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 Holding court in the shadow of a drug
war
By Judge Don Minton
EL PASO, TEXAS
Simmering on the far edge of Texas, El Paso has long been known as a quiet and sleepy town with a crime rate lower than national averages, with an even lower rate of violent crime. A beautiful city,
El Paso has been forced to endure its status as a major hub in the network of transporting illicit drugs. In fact, the federal government has gone so far as to designate El Paso as a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area.
As a result, El Paso is home to a task force of federal, state and local law enforcement officials who are cross-deputized and engage in highly sophisticated operations in coordination with one another to gather intelligence, investigate drug trafficking and institute both prosecutions and civil forfeiture proceedings.
Prosecution of these cases in El Paso has been fairly mundane and not particularly newsworthy for the past decade or so, with the exception of those few cases involving substantially large amounts of illicit drugs.
However, events just across the Rio Grande in the past year have caused drastic changes to the drug trafficking industry, changes that have made an impact on many facets of life in El Paso. That event is the Juarez Drug War. With more than 600 murders in Juarez in the past seven months (more than three times the number of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq during the same period), the Juarez Drug War has forevermore changed the landscape of this West Texas town.
At its core, the Juarez Drug War is a battle for control of the lucrative corridor of smuggling which exists in the El Paso/Juarez metropolitan region – the largest border community in the world.
The specific events that launched the Juarez Drug War are
unknown, but authorities believe the informal compacts between the Sinaloa and Juarez drug cartels apparently crumbled, causing a downward spiral of ever-more vicious violence.
Somewhat dated intelligence within the public realm places Vicente Carrillo Fuentes as the head of the Juarez drug cartel. Most officials believe he was initially able to seize control of the organization after the 1997 death of his brother, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who was known as the “Lord of the Skies” because of his use of airplanes to smuggle cocaine. Internal challenges to the authority of Vicente Carrillo Fuentes and his lieutenant, Luis Ledezma, known as J.L., served to whet the appetites of external organizations, including the drug trafficking organizations in Tijuana and Sinaloa.
Pitted against the Juarez cartel in the current war are several traffickers based in Sinaloa state, chief among them Joaquín Guzmán, known as “El Chapo,” and Ismael Zambada, known as “El Mayo.”
The uneasy alliance between the Sinaloa cartel and the Juarez cartel had been strained since one of the Carrillo Fuentes brothers, Rodolfo, was assassinated in September 2004. Many believe that Guzmán was behind the killing.
While tensions continued to mount throughout 2007, they reached epic proportions in December when Zambada steadfastly refused to pay the Juarez cartel the customary tax for smuggling drugs through its area.
Effectively declaring war on the Juarez cartel, Guzmán and Zambada began an offensive against the Juarez cartel. Ledezma refused to retreat and fought back fiercely.
Many believe that the Juarez cartel went on to forge an alliance with the Gulf cartel, led by Osiel Cárdenas Guillén (who is currently jailed) and his affiliates in Tamaulipas, across the border from South Texas.
Then the killings began.
The violence has included kidnappings, drive-by shootings and victims being mown down by machine gun fire in broad daylight. Gun battles stop cars cold in the middle of rush hour traffic along Triumph of the Republic Boulevard. Mutilated or headless corpses turn up at retail businesses and restaurants.
First responders in Juarez are warned over official radio nets not to approach scenes of violence, lest they become targets as well. Hospitals in Juarez have even come under machine gun fire, leading to the evacuation of the wounded across the border to El Paso.
Nearly a third of Mexico’s drug-related killings in this record year have been registered in Juarez and its surroundings. With more than 600 dead in little more than seven months, the violence has Juarenses running scared and El Pasoans looking over their shoulders as they take stock in the fact of life of the Juarez Drug War.
The impact of the Juarez Drug War on El Paso has been significant. Billed as the “Capital of the Border,” El Paso has had to rethink its close association with its sister city, as tourism to the area has suffered. A substantial portion of the leisure travel between El Paso and Juarez has stopped altogether, a development that corresponded with the travel alert in April of this year by the U.S. State Department, warning against travel to Juarez.
Immense fears on the part of El Pasoans that the violence would spill over from Juarez to El Paso were not allayed when it became a standard practice for the wounded in Juarez to be
medevaced across the border to the county’s Thomason
Hospital. Heightened concerns have led to security lockdowns at the hospital, complete with metal detectors and officers armed with military-style assault rifles.
As one would expect, the Juarez Drug War changed the playing field of the HIDTATask Force in its efforts to interdict and prosecute various players within the drug trafficking organizations. Both cartels sought to increase shipments during the confusion created during the Juarez Drug War. As a consequence, the number of illegal smuggling events has increased substantially. Furthermore, because of the hurried nature of the operations and the distractions of the Juarez Drug War, the smuggling operations have been more haphazard and prone to interdiction by U.S. officials.
As a direct consequence of the larger number of operations and the poor execution of such operations, the number of drug trafficking cases has increased substantially. As of June 30, the HIDTA case filings in El Paso County had reached 846 in number. At that rate, they are on track to be 1,692 filings for the year – 32 percent higher than last year’s 1,280 filings.
Faced with a 32 percent increase in docket size, a trial court must adapt and change the accepted paradigm for handling cases, or it will simply be inundated by onslaught of cases.
In light of the sacrifices made daily by law enforcement officers in bring cases to fruition to allow prosecution, the failure of a court to keep up with its docket would not be acceptable.
In El Paso, Criminal District Court 1 accepted the challenge and changed the way cases were brought to trial. Procedures were changed, work hours extended and technology was employed. As a result, more than 850 cases were disposed of by the court through the first six months of the year. At that rate, the court stands to dispose of more than 1,700 cases within the year – a number 27 percent higher than the year before, and more than enough to keep pace with the growing number.
The most critical change brought to the Court began with the implementation of a rapid trial docket, whereby every case was set for trial within 90 days of arraignment. Prior to this policy, cases were only set for trial when requested by the defense or prosecution, resulting in some cases languishing on the trial docket for more than three years.
As a result of immediately setting cases for trial, holding a tighter grip on attorneys and postponing cases only in extreme situations, cases are brought to trial much quicker. As a result, officers provide testimony about events that have transpired in the past three months, not the past three years. For example, of the last two trials in Criminal District Court 1 tried in July of this year, one case involved a smuggling attempt that took place on March 12; the second case arose out of an April 3 incursion.
Besides the larger number of cases which are presented to the Court, other challenges must be addressed. There remains the requirement that the judge and his staff remain vigilant to the heightened security risks attendant with a drug war less than 1,500 meters from the courtroom. The point is best driven home by the cold realization that a well-trained sniper in Mexico could reach the judge’s chambers, which face south across the Mexican border, at less than 1,500 meters. Cartel-employed snoops enjoy the privileges afforded to Texans under the Open Courts provisions of the Texas Constitution and regularly observe proceedings, hoping to make identifications of undercover agents.
In response to this threat, the court secured a separate office out of the main traffic area to allow officers to congregate, but the area is too small and undercover officers are forced to meet in plain view.
Each person involved must continue to reassess the dynamic stage presented by the Juarez Drug War. While some reports have indicated that the Sinaloan cartel has gained the upper hand, there is no indication that the war is coming to an end. Until then, law enforcement officers, prosecutors and court staff must both remain diligent, as well as dedicated to carrying a much higher caseload.
Don Minton is a Texas District Court judge, presiding over Criminal District Court 1 of El Paso County, Texas. Judge Minton was appointed to the bench in 2007 by Gov. Rick Perry. He graduated with honors from the University of Texas School of Law and in the top 10 percent of his class from the United States Military Academy at West Point. He is a disabled veteran and served in the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment as a M1A1 tank platoon leader.
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