According to the El Paso Times officials of the Texas border town of Fort Hancock, report that they consider the situation serious.
“We just got word that the cartel has threatened to kill children in schools across the border unless parents paid $5000 pesos,” said Mike Doyle, chief deputy sheriff of Hudspeth County. And that time might come sooner than later. Schools Superintendent Jose Franco said word has spread that everyone in the Mexican town must stay indoors while members of rival cartels prepare for a shootout.
“I may not be working in school that day. I may be working as a medic,” said Franco, who moonlights as an ambulance paramedic.
Franco also confirmed the ransom demand for students across the border, adding that some of his students had already paid the money to be left alone.
 

In a new development the U.S. has been able to assist the Mexican Government in its investigation to help establish “The motive behind the murder of two U.S. Consulate employees and the Detention Officer with the El Paso County Sheriff's Office. New information on an arrest that was initially said to be tied to those murders, Mexican authorities were reporting 45-year-old Ricardo Valles de la Rosa, a member of the Barrio Azteca gang in Juarez, was responsible for killing U.S. consulate worker Lesley Enriquez and her husband Arthur Redelfs. However, the El Paso Times are reporting that, Mexican authorities said Valles was not a suspect in the deaths. The couple who lived in El Paso was gunned down March 13 while leaving a birthday party in Juarez. Details about the arrest are still sketchy, Mexican investigators are expected to release more information soon.
 

The family of Ricardo Valles de la Rosa, says that he was held incommunicado at home for two days and beaten before being taken to authorities.
The wife of Ricardo Valles, said that he was deported from the United States more than two years ago. “I am sure that he was not a member of the Azteca gang”, she said. “He doesn’t look like a gangster, and has no gang tattoos”, she said while crying. The military broke into the home at about 2:00 or 3:00 PM Wednesday afternoon and took him without giving a reason, according to her. Also she said that there was no firearm in the house and that is why she thinks they planted the firearm that they supposedly found. “He couldn’t move, they kept beating him, they are lying”, she said during a recess declared by the presiding judge in the hearing.
“I am his wife and I was with him at the time this incident occurred and I am sure he wasn’t involved”, she said. Although he was incarcerated in the United States, she did not know the reason he had been jailed.
Valles is still being detained and questioned by authorities.
 

Brutal assassinations has been going on since Mexican President Calderon started the war on drugs shortly after taking office in 2006. Mexican newspapers report that as many as 20,000 people have been killed in Mexico as a direct result of the war.

"That dangerous situation involving Americans being killed on both sides of the border without much being done to curtail it has finally gotten attention from our border states where they have been forced to fill the void and start protecting their citizens" said an active Texas Ranger. Just recently Texas Gov. Rick Perry ordered a multiagency task force to the area. Rep. Kay Granger, the area congresswoman, pushed through the sale of three helicopters to the Mexican government to monitor the area. And the local sheriff has shifted patrols to the area in the hopes of stemming any violence that might spread across the border.

New Mexico news outlets report that Gov. Richardson ordered National Guard soldiers to patrol the state's border with Mexico after the killing of a rancher in Arizona.
According to news reports today soldiers will be assisting the U.S. Border Patrol by setting up surveillance in counter-drug efforts in the desert along the border, said a spokes man for the state's National Guard.
"Basically, it is just assisting them with observation and giving them a lot more eyes on the border," Lt. Col. Jamison Herrera said.
"We stand ready to support federal and local law enforcement to make sure the southern border of New Mexico stays safe and secure," Herrera said.
New Mexico officials refused to reveal any details of the operation nor disclose the number of soldiers who will be deployed, where they will be stationed or what sophistication level of air and ground equipment will be used.
Herrera said the Air and Army National Guard in New Mexico consists of about 4,000 people.
 

State officials say residents of Southern New Mexico have expressed concerns after the Arizona rancher's murder, possibly committed by someone who crossed the border.
Robert Krentz, 58, was shot and killed on Saturday while he worked on his remote ranch west of the New Mexico state line. No one has been arrested, but the trail of a suspect led authorities to the Mexican border.
 

Richardson's office confirmed that the deployment is due to fears of residents in the New Mexico Bootheel region after Krentz's murder near by.
The New Mexico Bootheel and the adjacent southeastern Arizona area is a known hotbed of Illegal alien crossings and Mexican drug smugglers. There are reports of a spike in recent months in immigrant-related crime, including shootings, vandalism and ranch/home break-ins.
"I want residents in Southern New Mexico to know we are taking this border violence very seriously by adding the National Guard presence along with state, local and federal law enforcement patrols along the border," Richardson said in a statement.
 

On Tuesday, Richardson announced that state police and sheriffs' patrols would increase on the border while the Krentz killing remains under investigation.
The rancher's death also spurred U.S. Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall, along with Rep. Harry Teague, all of New Mexico, to ask the Department of Homeland Security to increase the number of Border Patrol agents in the area and set up a Forward Operating Base in the New Mexico Bootheel.
 

Troops had been sent to the New Mexico border before. The federal Operation Jump Start placed guardsmen along the border to help watch for illegal crossings and build the border fence in 2007 and 2008.
 

The deployment in New Mexico comes weeks after Texas Gov. Rick Perry activated the Texas Military Forces OH-58 Kiowa and the UH-72 Lakota helicopters to patrol the border between El Paso and Brownsville.
The El Paso Times reports that the Texas deployment is part of the first phase of Perry's classified plan, which he said is necessary to prevent the spillover of drug violence from Mexico. Perry's critics panned the move as nothing more than election-year grandstanding.
 

Harold Kuenstler, a county commissioner in Hidalgo County in the New Mexico Bootheel, said Richardson's announcement is a good step.
"When the National Guard has gone to the Bootheel, there was a decrease" in trafficking activity, he said. "They have a high presence and visibility, and entries slowed down."
Kuenstler, who ran the Border Patrol's Lordsburg station until retiring in 1997, said he thinks the agency needs to shift how it monitors for undocumented immigrant traffic in rural regions. Now, he said, agents work too far from the border.

Google:

Americans Being Kidnapped, Held and killed in Mexico
Mexican Cartels "tortured and cook" American in Mexico
In Texas, fear follows Mexicans who flee drug war
Rancher's Murder Exposes Deadly Gaps in Border Policing, Tancredo Says
Lawmakers Demand Administration Deploy National Guard, Border Patrol After Killing