DRUG CARTEL'S TENTACLES STRETCH ACROSS THE U.S.

WASHINGTON: Mexican drug cartels are shipping more than massive
quantities of drugs north of the border. Increasingly, they're also
exporting bloody mayhem.

Seeking to stem the growing influence of the Sinaloa cartel within the
United States, federal agents arrested more than 50 suspects in raids
Tuesday night and Wednesday morning at different ends of the country.
The raids capped a 21-month operation by the Drug Enforcement
Administration that rounded up 755 suspects and seized more than $59
million in criminal proceeds.

"These cartels will be destroyed," Attorney General Eric Holder said
Wednesday at a press conference announcing the arrests.

The overnight roundup by DEA and state and local police included
arrests in California, Minnesota and the Maryland suburbs of Washington.

Holder called the cartels a threat to national security, adding, "They
are lucrative, they are violent, and they are operated with stunning
planning and precision."

The attorney general also suggested that re-instituting a U.S. ban on
the sale of assault weapons would help reduce the bloodshed in Mexico,
where last year 6,000 people were killed in drug-related violence.

Increasingly, U.S. law enforcement officials see cartel violence spill
into the United States, often as far away as Phoenix and Atlanta.

As he discussed the problem, Holder spoke briefly in Spanish, pledging
continued cooperation with Mexican authorities who have increasingly
come under direct fire from the heavily armed drug gangs.

U.S. officials have a responsibility to make sure Mexican police "are
not fighting substantial numbers of weapons, or fighting against
AK-47s or other similar kinds of weapons that have been flowing to
Mexico," Holder said.

DEA Acting Administrator Michele Leonhart said the raid showed the
tentacles of the crime syndicate had spread far across the U.S. -- not
just to major cities like Washington and Los Angeles, but to quiet,
smaller communities like Stow, Ohio, which the cartel allegedly used
as a conduit to funnel drugs around the country.

Leonhart said the Sinaloa cartel has become one of the largest
organized crime operations in the world.

"They've been hit hard, and their ability to spread death and
destruction has been diminished" by the arrests, Leonhart said.

Last year, a sweeping corruption probe led to the arrest of a dozen
high-ranking Mexican officials accused of collaborating with the
Sinaloa group or its one-time ally, the Beltran Leyva gang. Those
arrested include former drug czar Noe Ramirez, who is accused of
taking $450,000 from Sinaloa.

The U.S. government has praised President Felipe Calderon's government
for rooting out corruption at the top.

Yet over the many months the DEA's investigation proceeded, cartel
violence on both sides of the border increased substantially.

The State Department issued a travel warning Friday, urging U.S.
citizens traveling to Mexico to be aware of the increased threat of
violence and kidnapping, especially along the border. The situation in
Ciudad Juarez, which lies across the border from El Paso, is of
special concern, the State Department cautioned.