FBI: EL PASO GANGS COULD JOIN CARTEL POWER STRUGGLE

EL PASO -- Two gangs could be on a collision course in El Paso, says
an FBI specialist.

Marco Cordero, a special agent with the FBI's gang task force, said
the Barrio Azteca and Los Surenos gangs may start a power struggle.

"The information on the streets is that Los Surenos may be aligning
with the Chapo Guzman cartel," Cordero said in an interview.

The alliance between Los Surenos and the Sinaloa cartel, led by
Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, makes Barrio Azteca and Los Surenos
natural enemies, Cordero said.

Many in law enforcement believe Barrio Azteca members are fighting on
the side of the Juarez cartel against the Sinaloa cartel. More than
5,000 homicides have occurred in Juarez since 2008.

"We see two possibilities," Cordero said. "They can work in harmony or
they can do what the cartels are doing in Juarez, fight for the
control of the plaza, in this case El Paso."

Detective Andres Sanchez, an El Paso police gang investigator, said
the two gangs have never been aligned.

"The information that we have is that they are not getting along,"
Sanchez said.

He said several confrontations in El Paso involving Surenos and
Aztecas have occurred within the last year and a half, including
assaults and stabbings.

Sanchez said Los Surenos do not have a leader and are not as organized
as the Barrio Azteca gang. Los Surenos are under the California
Mexican Mafia, a prison gang that originated in the 1950s.

Los Surenos are broken into at least 200 different cliques, or gangs,
scattered throughout the United States, Sanchez said.

He said El Paso authorities have identified between 15 and 20 Surenos
groups who moved to El Paso between the late 1980s and early '90s.

"Authorities have confirmed the presence of about 400 Surenos gang
members in El Paso," Sanchez said.

Sanchez said these groups are mostly attracted to border cities
because of the drug trade.

He said it was common to see street gangs operating with cartels to
smuggle and sell drugs in the United States.

Cordero said the Safe Streets Gang Task Force, made up of local, state
and federal law enforcement agencies, is working to stay ahead of gangs.

The community has to be willing to work with authorities to ensure
that El Paso continues to be safe, Cordero said.

"We are only as safe as people want us to be. We are going to do our
part, but we don't have as many eyes and ears as they have," he said.

Recently, the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, El Paso police,
the Sheriff's Office and other law enforcement agencies carried out
Operation Knockdown, an effort to elicit information from Barrio
Azteca members about an unsolved high-profile triple-homicide on March
13 in Juarez.

The victims were Lesley Enriquez Redelfs, 35, who worked for the U.S.
Consulate in Juarez, and her husband, Arthur Redelfs, 34, a detention
officer for the Sheriff's Office in El Paso. Also killed was Juarez
resident Jorge Alberto Ceniceros Salcido, 37, whose wife, Hilda
Antillon Jimenez, also worked for the U.S. Consulate.

Operation Knockdown led to the arrests of 54 Barrio Azteca members and
alleged associates. On March 23, Juarez authorities arrested Ricardo
"Chino" Valles de la Rosa, 45, a former Barrio Azteca gang member from
El Paso, suspected of other killings but not the consulate murders.

Mexican officials said Valles claimed the target of the attack was
Arthur Redelfs. Valles purportedly said the detention officer had
mistreated gang members at the El Paso County Jail. El Paso County
Sheriff Richard Wiles said the allegation was untrue and called
Redelfs a "model officer."