BLOODSHED ON THE BORDER

Life in Juarez, where drug violence has created the equivalent of a
failed state on our doorstep.

Late one night in January, an ambulance escorted by five unmarked
squad cars pulled up to Thomason Hospital in El Paso, Texas. Out
leaped more than a dozen armed federal agents to protect the
patient--Fernando Lozano Sandoval, a commander with the Chihuahua
State Investigations Agency. He'd been pumped full of bullets just
across the Mexican border in Ciudad Juarez by gunmen believed to have
been hired by a drug cartel. Lozano Sandoval's sole hope of survival
was the medical team at Thomason, the only level-one trauma center
for nearly 300 miles. U.S. authorities took no chances; in Mexico,
assassins regularly raid hospitals to finish off their prey.
Throughout Lozano Sandoval's three-week treatment at Thomason (which
proved successful), the Americans funneled visitors through metal
detectors, posted guards outside the commander's room and deployed
SWAT teams armed with assault rifles around the hospital's perimeter.
Officers "were ready for war if it should go that route," says El
Paso Police Chief Greg Allen.

Lozano Sandoval was the first in a string of victims of Mexico's
spiraling violence to show up at Thomason this year. Twice more,
authorities beefed up security at the hospital to the strictest
level--in June, when a high-risk Mexican national was brought in
anonymously, and in July, when two Mexican police officials were
airlifted to the border and driven across. Beyond those cases, 43
additional patients wounded in Juarez have been treated at Thomason
this year, including a 1-year-old girl who was pinned against a wall
by a truck involved in a drug-related shooting. All the patients have
been dual citizens of Mexico and the United States or have had the
proper documentation to enter the country, says a Thomason
spokeswoman. Yet legal issues are beside the point for many El
Pasoans. A recent posting in an online forum on border violence
summed up the fear of many: "It is only a matter of time before the
Mexican drug dealers send assassination squads over to Thomason
hospital." The traffickers already occasionally kidnap Mexicans who
have fled north to escape threats of violence in Juarez.

The border between El Paso (population: 600,000) and Juarez
(population: 1.5 million) is the most menacing spot along America's
southern underbelly. On one side is the second-safest city of its
size in the United States (after Honolulu), with only 15 murders so
far in 2008. On the other is a slaughterhouse ruled by drug lords
where the death toll this year is more than 1,300 and counting. "I
don't think the average American has any idea of what's going on
immediately south of our border," says Kevin Kozak, acting special
agent in charge of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement's office
of investigations in El Paso. "It's almost beyond belief." Juarez
looks a lot like a failed state, with no government entity capable of
imposing order and a profusion of powerful organizations that kill
and plunder at will. It's as if the United States faced another
lawless Waziristan--except this one happens to be right at the
nation's doorstep.

The drug war in Juarez escalated dramatically at the start of the
year when the Sinaloa cartel--which originated in the Pacific state
of the same name--began trying to muscle in on the Juarez cartel's
turf. The focus of the fight, which has also drawn in the formidable
Gulf cartel, is the city's prized "plaza," or drug-smuggling
corridor. Mexican President Felipe Calderon responded to the turmoil
by dispatching 3,000 balaclava-clad soldiers and federal police to
the state of Chihuahua, where Juarez is located, earlier this year.
Yet the narcotraffickers, with their vast arsenal of high-powered
weaponry, haven't shied from taking them on. (Or trying to buy them
off: the cartels have infiltrated virtually every law-enforcement
institution in the country, from local police departments to the
Mexican attorney general's office.) The result has been an orgy of
violence, growing more public and more spectacular by the day.
Beheadings, burnings, dismemberments and mutilations have become routine.

On a recent weekday night, reports of yet another execution in Juarez
crackled over a police scanner. Two brothers had been shot in a
squatter neighborhood called Mexico 68. At the crime scene, one of
them lay dead on the sidewalk, his red T shirt pulled up to expose a
chest riddled with 9mm bullets. The other, who had barely survived,
was evacuated by ambulance. A group of teenage girls straining
against the yellow police tape recounted what they'd seen. A silver
GMC Yukon SUV roared up to the victims' home, one of the rear tinted
windows was lowered and a gunman emptied his pistol. "It was the
Aztecas," one of the girls whispered, referring to the Barrio Azteca
gang, which got its start in El Paso and is reportedly allied with
the Juarez cartel. The group "controls and terrifies" the
neighborhood in its battle against affiliates of the Sinaloa cartel,
the girl said. "Shhh!" one of her friends cautioned. "It's the
truth," said the girl, who requested anonymity for safety reasons.

The cartels operate largely with impunity. Police who defy them are
eliminated, as in the case of Oscar Campoya, a municipal cop who was
shot dead by assassins in March as he left a local precinct. Despite
the presence of several witnesses, including fellow officers, there
have been no arrests (only 2 percent of violent murders in Mexico are
solved, according to government figures). Mario Campoya, the victim's
brother, says Oscar had been pressured relentlessly by other members
of the force to cooperate with the drug gangs, but had refused.

To try to remedy things, Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes demanded that the
city's police department clean house earlier this year. More than 400
cops have been dismissed, and every officer must now undergo drug
tests and background checks. "Corruption is so strong within the
force, there are so many inside deals, that the criminals hardly
worry about getting caught," says Reyes. "I realize that firing cops
and turning them out on the street is dangerous, but it's worse to
have them within the police force." Next on his agenda: to acquire
better equipment for law enforcement and redouble enlistment efforts.
Large billboards around the city feature a black-masked,
machine-gun-toting officer along with a boldface message: JUAREZ NEEDS YOU!

YET authorities face a ruthless enemy. Cartel capos have made clear
they'll go to whatever length necessary to eliminate opponents. In
early November, armed men stormed a Red Cross operating room in
Juarez, ordered the doctors and nurses performing surgery on a
25-year-old gunshot victim to leave and then killed him. Oscar
Varela, head of the city's Hospital General, says high-risk patients
are now treated in a restricted, bulletproof area guarded by cops.

Violence has long plagued Juarez. This, after all, is the city where
hundreds of women were mysteriously murdered in the 1990s. But
recently the bloodshed has taken on an anarchic quality. The absence
of authority has opened the way for hordes of criminal gangs--some of
them offshoots of the cartels; others, bands of opportunistic street
thugs--to carve out specific rackets, like kidnapping, human
trafficking and car theft (more than 1,500 vehicles were reported
stolen in October alone). Another burgeoning activity is extortion.
Business owners are ordered to pay as much as $2,000 per month in
protection money; if they refuse, their establishments are torched
with Molotov cocktails. That happens regularly; the city is dotted
with shuttered restaurants and clubs still blackened with soot.
Juarez "is a lawless territory," says Sergio Gonzalez, a Mexico
City-based expert on the border region. "And I'm afraid it might only
get worse."

That prospect stokes alarm among many residents in El Paso because of
the city's close bond with Juarez. The two places are deeply
interwoven by culture, trade and geography. Stand atop a hill on
either side of the border, and the urban tapestry below unfolds like
a single metropolis with a barely visible divide at the river. Many
area residents hold dual citizenship and have relatives in both
countries. Each day, 200,000 people cross the Rio Grande along one of
five bridges connecting the two cities. Executives of the Mexican
maquiladoras (factories) who live in El Paso head south, while
juarenses shopping for sneakers and stereos head north. Mexican
nationals spend about $2.2 billion per year in El Paso, and before
the bloodbath began, Americans fueled a vibrant tourism economy in Juarez.

Then there are the illicit links. Going back to Prohibition, Juarez
has helped sate the ravenous American appetite for contraband. These
days, the West Texas corridor is a key shipping and distribution
center for drugs destined for various markets across the United
States. According to a recent report by the Justice Department's
National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), 6 cartels, 129 midlevel
organizations and 606 local groups engage in drug-trafficking
activities in the binational region. As part of an elaborate, highly
compartmentalized operation, some outfits specialize in
transportation, others in enforcement and still others in retail
sales. Guided by spotters on the Mexican side equipped with
binoculars and cell phones, many shipments cross the bridges into El
Paso alongside legitimate commerce. Once in the city, the goods are
deposited in stash houses before being sent elsewhere.

Given the permeability of the border, it's not hard to imagine
violence seeping over as well. American officials insist that's
highly unlikely. The cartels "cannot operate here with impunity,"
says ICE's Kozak. "One reason we don't see that type of violence here
is that it would never be tolerated." El Paso is crawling with
federal law-enforcement agents--including representatives of ICE, the
FBI, Customs and Border Protection and the Drug Enforcement
Administration--and all are monitoring events to the south like
hawks. An ICE-led, multiagency Border Enforcement Security Task Force
that launched in El Paso in 2006 and specializes in criminal
organizations has arrested more than 1,500 individuals and seized six
tons of narcotics as well as countless weapons. Tangling with
American authorities, says Kozak, "is not good for [the cartels'] business."

True enough, but the United States is less insulated than some might
think. According to the NDIC report, the increased bloodshed in
Juarez "could spill into the [West Texas] region," since it raises
the threat that drug-trafficking organizations will "confront
law-enforcement officers in the United States who seek to disrupt
these DTOs' smuggling operations." (The report cites several armed
encounters that took place on the American side in 2006.) The
cartels' tentacles already reach deep into El Paso. Local banks are
full of drug money, says Claudio Morales, who heads special
operations at the El Paso County Sheriff's Office. "We're one of the
poorest regions along the border, yet El Paso has some of the largest
cash transactions" in the country. Many cartel henchmen are known to
have moved their families to the Texas city to insulate them from the
carnage back home--though that still leaves the families vulnerable
to kidnappers. Kids whose relatives have been killed in the violence
are showing up at the Children's Grief Center of El Paso. "We have a
lot of kids that are really traumatized," says executive director
Laura Olague. "There's a lot of secrecy, or fear, that whoever killed
their parents or loved ones would come look for them."

Authorities, too, worry that narco leaders could order hits on city
residents. "We've had that type of intel," says Kozak. Among the
prime targets could be Mexican cops, who are fleeing the violence in
greater numbers and seeking political asylum in the United States
(such requests are rarely granted, since the laws are aimed at
victims of state-sponsored persecution). For now, drug organizations
prefer to abduct their quarry in the United States and spirit them
across the border before harming or killing them. Kozak says that in
the past year, a half-dozen kidnappings tied to narcotraffickers have
taken place in El Paso. One of them involved Miguel Rueda, a
convicted smuggler who failed to pay a drug debt. According to a
criminal complaint filed in U.S. district court, Rueda was told to
meet a former accomplice, Ricardo Calleros-Godinez, at a gas station
in El Paso in February. After picking up Rueda, Calleros-Godinez
allegedly pulled a gun on him, duct-taped his eyes, mouth, hands and
legs, and drove him to a house in Juarez. Four or five days later,
Rueda reportedly settled the debt through a transfer of family land
and was freed. (He's now in Texas state prison serving a sentence on
cocaine charges.)

The criminal group that perhaps best illustrates the porousness of
the border is the Barrio Azteca gang. Founded in the 1980s in state
prison in El Paso, the organization now counts thousands of members
in Mexico and the United States and is believed to be affiliated with
the Juarez cartel. Authorities say the gang has a penchant for
brutality and engages in everything from extortion to trafficking to
assassination. The Barrio Aztecas are "the wild card in all this,"
says Samuel Camargo, a supervisory special agent with the FBI in El
Paso. "That probably has the most potential for violence here"--and
it's an American creation. In January, the U.S. Attorney's Office
brought racketeering charges against more than a dozen of the gang's
members, and a trial began in early November.

All the talk of bloodletting has made El Pasoans warier than ever of
their southern neighbors. Amity has given way to division. The turn
of events anguishes Veronica Escobar, an El Paso County commissioner.
Her office window overlooks Juarez, where she used to buy Christmas
presents as a child and where, until this year, she used to celebrate
her birthday. "I feel so sad that our sister city is struggling
through this period in their history that's horrific." Just a few
miles across the river in Juarez, a carpenter named Francisco (who
wouldn't give his last name) lives on a hill from which he can see
the lights of downtown El Paso twinkle at night. He yearns to take
his children north one day. "I've had enough of this," he says.
"Enough with these gangs and their ruthless rats." Residents on both
sides of the border share his disgust--and his dread that the
violence will never let up.