Experts: Americans Aren't Safe in Mexican Drug Wars

MEXICO CITY (March 16) -- The killing Sunday of three people connected to the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juárez undermines the popular notion that Americans are immune to the Mexican drug war, observers say.

Two of the victims, a consular employee and her husband, were returning home to El Paso, Texas, from a birthday party across the border with their 7-month-old baby. The Mexican husband of another consular employee was killed in a separate shooting. Their two children were wounded.

The deaths suggest the Mexican government's strategies to address the security crisis are failing, putting more Americans at risk, said Maureen Meyer, a Mexico and Central America specialist for the Washington Office on Latin America, a D.C.-based think tank.

"More than a massive deployment of security forces, Mexico needs to prioritize institutional strengthening, combating corruption and violence-prevention policies to ensure citizen security in the long term. ... The U.S. government should support them in these areas," she said.

The killings in Juárez brought the death toll of U.S. citizens in Mexico to six this year. Over New Year's, four American tourists were kidnapped and later murdered in Gomez Palacio in the state of Durango.

Lesley Enriquez, 35, an American working for the consulate in Juárez, and her husband Arthur Redelfs, 34, a detention officer in El Paso, were killed Sunday in their car after being chased through the streets of Juárez by their assailants. Their daughter, Rebecca, was unharmed. Enriquez was four months pregnant, officials said.

"The entire Redelfs family is grieving over this," said the victim's cousin, Jennifer Redelfs Hendrickson. "He was a very hard-working, loyal and great guy with a great sense of humor. A very strong family man," she said.

In a separate attack, gunmen opened fire on Jorge Alberto Salcido, 37, killing him and wounding his two children, 4 and 7.

Mexican authorities blamed the slayings on the Aztecas, a gang linked to the Juárez drug cartel.

The victims were targeted but the motive was still unknown, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday, quoting an unnamed security official in Juárez. "The information we have indicates they were specific targets, but the motives behind the attack are not yet known," the Times quoted the official as saying.

Edgardo Buscaglia, a Mexican academic and an expert on organized crime, said the killings were intended to send "a clear message to the states that there is a lot at stake for [the cartels]. It's not just about drugs for them, it's 22 very profitable illicit businesses that range from human trafficking to pirating. And they will not give up."

George Grayson, author of "Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State?" and a professor at William and Mary College, said he found the killing of the Americans "puzzling."

"The Juárez cartel has a paramilitary hold, and they have not focused on civilians in general, much less Americans," Grayson said. "It's not because of any love lost for us nice gringos but because they don't want to be the focus of Washington's attention."

The shootings in Juárez added to a particularly bloody weekend in Mexico. Fifteen people died in an early-morning shootout March 14 in the beach town of Acapulco, including a woman in a taxi killed by a stray bullet and a man who was quartered, according to the Guerrero newspaper Diario 21. The day before 11 victims were found in the popular spring break destination, including six police officers and four decapitated heads, and 20 others died amid the crossfire elsewhere in the state of Guerrero.

Mexican authorities report that more than 2,600 people were killed in Juárez in 2009, on top of 1,600 killed in 2008.

On Sunday the U.S. State Department authorized the departure of the dependents of U.S. government personnel from U.S. consulates in the northern Mexican border cities of Tijuana, Nogales, Juárez, Nuevo Laredo, Monterrey and Matamoros. The U.S. Embassy also urged Americans to delay unnecessary travel to parts of Durango, Coahuila and Chihuahua states.

The 300-employee consulate in Juárez, among the largest of the U.S. consulates, is closed today "to allow the community to mourn," said spokesman Silvio Gonzalez, who wasn't able to specify the jobs of Enriquez or Salcido's wife. It was the second U.S. border consulate closed because of violence in the last month. The consular office in Reynosa closed for several days in late February because of gun battles in the area.

Juárez Mayor José Reyes Ferriz denounced the killings, vowing a "cleanup" of the police force, which critics accuse of corruption. "We must increase street surveillance ... and, above all, intensify the cleanup of the police force," Ferriz said in a statement released Monday.

President Barack Obama "shares in the outrage of the Mexican people at the murders of thousands in Ciudad Juárez and elsewhere in Mexico," the White House said in a statement released Sunday.

Obama said the United States would "continue to work with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and his government to break the power of the drug trafficking organizations that operate in Mexico and far too often target and kill the innocent. This is a responsibility we must shoulder together." The FBI was dispatched Monday to Juárez.

The Mexican government also said it was "profoundly sorrowed" by the killings but vowed to press forward with its military-led offensive against drug cartels. Calderon, who has sent 7,000 soldiers and 2,000 federal police to the city in the past two years, expressed "indignation" and "condemnation" and promised to bring the killers to justice.

Bloodshed in the city has surged as the Juárez drug cartel battles a takeover attempt by Sinaloa-based kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. Calderon will travel to Juárez today and traveled to the city twice last month, promising to restore safety.