Drug Cartel

SAN DIEGO - A woman claiming to be the daughter of the world's most wanted drug trafficker was arrested at the San Ysidro port of entry Friday afternoon after trying to enter the country with fraudulent documents, according to a criminal complaint and a high-ranking U.S. law enforcement official. Alejandrina Gisselle Guzman Salazar allegedly told U.S. customs officers that she was traveling to Los Angeles to give birth. After questioning, she admitted that she was the daughter of Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman, the leader of Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel, said the unidentified official who is not authorized to speak about the case.

SAN DIEGO - Federal authorities have linked a high-ranking Mexican organized crime member to two of the largest drug tunnels ever discovered under the San Diego-Tijuana border, according to a 13-count indictment announced Wednesday that details a far-flung operation that allegedly moved tons of marijuana across the border. Jose Sanchez-Villalobos, 49, is the highest-ranking member of the Sinaloa drug cartel ever charged in connection with the construction of underground tunnels, according to federal prosecutors in San Diego.

MEXICO CITY - Mexican authorities working closely with their U.S. counterparts scored big in the fight against drug cartels with the capture of a top leader of Mexico's most vicious criminal gang, the Zetas paramilitary force. Ivan Velazquez Caballero, who used aliases that included "Zeta-50" and "El Taliban," was presented to reporters Thursday in Mexico City by masked naval special forces. Navy spokesman Vice Adm. Jose Luis Vergara said Velazquez was captured a day earlier when the marines surrounded one of his residences in the eastern city of San Luis Potosi.

SAN DIEGO - Eduardo Arellano Felix, one of a band of brothers who headed what was once Mexico's most powerful drug trafficking organization, was extradited to the U.S. on Friday, capping a 20-year effort to bring the siblings to justice in federal court. Arellano Felix, 55, a onetime medical student nicknamed "El Doctor," was allegedly a key advisor in the Arellano Felix drug cartel, which during its heyday in the 1980s and '90s pumped tons of drugs into the U.S. and murdered hundreds while defending their turf in Baja California.

Local and federal authorities moved Thursday to break up an alleged drug trafficking ring connecting a major Mexican cartel to San Gabriel Valley street gangs and arrested 17 people in a pre-dawn sweep. A federal indictment unsealed Thursday charges 27 people with making, possessing and dealing methamphetamine imported by La Familia Michoacana, one of Mexico's most violent cartels, to two Pomona gangs: Los Amables and Westside Pomona Malditos. Thursday's crackdown is the culmination of Operation Crystal Light, a 16-month investigation by the San Gabriel Valley Safe Streets Gang Task Force.

MEXICO CITY - With rare speed, authorities in the violence-plagued coastal state of Veracruz say they have solved the killings of five journalists and news media workers, pinning the slayings on two notorious drug cartels. But press freedom advocates Thursday questioned what they considered a too facile resolution of one of the most alarming strings of journalism attacks in a country where such bloodshed has become all too familiar. "The government of Veracruz is trying to shelve its worst-ever crisis of violence against the press," the advocacy group Article 19 said in a statement.

Araceli Magdalena Rodriguez remembers precisely when her son first said he wanted to be a policeman. She went to the market one day in their community near Puebla, Mexico, when he was 4 years old and returned home empty-handed after a pickpocket stole her wallet. "Where are my bananas?" Luis Angel Leon Rodriguez asked his mother. When she told him what had happened, the boy said he would grow up to be a police officer and catch the thief. Nearly 20 years later, Luis Angel became a federal police officer, but when his mother told me the story Monday afternoon on a visit to Los Angeles, she was in tears.

BOOKS Comedian Jeff Garlin's reading group will convene at Book Soup to discuss Don Winslow's novel "Savages. " A suspenseful thriller "Savages" chronicles the dangerous struggle between young kingpins and the ever-powerful Mexican drug cartel. Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. 6 p.m. Sat. Free. (310) 659-3110; http://www.booksoup.com.

A San Diego jury convicted a young woman on kidnapping charges Thursday for her "femme fatale" role in a Mexican gang that targeted wealthy businessmen for large ransoms. Nancy Mendoza Moreno, 24, an aspiring flight attendant, was found guilty of luring two men to a gang of kidnappers who preyed on San Diego suburbs from 2004 to 2007. Mendoza was acquitted of a third kidnapping charge. She faces a possible life prison term at her sentencing hearing in August. Portrayed as a party girl with a taste for pricey liquor and gangster boyfriends, Mendoza was found guilty of enticing Eduardo Gonzalez Tostado, 37, to a rendezvous at a house in Chula Vista, where masked gunmen held him captive for eight days.

As authorities in Yuma, Ariz., on Thursday announced the discovery of a significant cross-border drug tunnel, a federal expert on such passageways discussed the significance of the find -- as well as the cat-and-mouse game of border drug smuggling. Lauren Mack, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Diego, told the Los Angeles Times that 156 tunnels have been uncovered along the United States' southwestern border with Mexico since the early 1990s. Three out of four were discovered after 2001, the majority of which were incomplete.