"Violent drug trafficking organizations threaten both the United States and Mexican communities," Vice President Joe Biden said at a ceremony to nominate Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske as the new drug czar. Biden said Kerlikowske would oversee a strategy to improve intelligence sharing and boost interdiction of drugs into the US and guns and cash into Mexico. "It is a strategy we need...in order to bring the situation under control, to protect our people, and to bring about the demise of the Mexican drug cartels," Biden said.

President Barack Obama was briefed March 7 by Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Adm. Mike Mullen about Mexico's drug wars and the need for US assistance. "They have an urgent need," Mullen told reporters in a conference call from his aircraft as he returned from his first official visit to Mexico. "We all have a sense of urgency about this. And so we're all going to push pretty hard to deliver that capability as rapidly as possible."

Nearly 7,000 Mexican soldiers and federal police arrived in Ciudad Juárez this week in a bid to restore order amid an escalating bloody turf war between rival drug cartels. Masked soldiers are patrolling the streets in long convoys of military vehicles and conducting traffic checkpoint. Another 1,500 soldiers are expected to join the 3,500 that rolled into the northern border city earlier this week. "They'll stay as long as necessary," said Juárez police spokesman Jaime Torres Valadez. Surveillance cameras will be installed throughout the city to help police stem executions and assassinations in the streets. (CNN, March 6)

An unexploded bomb forced the evacuation of the airport in in Mexico's violence-torn Ciudad Juárez Feb. 25, while a bomb threat cleared the border city's courthouse. Airport personnel and travelers returned to the airport three hours after the explosive device was found by police, an airport official said. No explosives were found at the courthouse. At a hotel three blocks from the courthouse, four federal government ministers were holding a security meeting about the unprecedented violence in the city. (AFP, Feb. 25)

After eight years in a maximum-security Mexican prison, convicted drug kingpin Miguel Caro Quintero AKA "Michael Jackson" was extradited to the US Feb. 25. With his brother Rafael Caro Quintero, the extradited kingpin is said to have led the Guadalajara Cartel, Mexico's top crime machine in the 1980s and forerunner of today's warring Tijuana Cartel and Sinaloa Cartel. Rafael, arrested in Costa Rica in 1985, is serving time in Mexico for the 1985 killing of US Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena. (AFP, El Universal, Feb. 25)

Federal, state, and local law enforcement in California, Minnesota, and Maryland arrested 50 people Feb. 25 who the US Justice Department claims are operatives of Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel and related criminal enterprises. Authorities also confiscated $59 million in drug money, 12,000 kilos of cocaine, 1,200 pounds of methamphetamine, 1.3 million Ecstasy pills and more than 160 weapons. The Justice Department said federal agents arrested more than 750 alleged cartel operatives in the last 21 months as a part of the same investigation, "Operation Xcellerator." Attorney General Eric Holder, making the announcement, said: "We can provide our communities the safety and the security that they deserve only by confronting these dangerous cartels head-on, without reservation. We can do that and we will do that. These cartels will be destroyed." (KDBC, El Paso, Phoenix Business Journal, Feb. 25)

On Feb. 16 some 150 people greeted the brothers Antonio and Héctor Cerezo Contreras as they left a medium security prison in Morelos state, close to Mexico City. The Cerezos were arrested in 2001 along with their brother Alejandro after three small bombs exploded at Mexico City banks. Many people believe the arrests were connected to reports that their parents, Francisco Cerezo Quiroz and Emilia Contreras, are leaders in the rebel Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR). The brothers were never charged in the bombing but convicted of weapons and explosives possession. Alejandro was released in February 2005 after a court overturned his conviction.

Some 500,000 Mexican bus and truck drivers and owners held a one-day strike on Feb. 16, slowing freight deliveries and forcing many passengers to find alternative transportation in 17 of the country's 32 entities (31 states and the Federal District). The strike was called by the Alliance of Multimodal Transport, recently formed by about 200 transport associations. The alliance is demanding that the federal government freeze diesel fuel prices at 6.31 pesos (about $0.43) a liter; the fuel is distributed by the state-owned Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) oil company.