Tijuana cartel boss captured while watching world cup
Mexican police captured Fernando Sanchez Arellano, leader of the Arellano Felix cartel, on June 23 while he was watching the matchup between Mexico and Croatia in Tijuana. Arellano is suspected of drug trafficking, extortion, kidnappings and murders in Baja California.
Arellano, known as “El Ingeniero” or “The Engineer,” was arrested by the Federal Prosecutor’s Office (PGR) and the Mexican Army without the firing of a single shot. The arrest comes a few months after the recapture of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera, the head of the Sinaloa cartel, which runs the drug trafficking ring in the region. Both cartels had allied between 2008 and 2009 in Tijuana, although the current status of their relationship is unclear.
Obama to Central Americans: Stop sending children
Throughout the current year, more than 52,000 unaccompanied minors were arrested after arriving to the U.S. border without their parents. The children were mainly from Honduras, Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador. Although U.S. law states that Central American minors apprehended by Border Patrol should be sent to the Office for Refugee Resettlement (ORR), the government chose other alternatives.
American authorities have established makeshift facilities—many of which are military-like—such as the Naval Base in Ventura County between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. President Obama pleaded with Central American parents via the media: “Do not send your children to the borders. If they do make it, they’ll get sent back. More importantly, they may not make it.”
Honduran journalist murdered
On June 23, an unidentified gunman shot radio journalist Luis Alonso Fúnez Duarte five times outside his home in the La Hoya neighborhood of the Olancho Department in Honduras. The motives for the killing are unknown, authorities said.
Duarte, 47, ran a country music program on the local radio station “Super 10” and a political humor segment called “Barriendo y trapeando” (“Sweeping and mopping”).
Duarte is the 44th journalist killed in Honduras since 2003, with only four of those murder cases resulting in convictions. According to Reporters Without Borders, Honduras was the world’s most dangerous country for media professionals in the first quarter of 2010, especially in cities like San Pedro Sula and La Ceiba, where members of the Honduran police have been involved in robberies and criminal activity. The rate is about 90 murders per 100,000 inhabitants.