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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | August 2007 
Cartel Member Wanted in U.S. Nabbed
 Julie Watson - Associated Press
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| | Mexico nabs high-ranking member of drug cartel in popular restaurant. |
Mexico City - A high-ranking Gulf drug cartel member wanted in Texas for allegedly threatening to kill U.S. federal agents was arrested in a raid on a steak house in Mexico City, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
Juan Carlos de La Cruz Reyna, a former policeman in the northern state of Tamaulipas believed to be a senior figure in the Gulf cartel, was arrested along with three Colombians and three other Mexican drug suspects, the attorney general's office said in a news release.
Soldiers and federal police made the arrests as they raided the Rincon Argentina restaurant in the wealthy Polanco neighborhood on Tuesday night.
In 2003, the attorney general's office listed de la Cruz Reyna as a "direct collaborator" with the imprisoned cartel leader Osiel Cardenas, who was arrested in northern Mexico that same year and has been extradited to the United States.
Based in Tampico, Tamaulipas, de la Cruz Reyna was responsible for moving drugs from northern Veracruz state to the Mexico-U.S. border and led a network of 300 drug traffickers, including local police officers, federal prosecutors said.
De la Cruz Reyna allegedly began coordinating the shipments of drugs from Colombia and Central America after the June arrest of another top Gulf cartel member.
According to a federal indictment in Brownsville, Texas, de la Cruz Reyna was among a group of at least 15 police and drug traffickers armed with assault weapons who in 1999 cornered Drug Enforcement Administration agent Joe Dubois and FBI agent Daniel Fuentes in their car in the border city of Matamoros, across the Rio Grande from Brownsville. Cardenas, who was with the men, reportedly stuck his head and a submachine gun into the U.S. agents' car and told the agents he would kill them if they did not turn over an informant who was traveling with them.
U.S. authorities say the agents saved the informant and escaped by talking their way out of the situation. The agents were given the U.S. Attorney General's Award for Exceptional Heroism.
U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza praised the arrest, saying in a news release. "I applaud the unwavering commitment of the (Mexican President Felipe) Calderon administration ... to pursue, confront, and disband the armed criminal gangs operating in Mexico."
The Gulf Cartel is one of Mexico's most powerful and brutal trafficking gangs and is believed responsible for much of the bloodshed along the Mexican border with Texas.
U.S. investigators say that at its height, the Gulf cartel had cells in Houston, Chicago, Atlanta and other U.S. cities and moved tons of cocaine per month into the United States. |
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