'" he said.

"Right now, we haven't received any type of confirmation," Perez added.

It might not be true, but "nobody wants to be the one who sat on it a week or two waiting to see if it's true," said a senior federal law enforcement official on the border who was aware of the warning and who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"Now, virtually everything gets out. We sometimes refer to it as trying to drink water out of a fire hose," he added.

Tensions have run high the past two years among law enforcement agencies as a war for drug shipping routes into several South Texas cities such as Laredo, McAllen, Roma, and Brownsville, continues. Some 800 people in Mexico are believed to have been killed this year as a result of the war, largely between the Gulf Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel led by Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán.

The areas are controlled by the Gulf Cartel and its Zetas, originally a group of 31 highly trained Mexican army commandos who switched from counter-drug operations to hiring themselves out as the cartel's muscle, according to U.S. government sources. Today, the group has grown much larger and has spawned imitators.

According to the July 28 warning, new recruits "have bolstered Los Zetas ranks within the last 18 months." It added, "They are allegedly more violent than their leaders and may be behind much of the drug-related turmoil occurring along the border."

The warning states the Zetas employ military tactics and are blamed for "hundreds of violent drug-related murders, the execution of journalists, and have committed murder in Dallas, McAllen and Laredo."

The warning mentions other recent reports, including information that the Zetas may have "directed smugglers to engage law enforcement personnel or face execution."

It states "U.S. law enforcement have reported bounties offered by Los Zetas of between $30,000 and $50,000 for the killing of Border Patrol agents and other law enforcement officers."

San Antonio-based FBI spokesman Rene Salinas said the information hadn't been confirmed.

Border Patrol headquarters in Washington wouldn't comment on the warning, but noted that risks go with the job. Four agents have been killed since March, 2003, all in accidents.

The last agent to be killed by gunfire was Alexander Kirpnick, 28, in 1998 near Nogales, Ariz., by drug smugglers.

Patrol spokesman Mario Villarreal said rumors about bounties placed on officers have circulated in the past, adding: "This type of information is a concern not only to U.S. Customs and Border Protection but to our partners in law enforcement that work closely with us along our nation's border."

The name of the elite Guatemalan unit, accused of human rights abuses during Guatemala's civil war in the 1980s, comes from Kaibil Balam, a Mayan leader who avoided capture during the Spanish conquest.

According to a Web site about the unit, its members wear maroon berets and have the motto: "If I advance, follow me. If I stop, urge me on. If I retreat, kill me!"