Mexican Authorities

A Mexican man wanted in connection with the death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent last year has been arrested in Mexico and is being held pending extradition, according to U.S. federal authorities. This is the second time Mexican authorities have arrested Jesus Navarro Montes, a 23-year-old alleged drug smuggler who U.S. officials suspect drove a sport utility vehicle that ran over agent Luis Aguilar at the Imperial Sand Dunes in Imperial County on Jan. 19, 2008. After an intense, three-day manhunt, Navarro was captured in Mexicali, but Mexican authorities released him last June, drawing criticism from U.S. officials.

Mexican authorities said they were conducting an extensive search for a man suspected of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a 10-year-old Northridge girl. Mexican police issued wanted posters for the suspect, Tobias Dustin Summers, on Friday. Police have been alerted in the Baja California cities of Tijuana, Tecate, Ensenada and Rosarito Beach. Alfredo Arenas, commander of the Baja California state police fugitive squad, said Mexican authorities are in daily contact with LAPD officials.  “We want to find the guy before he rapes a Mexican kid,” Arenas said.

U.S. authorities launched a nationwide sweep of drug trafficking suspects, declaring the crackdown a retaliatory strike against the U.S. operations of Mexican drug cartels after the killing of an American agent in Mexico last week. More than 100 suspects were arrested in nine cities across the U.S. during coordinated raids by federal, state and local police that began Wednesday and continued Thursday. Mexican drug cartels have distribution channels in every major city in the U.S., said Derek Maltz, special agent in charge of special operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

In a sign of the cost of widespread U.S. weapons smuggling into Mexico, federal law enforcement sources have confirmed that two guns, part of a series of purchases that were being monitored by authorities, were found at the scene of the firefight that killed a U.S. Border Patrol agent in southern Arizona. Sources said U.S. authorities did not have the ability to adequately monitor the movement of the guns toward the southern border, in part because current laws and low levels of staffing.

After spending months in a Mexican prison for attempting to carry his great-grandfather's shotgun into the country, a former Marine has been released and is back in the United States. Jon Hammar, 27, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, had been incarcerated in the border city of Matamoros since August. He reportedly was beaten by inmates who also tried to extort money from his family in Florida. “This is a great day for the Hammar family,” Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.)

The Mexican government said it would formally request today the extradition of two men who allegedly plotted the kidnaping of a Guadalajara doctor accused in the murder of U.S. drug agent Enrique S. Camarena. The bulletin from the Mexican Foreign Ministry, released Thursday, also stated that the U.S. State Department has replied to Mexico's requests for information about the abduction and the return of the doctor for questioning by Mexican authorities.

Mexican authorities on Friday announced the arrest of the man they say directed the kidnappings of 72 Central and South American migrants found slain in northern Mexico last year. Federal police said Edgar Huerta Montiel, 22, told them he led the capture of two freight trucks packed with undocumented migrants in the state of Tamaulipas, then killed 10 of the victims. Huerta, described as an army deserter who works for the Zetas drug gang, allegedly told police he also ordered the kidnappings of six busloads of passengers in the rural town of San Fernando.

Andres strengthened into the Pacific season's first hurricane, flooding homes, toppling trees and killing at least one person as it swiped Mexico's southwestern coast with wind and rain. The storm packed maximum winds near 75 mph, just over the threshold of hurricane strength, but weakened to below hurricane strength, and was expected to weaken further over the next day or two, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. Mexican authorities posted a hurricane warning for the coastal strip from just south of Manzanillo to near Puerto Vallarta, and heavy rain flooded homes and wind blew down trees in the states of Jalisco, Colima and Guerrero.

Tijuana gunmen fatally shot a Mexican immigrant safety officer and injured his partner Wednesday night as they patrolled a dangerous border neighborhood across from San Diego. The officers were approaching a popular staging area for smugglers when a group of masked assailants in a truck blocked their path. The gunmen opened fire with high-powered weapons, spraying the officers' vehicle with more than 150 bullets, according to Mexican authorities. Alejandro Rivera Melendez, 34, died later at a hospital.