VDARE.com’s readers are willing to go to lengths that the Main Stream Media’s writers can’t or won’t go: one has established that the “Mayberry” perp was indeed an immigrant, maybe illegal.

Reader John J. Pershing (e-mail him) writes

Note that the NC Dept. of Corrections mug sheet on Chavez Gonzales indicates: “Detainer:-Y” That means that there was an INS detainer placed on this guy at some point between his original arrest for kidnapping and his illegal release on probation (people on probation are supposed to obey federal and state laws, IA’s are ipso facto probation violators as soon as their probation intake interviews are conducted) as the second part of his “split sentence”. A “split sentence” in NC is a ruse that allows judges to dodge the abolition of parole in NC under the “Truth In Sentencing Act” and “Structured Sentence Act”.

and later writes:

Just got off the phone with Lt. Shelton regarding our boy’s lodging history in the Surry County lock up.

First stay (under the name of Marcos Gonzalez Chavez anyway) was in 2001 for his felony child kidnapping charge which got him into the NC prison system with an INS detainer as previously pointed out.

Next was in 2006 for a little less than 30 days and a guilty plea in court for no operator’s license arrest–released on time served as sentence.

Again on 6/06/06 for a parole violation. (from his child kidnapping conviction split sentence)

And now.

Gonzalez Chevez told Surry County detention intake officers that he was born in Mexico on this arrest. ICE has not issued a detainer yet. As of a few minutes ago Chavez Gonzalez has not received any visitors since his transfer from Virginia. I didn’t ask, but my guess is that his first appearance in Surry County Court will be today and he’ll get a court appointed defense attorney.

P.S.–Lt. Shelton is an affable fellow with a good sense of humor. It took him about 10 minutes to get to the phone because he was dealing with some sort of computer control problem on the sally port gates. I remarked that it sure was quite a leap from “one bullet” Barney getting locked in a cell by Otis the drunk to having computer problems with the sally port. He got a kick out of that.

Unintended humor from the Christian Science Monitor with its headline [Drug violence tarnishes Mexico's international image,February 25, 2009]and earnest explanation of how Mexico is no longer considered a safe and beautiful tropical spot. Who knew?

Mexico has an image problem. It has long been internal – with newspaper headlines and nightly news broadcasting the menacing notes, severed heads, and bullet-riddled bodies that are the byproducts of a deadly drug war raging across the country.

But now Mexico’s vicious reputation has gone international.

In the past week, international newscasts have focused on protests along the US-Mexican border against soldiers battling drug gangs, which officials say were organized by drug gangs themselves. Then a chilling note left for the police chief of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico’s most violent city, made headlines around the globe: Step down, it stated, or one police officer will be killed every two days.

Hours later, Roberto Orduna resigned after a police officer and jail guard were murdered and left with signs on their bodies that said more people would be killed until he stepped down.

Now the US State Department has issued a new travel advisory, warning of “large firefights” across the country.

“Recent Mexican Army and police confrontations with drug cartels have resembled small-unit combat, with cartels employing automatic weapons and grenades,” it reads.

The Feb. 20 State Department travel advisory does indeed contain some hairy details… (more…)

While most of the MSM is fixated with Israel’s efforts to deal with a bothersome border problem, the New York Times deserves credit for noticing a far bigger and more important border problem America has – increasing anarchy in Mexico.

Kidnappings in Mexico Send Shivers Across Border by Sam Dillon January 4 2009

reports that Mexican professional kidnappers have a new gig:

“The relatives of Mexicans in the United States have become a new profit center for Mexico’s crime industry,” said Rodolfo García Zamora, a professor at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas who studies migration trends. “Hundreds of families are emigrating out of fear of kidnap or extortion, and Mexicans in the U.S. are doing everything they can to avoid returning. Instead, they’re getting their relatives out.”… kidnappers were targeting people with relatives in the United States, because they knew these families have money,” said Santana Lujan, a local farmer…

…such crimes — and the attention they receive on Spanish-language television in the United States — appear to have frightened not only those who live here year-round. Most years at Christmastime, hundreds of men in cowboy hats who work north of the border return to Jerez, jamming the streets with pickup trucks and cars with California and Illinois license plates and reuniting with old friends and family in the town square. This holiday season, Jerez and surrounding towns have had few migrants return. And demographers based in Jalisco and Michoacán said in interviews that few migrants had returned to those states either.

So America suffers two ways because Mexico cannot police itself. Refugees flee to join relatives here. And the promising self-deportation of aliens because of the economic downturn falters.

A caucus of Mexican legislators who specialize in migration issues predicted in October that some three million Mexicans might return from the United States as a result of the recession. But the same group reported in a study released in late December that in fact fewer migrants seemed to have returned this holiday season than in previous years, in part because of what they delicately termed “the insecurity in Mexico.”

It is sad that Mexico has these problems, but it not America’s duty – or prerogative – to solve them. What is America’s duty is to protect its own people - and itself, from becoming an Hispanic slum.

America needs that Fence.

(Parenthetically, no wonder the NYT is failing. Contrast the amorphous headline above with the incisive one the Press Democrat, of Santa Rosa, put on the same story today:
Mexicans flee north as kidnappers target U.S. immigrants’ relatives)

Mexico used to be a nice country, pleasant and safe to visit. But its new identity as the narco-hub of the Western Hemisphere has turned it into one of the most dangerous places on earth, where cartels engage in street battles over turf in which innocent civilians are killed in the crossfire. Naturally, such chaos has a negative effect on normal activities like commerce and education. People hide in their houses and civil society shrivels up.

Note the Los Angeles Times’ characterization of Mexico in chaos; it describes a failed state perfectly:

Swaths of Sinaloa periodically become no-go zones for outsiders; the central government abdicated control long ago. By one estimate, 32 towns are run by gangsters.

In Culiacan, the capital, casinos outnumber libraries, and dealerships for yachts and Hummers cater to the inexplicably wealthy.

This is where narco folklore started, with songs and icons that pay homage to gangsters, and where children want to grow up to be traffickers. How Sinaloa confronts its own divided soul offers insight on where the drug war may be going for Mexico, where more than 5,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence this year.

“The monster has lost all proportion,” said Del Rincon, who is a member of the conservative National Action Party.

A spunky woman with large eyes and hands that seem to be in constant motion, Del Rincon scans other tables at cafes where she meets people, making sure she knows who is within earshot; she lowers her voice when she names names. Her husband and closest confidant keeps tabs on her whereabouts throughout each day.

Such are the risks of speaking out.

“The narcos have networks meshed into the fabric of business, culture, politics — every corner of life.”
[In Sinaloa, the drug trade has infiltrated 'every corner of life', Los Angeles Times, Dec 28, 2008]

The level of corruption and social pathology can hardly be overstated. And this narco-state is our southern neighbor, where Washington leaves the doors to America wide open to Mexican criminals and assorted others.

More than 100 police officers have been killed in Sinaloa this year, most of them gunned down. Countless others have fled, or taken bribes and changed sides. As much as 70% of the local police force has come under the sway of traffickers, by some estimates. [...]

Then those same streets turn into a shooting gallery. Gunmen in dark-windowed SUVs open fire on rivals or cops, day or night. Five federal and state policemen were killed in a hail of bullets on Culiacan’s prominent Emiliano Zapata Boulevard one recent night. The truck with their bloodied corpses came to rest outside a busy casino under blue and purple neon lights and fake palm trees. It was the third time in recent weeks that an entire squad of agents was wiped out in an ambush. No one is ever arrested; shootings, even of cops, are hardly investigated.

“Twenty years ago we knew of the handful of big mafia dons, but they were discreet,” Rodriguez said. “Today we are dealing with the apprentices, who want to get rich very fast, who commit enormous excesses, who want to be noticed.”

Despite the hand-wringing of this LA Times article, just two months ago the very same paper reported that locals missed the easy money of narco-business: Culiacan, Mexico, feels the pain of a drug-induced recession. (See my blog at the time commenting on the crime-loving Mexicans of Sinaloa, Some Mexicans Unhappy with Improved Law and Order.)

Mexicans’ admiration of the dark side is illustrated by the elevation of a common crimal, Jesus Malverde, to the status of being an odd sort of secular saint, worshipped by drug traffickers.

“Jesus, help me, bro’, to get my next drug load across. Check out this nice votive candle I lit for you.” *

(* Not a real caption.)

There is apparently no limit to the depravity of Mexican criminals. Terrorizing innocent little kids for money is part of their thug portfolio these days: Mexican schools close as children are threatened [AP, December 13, 2008] .

Across Ciudad Juarez, parents and students are stricken by reports of kidnapping and extortion threats, starting with a sign that appeared Nov. 12 on the front door of another school, the Elena Garro kindergarten, demanding: “Either give us your bonuses, or we will start to kidnap the children.”

Police removed it before the children arrived.

Some speculate that cartels now are targeting schools to supplement income with the Mexican government’s crackdown on drug trafficking, much as they’ve already extorted businesses. Others say common criminals are trying to cash in on the fear that pervades border cities, where terrified residents are seeing ever more brutal murders – more than 1,300 so far this year in Ciudad Juarez.

It may be that the criminals in this case are knuckle-dragger opportuninsts with no intention of actually kidnapping kids and are just trying to make some easy money. But that would be a foolish assumption. Kidnapping is a low-investment crime that requires little equipment — a van, some duct tape and a spare room can put a Mexican crime entrepreneur in business, and plenty have. However, for all its simplicity, kidnapping is a tremendously cruel crime that results in a terrorized population when it is practiced as commonly as it is in Mexico.

In a reminder of the heartbreak which some Mexican families have endured (just a few months after the brutal case of 14-year-old Fernando Marti being snatched and killed), a young victim — Silvia Vargas (pictured) — has been found dead a year after being kidnapped: Mexico Kidnapping Death Stokes Outrage [Washington Post, Dec 14, 2008].

MEXICO CITY, Dec. 14 — Her mother asked that mourners wear white, so the memorial service Saturday for Silvia Vargas Escalera seemed less grim than the circumstances surrounding one of Mexico’s most notorious kidnappings.

The body of the wealthy and vivacious Mexico City teenager was found last weekend buried under a patio in a house south of the city. She had been missing for more than a year. Her remains were identified by dental records and DNA on Thursday.

The abduction and killing of the 18-year-old student, whose fresh young face had been ubiquitous in the news media here for months, have stoked outrage and revulsion in Mexico. The public is frustrated not only by waves of violent and often organized crime, but also by the government’s inability to solve cases and put the guilty behind bars.

Many people, too, are afraid of the kidnapping crews, which no longer limit their targets to the super-rich, and travel in armored cars and with bodyguards. Kidnappers now snatch middle-class and even poor victims, demanding as little as $500 in ransom for their return.

What a horror. For one twisted symptom of how Mexicans adjust to the unacceptable, see this item about bullet-proof clothing, etc.: Crime fears drive Mexicans’ increase of extreme security measures.

Naturally, the influx of millions of Mexicans has brought their way of crime, including kidnapping, along the rest of their culture.

More bad craziness from Washington regarding Mexico. That country has plenty of money to finance its own internal law enforcement efforts; Mexico’s GDP consistently ranks about #15 in national listings. American taxpayers shouldn’t be dinged for a penny to support wealthy, corrupt Mexico.

The U.S. government finally released the first part of a $400 million aid package Wednesday to support Mexico’s police and soldiers in their fight against drug cartels.

The money comes at a critical time: Mexico’s death toll from drug violence has soared above 4,000 so far this year, and drug-related murders and kidnappings are spilling over the U.S. border as well.

U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza formally released $197 million at a signing ceremony in Mexico City, calling it “the most significant effort ever undertaken” by the U.S. and Mexico to fight drugs. The rest will be disbursed throughout the year.

“The Merida Initiative is not just about money. It is about a closer and more collaborative effort by the United States and Mexico to work more effectively together to share information in a more timely fashion,” Garza said. [US releases first part of drug aid for Mexico, By Traci Carl And Frank Bajak, Associated Press, December 3, 2008]

See my 2007 VDARE.com article about the Merida Initiative ($1.4 billion over 2 years), A “Marshall Plan For Mexico”—Sending Welfare To A Crack House.

How bad is Mexico’s kidnapping crime wave? Bad enough for even middle class people to have electronic transmitting devices implanted into their bodies, so they can be located by satellite in case they are snatched.

Wealthy Mexicans, terrified of soaring kidnapping rates, are spending thousands of dollars to implant tiny transmitters under their skin so satellites can help find them tied up in a safe house or stuffed in the trunk of a car.

Kidnapping jumped almost 40 percent between 2004 and 2007 in Mexico according to official statistics. Mexico ranks with conflict zones like Iraq and Colombia as among the worst countries for abductions. [...]

More middle-class people also are also seeking out the tiny chip designed by Xega, a Mexican security firm whose sales jumped 13 percent this year.

The company injects the crystal-encased chip, the size and shape of a grain of rice, into clients’ bodies with a syringe. A transmitter then sends signals via satellite to pinpoint the location of a person in distress.
[Satellites track Mexico kidnap victims with chips, Reuters, August 21, 2008]

Security is a growth industry in a country where crime pays — armored cars, personal guards and whatever techno gizmos can be thought up. Contact my satellite, Scotty!

If 2000 soldiers of the Mexican Army can’t return Juarez to law and order, that region must be understood as lost to federal control, at least for the time being. And one definition for “failed state” is the inability to enforce the law and preserve order over territory.

There is an ongoing struggle for turf among the drug cartels, and the warfare continues because the efforts of the central government to rein it in are too little, too late. (Presidente Fox left his successor the mother of all banana peels by ignoring the growing power of the drug cartels.) Presidente Calderon has sent 20,000 troops throughout the country, and any sign of success remains too subtle to detect.

Stratfor’s analysis is that Mexico City has “limited options for responding to the attacks in Mexico City and for containing the violence in Sinaloa state.”

More than a month after Mexican President Felipe Calderón dispatched more than 2,000 soldiers to the troubled border city, execution-style murders remain commonplace — and usually unsolved — as heavily armed drug cartels battle for control of lucrative drug-smuggling routes into the United States. [...]

At least 10 federal police officers have been killed in the past three weeks, and pitched shootouts have raged from the Pacific Coast to central Zacatecas, where three died in clashes Wednesday morning, including a young girl believed to have caught a stray bullet, authorities said.

It has been a particularly violent year in Ciudad Juarez. Once the undisputed turf of the Juarez Cartel, the city of 1.3 million people has become the scene of an epic turf battle, as elements of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel try to muscle their way in.

Nearly 300 have died in the violence so far this year, some of their bodies dumped in mass graves.
[2,000 soldiers can't stop the bloodshed in Juarez, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, May 8, 2008]

To showcase their power, cartels have recently engaged in high profile assassinations of two top cops in the nation’s capital city: 2 top Mexican police officials killed in 2 days.

The commander of Mexico City’s investigative police force was shot and killed Friday morning as he left his home, authorities said.

The death of Esteban Robles Espinosa comes a day after Mexico’s federal police chief was shot dead in a northwestern Mexico City neighborhood.

Robles headed Mexico City’s anti-kidnapping unit until 2003, according to the city’s judicial police. He was also on the internal affairs commission, the department said. [...]

The federal police chief, Edgar Eusebio Millan Gomez, was fatally shot around dawn Thursday in a street in Colonia Guerrero in Mexico City, the country’s public safety department said.

Gov Bill Richardson had a case of bad timing when he visited Mexico Wednesday and praised the improved safety along the border region after a period of worsening violence: N.M. Gov. Richardson calls US-Mexico Border more secure.

Richardson said he would ask U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza to reevaluate a travel alert, issued by the U.S. State Department in April, that warned U.S. citizens of rising violence in northern Mexico but stopped short of suggesting that Americans avoid traveling in the region.

Yes, let’s vacation in beautiful scenic Mexico!

Unfortunately, all this carnage has led some less-than-astute minds (like President Bush) to support the Merida Initiative — aka “Sending welfare to a crack house” — an equipment giveaway to Mexico on the backs of the taxpayers costing $1.4 billion. Of course, Mexico is a wealthy nation, consistently ranking among the top 15 countries in GDP, and could easily afford to purchase their crime-fighting technology. Presidente Calderon could write out a check for items he needs, just as the Saudis do for military hardware.

The House Committee on Foreign Affairs had a hearing about the Merida Initiative on Thursday. Here are the members of the Committee, in case you want to suggest better ways to spend our money–like enforcing America’s borders, for example.

Mexico continues its descent toward becoming a failed state. The latest victim is the integrity of the electoral process as the narco-cartels remind candidates of the syndicates’ growing power.

MEXICO CITY, Jan. 4 — Drug cartels are trying to influence the outcomes of major elections in Mexico by kidnapping and threatening candidates, according to Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora.

The remarks by Medina Mora, released by his office Friday, underscored the Mexican government’s growing willingness in recent months to acknowledge the threat drug cartels pose to the nation’s fragile democracy. The problem is most severe, Medina Mora said, in the border states of Baja California and Tamaulipas, and in Michoacan, the home state of Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

“We have evidence, complaints from candidates who were kidnapped or intimidated, or who received threats intended to influence the results of an election and the behavior of candidates,” Medina Mora told the Spanish newspaper El Pais, according to a transcript of the interview.
[Mexican Drug Cartels Threaten Elections, Washington Post, Jan 4, 2008]

The latest uptick in cartel crimes indicates that Presidente Calderon’s campaign against the drug lords is not going well. The escalation shows one reason why he put the squeeze on Bush for $1.4 billion in military aid, which will be stolen or squandered if history is any indicator.

Keep in mind that at the same time as Washington is moving forward to deliver over a billion taxpayer dollars to ultra-corrupt Mexico, it recently pulled the plug on funding for the border fence.

Furthermore, Mexico is losing a lot of money because American travelers are choosing to forego beautiful tropical sunsets to avoid worsening danger: Mexican violence driving away U.S. tourists (Houston Chronicle, Jan 5, 2008).

PLAYAS DE ROSARITO, Mexico — Assaults on American tourists have brought hard times to hotels and restaurants that dot Mexican beaches just south of the border from San Diego.

Surfers and kayakers are frightened to hit the waters of the northern stretch of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula, long popular as a weekend destination for U.S. tourists. Weddings have been canceled. Lobster joints a few steps from the Pacific were almost empty on the usually busy New Year’s weekend.

Americans have long tolerated shakedowns by police who boost salaries by pulling over motorists for alleged traffic violations, and tourists know parts of Baja are a hotbed of drug-related violence. But a handful of attacks since summer by masked, armed bandits — some of whom used flashing lights to appear like police — marks a new extreme that has spooked even longtime visitors.

Lori Hoffman, a San Diego-area emergency room nurse, said she was sexually assaulted Oct. 23 by two masked men in front of her boyfriend, San Diego Surfing Academy owner Pat Weber, who was forced to kneel at gunpoint for 45 minutes. They were at a campground with about 30 tents, some 200 miles south of the border.

The men shot out windows of the couple’s trailer and forced their way inside, ransacked the cupboards and left with about $7,000 worth of gear, including computers, video equipment and a guitar.

With Mexico as a neighbor, we need a fence and the military on the border to keep out the worsening crime and narco-violence.

Not quite, the headline ia actually

Arizona squeeze on immigration angers business
By Miriam Jordan
The Wall Street Journal
Dec. 14, 2007 09:40 AM
PHOENIX - Arizona businesses are firing Hispanic immigrants, moving operations to Mexico and freezing expansion plans ahead of a new law that cracks down on employers who hire undocumented workers.

The law, set to take effect on Jan. 1, thrusts Arizona into the heart of the national debate on illegal immigration, which has become a hot topic on the presidential campaign trail. Republican candidates, in particular, have been battling to show how tough they are on the issue.

Arizona’s law, believed to be the strictest in the nation, is shaping up as a test of how employers will react when faced with real sanctions for hiring undocumented labor. It is being closely watched by businesses across the country. While proponents say the crackdown will save the state money on services for illegal immigrants, some businesspeople fear Arizona’s economic growth may be at risk.
Under the law, people will be encouraged to contact a county sheriff’s or county attorney’s office to report businesses they suspect of employing an illegal immigrant. After the sheriff investigates, the county attorney can then seek to suspend and ultimately revoke the business license of an employer who knowingly hires an illegal immigrant. The measure would also require all Arizona businesses to use E-Verify, a federal online database, to confirm that new hires have valid Social Security numbers and are eligible for employment.[More]

Of course, the basic principle here is that businesses that employ illegals profit from illegal immigration, American workers and taxpayers suffer. Now the taxpayers of Arizona have voted to stop it. There are non-economic costs to massive Hispanic immigration, of course. See

• VDARE.com: 06/25/03 - Hate Crime in Phoenix? Police, Press Don’t Want to Know; Etc.
• VDARE.com: 07/20/05 - The Cervantes Zavala Saga: Special Treatment, No Gratitude
• VDARE.com: Blog Articles » Kidnapping (or Worse) Fought Off by Arizona Woman