New Mexico Tribe Bans Newspaper After Story of Killing

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.-- The leaders of a small tribal community nestled in northern New Mexico's mesas and red rocks hoped their tribe could heal from the horrific killing of one of their own.

Then the slaying was recounted on the front page of the Jemez Thunder: "Gruesome murder at Jemez Pueblo." In seven paragraphs, the story described how a tribal member stabbed, slashed and disemboweled another man.

In some places, the story might draw outrage for its details. In Jemez Pueblo, the newspaper was also banned.

The tribe was well within its rights as a sovereign government to prohibit, as the governor did, the distribution of the newspaper at the tribal visitors center and a convenience store.

"The pueblos enjoy sovereign immunity where free speech and the First Amendment are concerned," said Peter Simonson, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in New Mexico.

The tribe was in the news just a week ago, when it banned trick-or-treating on Halloween. The tribe said it was not part of its traditional culture and was a safety concern because of the small community's unlit roads.

The community of about 2,500 sits an hour's drive northwest of Albuquerque, New Mexico's largest city. The tribe deeply embraces its traditions, including preserving their Towa language.
Tribal lands are apart from the U.S. government. Tribes have their own separate governments, and their own laws. The federal government prosecutes violations of crimes such as murder.

The 1,000-circulation, English-language newspaper is based in the nearby non-tribal community of Jemez Springs, sells for 75 cents and usually runs between 24 to 32 pages, said Robert Borden, who owns it along with his wife, Kathleen Wiegner. The Bordens and a reporter make up the staff, although it also pays some columnists.

Borden said he's written positive stories about the pueblo in the past.

He wrote the story about the killing based on an FBI criminal complaint filed in federal court. He noted he also wrote that the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty. It was published at the bottom of the front page of the paper's Oct. 15 edition, below stories about a horse-riding program and artists being sought for a bridge program.

Lucas Toledo, 22, faces a murder charge in the killing of Matthew Panana, 21, on Sept. 29.
Jemez Pueblo Gov. Joshua Madalena banned the sales, saying the story was sensationalized. Madalena said the paper's failure to exercise restraint shows it is "out of touch with the community's perspective."

Borden, who has published the newspaper since 1995, said he was disheartened rather than angry at the response.

He and Madalena were planning to meet Wednesday for what Borden said would be "a wide-ranging discussion."

Madalena said the discussion needs to be held "to make sure the newspaper is respectful toward the pueblo and the other communities" in the 30-mile Jemez Valley.

Madalena said Tuesday the close-knit community did not need to know the details of the killings. He said the story reopened wounds and was hurtful to the tribe.

The community "is hurt by the fact that this occurred at all," Borden responded. "I didn't hurt the community."

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Mexico: 13 Dead in Massacre at Ciudad Juarez Party

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico –  Gunmen stormed two homes and massacred 13 young partygoers in the latest large-scale attack in this violent border city, even as a new government strategy seeks to restore order with social programs and massive police deployments.

Attackers in two vehicles pulled up to the houses in a lower-middle-class neighborhood late Friday and opened fire on about three dozen youths attending a party. The dead identified so far were 16 to 25 years old, the Chihuahua state attorney general's office said Saturday in a statement. Fifteen were wounded, including a 9-year-old boy.

Police found 70 bullet casings from assault weapons typically used by drug gangs whose bloody turf battles have killed more than 2,000 people this year in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas.

The attackers escaped, and police said they had no immediate information on any suspects or possible motive.

Ciudad Juarez has become one of the world's deadliest cities amid a turf war between the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels, which frequently go after each other in mass attacks on bars, drug rehab centers and parties.

Some have resulted in apparently innocent people being killed, either because someone else at a gathering was the target or gunmen simply had the wrong address.

Most recently, attackers stormed two homes on Oct. 17, killing seven at a party and two more in another house nearby.

And in January, gunmen massacred 15 people at a party in a house not far from the site of Friday's killings. Most of the victims were teenagers, students and athletes.

Investigators later said the attack was apparently carried out by Juarez cartel gunmen looking to kill allies of the Sinaloa cartel. There is no evidence the youths were the targets, and police said the killers may have hit the wrong house.

The city was outraged by the January massacre, leading President Felipe Calderon's government to vow to implement a new strategy for restoring order in Ciudad Juarez, where the army had by then had replaced the disorganized, outgunned local police.

In April, federal police took over public security duties from the army, and about 5,000 federal officers were deployed in Ciudad Juarez.

The federal government also stepped up social programs to try to break the cycle of poverty, broken homes and lack of opportunities that make the city's youths a fertile recruiting ground for the gangs.

Cash aid programs, neighborhood improvement initiatives, educational and job-training programs were part of the new strategy, together with ubiquitous convoys of blue federal police trucks patrolling "safe corridors" throughout the city.

But in light of the recent mass attacks, it is unclear whether the new strategy for the city is having an effect so far. While the bustling industrial hub was known mainly throughout the 1990s for the grisly series of murders of more than 100 young women, the city's youths now bear the brunt of the violence.

In an interview with The Associated Press earlier this month, President Felipe Calderon said the Juarez strategy is a long-term policy.

"We cannot think that all the ground lost regarding opportunities for these young people can be recovered in a few weeks," Calderon said. "If we are building five new high schools and two universities, don't tell me it's not working if classes started a month ago."

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Three Bystanders Killed During Gunbattle in Northern Mexico

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- Three bystanders died in the crossfire of a shootout between gunmen, police and soldiers in northern Mexico on Sunday.

The victims were a 14-year-old boy and two women aged 18 and 47, according to a statement by the prosecutors' office in northern Coahuila state.

The statement said gunmen traveling in two vehicles opened fire on a convoy of federal police and soldiers in the city of Saltillo, Coahuila. The officers and soldiers returned fire.

It was not clear who fired the shots that killed the bystanders, but the state attorney general's office said it was investigating and expressed condolences to the victims' families.

"They are civilians who unfortunately died in the exchange of gunfire," it said, describing a running series of confrontations between police and assailants who allegedly fired shots into the air to clear bystanders from their path at one point.

Three gunmen also died Sunday in a separate shootout in another Coahuila city, Torreon.

Coahuila has been the scene of bloody turf battles between the Sinaloa cartel and the Zetas drug gang.

Mexico's army, which has taken a leading role in combating drug gangs, has come under criticism for alleged indiscriminate use of force and firing on civilians.

In the border city of Ciudad Juarez, meanwhile, the death toll from a birthday party massacre late Friday rose to 14 after an 18-year-old male died of his wounds.

Nineteen people were wounded in the attack on two private homes where about four dozen partygoers had gathered for a teen's birthday.

The dead identified so far were 13 to 32 years old, and the majority of the victims were high school students, a survivor said.

While investigators said they have not yet identified the perpetrators or a motive, police found 70 bullet casings from assault weapons typically used by drug gangs at the scene of the shootings. Cartel violence has killed more than 2,000 people so far this year in the city across from El Paso, Texas.

Friday's attack recalled a similar massacre in Ciudad Juarez in January, when gunmen killed 15 people at a house party.

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Mexico arrests man accused of detonating car bomb

MEXICO CITY –  Federal police announced Thursday that they arrested a gang member who detonated the first successful car bomb by Mexican drug cartels, an attack that killed three people in the border city of Ciudad Juarez.

Fernando Contreras used a cell phone to set off the bomb that killed a federal police officer and two civilians June 15, said Luis Cardenas Palomino, the regional federal police chief.

The bomb exploded after police and paramedics arrived on a street corner to help a wounded man, adding a new dimension of terror in Ciudad Juarez, which has become one of the world's deadliest cities amid a turf war between the Sinaloa and Juarez drug cartels.

Cardenas Palomino said that after the attack, Contreras was sent to Chihuahua city — the capital of the state by the same name — as the leader there for La Linea drug gang allied with the Juarez drug cartel.

Contreras was arrested Wednesday in Chihuahua along with 14 others, several weapons and drugs, the official said.

The arrest was announced the same day that the Chihuahua state legislature approved a bill introducing life imprisonment for certain murders, including the killing of journalists and police. Those who commit multiple murders or torure their victims before killing them also would get a life sentence under the law.

Gov. Cesar Duarte applauded the initiative. Once he signs it into law, Chihuahua will become the only Mexican state with life imprisonment. Murder in Chihuahua is currently punnishable by up to 50 years in prison.

"Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures," Duarte said. "Those who want to make a career out of victimizing citizens, innocent people, will never get out of jail."

More than 2,000 people have been killed this year in Ciudad Juarez, a city of 1.3 million across the border from El Paso, Texas. Most killings are blamed on drug gangs.

Meanwhile, officials continued to burn the 148 tons (134 metric tons) of marijuana seized in the border city of Tijuana. The 15,000 packages — Mexico's biggest pot haul on record — were set ablaze Wednesday.

Authorities announced that one of the 11 men detained during the seizure also confessed to participating in at least eight killings.

Rodolfo Campos Montejo told police he acted as a lookout during the killing of two men who were decapitated and hung by their feet from a bridge last week, according to a statement from the Baja California state attorney general's office. Campos also allegedly said he participated in the assassination of the top state police commander in the town of Rosarito.

The statement said police suspect Campos served as liaison between local Tijuana gangs and the powerful Sinaloa cartel, which investigators believe owned the seized marijuana.

In Acapulco, meanwhile, prosecutors said they are investigating whether local police were involved in the kidnapping of 20 men who disappeared while traveling together in the resort city last month.

Guerrero state Attorney General David Augusto Sotelo said prosecutors were investigating the veracity of a video that appeared this week on YouTube, showing a man who identified himself as a policeman and said he and other officers kidnapped the 20 men.

The man, who appeared to be answering questions from an interrogator, claimed he belonged to a cartel led by Edgar Valdez Villarreal, alias "The Barbie," a U.S.-born reputed drug lord who was recently captured outside Mexico City.

The 20 men were visiting Acapulco from the city of Morelia, in neighboring Michoacan state, when they disappeared Sept. 30.

One of their companions reported the kidnapping to police, saying the men were traveling in several cars and looking for accommodations when gunmen kidnapped them. The man said he had gone to the store and when he returned, he found his companions were gone and witnesses told him about the kidnapping.

Guerrero state prosecutors have said that interviews with relatives and background checks indicated the 20 men had no criminal records. Relatives, and the man who went the police, say the men were mostly mechanics from Morelia who had saved up for a vacation together.

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Gulf of Mexico Corals in Oil Spill Zone Appear Healthy

ON THE FLOOR OF THE GULF OF MEXICO -- Just 20 miles north of where BP's blown-out well spewed millions of gallons of oil into the sea, life appears bountiful despite initial fears that crude could have wiped out many of these delicate deepwater habitats.

Plankton, tiny suspended particles that form the base of the ocean's food web, float en masse 1,400 feet beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, forming a snowy-like underwater scene as they move with the currents outside the windows of a two-man sub creeping a few feet off the seafloor.

Crabs, starfish and other deep sea creatures swarm small patches of corals, and tiny sea anemones sprout from the sand like miniature forests across a lunar-like landscape illuminated only by the lights of the sub, otherwise living in a deep, dark environment far from the sun's reach.

Scientists are currently in the early stages of studying what effects, if any, BP PLC's April 20 oil well blowout off Louisiana and the ensuing crude gusher has had on the delicate deep sea coral habitats of the northern Gulf.

So far, it appears the area dodged a bullet, but more research is needed. Some of the deep sea corals near the spill site were only discovered just last year.

"Originally, when we saw the trajectory for the oil spill and where it was going, we were very concerned that these habitats would be impacted," said researcher Steve Ross of the Center for Marine Science at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

Ross and others are conducting research from a Greenpeace ship in the Gulf, using a two-man sub as they work to determine if the corals have suffered damage, or may take a hit from long-term impacts, such as stunted reproduction rates.

"We thought certainly that ... we would see signs of damage," Ross said. "And we're very pleased to say so far, that in these locations, we haven't seen a large scale damage to the coral habitats. We're still looking, but so far, it's good."

Ross was part of a team of researchers that studied deep sea corals in the Atlantic Ocean between North Carolina and Florida. The research eventually helped lead to added federal protections for a roughly 23,000 square-mile network believed to be among the largest continuous distribution of deep water corals in the world.

Ross and others have now turned their attention to the Gulf.

While fishermen have for centuries dragged up corals from the deep sea, it wasn't until the early 1900s that scientists discovered these extensive cold-water reefs. And it wasn't until the 1970s that researchers were able to use subs and cameras to reach the sea floor to document them. It had long been thought coral reefs only formed in shallow, warm waters.

Deepwater reefs and pinnacles are much more slow-growing and can take several million years to form. Science is only now beginning to understand these underwater "frontier zones."

Researchers are looking to these regions for the development of additional pharmaceuticals since these cold-water critters have adapted to live in such unique environments void of sunlight, they possess unusual qualities that federal scientists say could aid in creating new drugs for cancer, heart disease and other ailments.

"We are very interested in any potential damage to deep sea corals," said Steve Murawski, chief fisheries scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is currently conducting research into oil in Gulf sediments, among other studies.

The federal government maintains much of the oil is now gone from the Gulf, but some studies indicate it remains in significant amounts on the sea floor. Microscopic particles have also been found in the water column.

It is now a prime time for coral spawning in the Gulf, when the corals release tiny larvae that eventually form new corals.

"It could alter the reproduction of these animals," Murawski said. "Even though the adults may survive the event, did we lose the opportunity to have more juveniles produced?"

Sandra Brooke, coral conservation director at the Marine Conservation Biology Institute, who is also participating in the research, agreed. The corals' reproduction rates will be studied over the coming weeks, she said.

"We have to be careful with our conclusions about this kind of data," Brooke said, noting it will take more than just a few dives to determine the extent of the damage. "We'll take further analysis but from what we've seen so far, it seems like they've dodged a bullet."

Long-term impacts, for instance, from 1989's much smaller Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska took years, even decades to understand.

"We're just going to have to continue watching," said Margot Stiles, a marine scientist with the conservation group Oceana.

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Student, 20, heads police in Mexico drug corridor

PRAXEDIS G. GUERRERO, Mexico –  There's a new police chief in this violent borderland where drug gangs have killed public officials and terrified many citizens into fleeing: a 20-year-old woman who hasn't yet finished her criminology degree.

Marisol Valles Garcia was sworn in Wednesday to bring law and order to a township of about 8,500 that has been transformed from a string of quiet farming communities into a lawless no man's land. Her predecessor was gunned down in July 2009 and the town had been unable to find a replacement for more than a year.

Two rival gangs — the Juarez and Sinaloa drug cartels — have been battling for control of its single highway, a lucrative drug trafficking route along the Texas border.

The tiny but energetic Valles Garcia, whose only police experience was a stint as a department secretary, says she wants her 13 officers to practice a special brand of community policing. She plans to hire more women — she currently has three — and assign each to a neighborhood to talk with families, promote civic values and detect potential crimes before they happen.

"My people are out there going door to door, looking for criminals, and (in homes) where there are none, trying to teach values to the families," she said in her first official appearance on Wednesday. "The project is ... simple, based on values, principles and crime prevention in contacts house-by-house."

Valles Garcia has been assigned two bodyguards but won't carry a gun. She says she will leave most of the decisions about weapons and tactics to the town's mayor, Jose Luis Guerrero.

She didn't respond when asked why she seeks women to do the job. She wasn't even in the market to do it herself.

But Guerrero solicited proposals from residents on how to make the town safer, and he liked hers so much, he offered her the chief's job. She took it, she said, because she loves the town where she has lived for 10 years, though she was born and has studied in Ciudad Juarez.

Whether her decision is courageous or foolhardy, the appointment shows how desperate the situation has become in the Juarez Valley. Local residents say the drug gangs take over at night, riding through the towns in convoys of SUVs and pickups, assault rifles and even .50 caliber sniper rifles at the ready. The assistant mayor of nearby El Porvenir and the mayor of Distrito Bravos were killed recently even after they took refuge in nearby Ciudad Juarez.

While the bullet holes that pockmarked police headquarters in Praxedis have been painted over, police buildings in other towns in the valley remain empty, with broken windows and few sign of life.

Eight officers quit in fear two years ago, leaving only three when Valles Garcia took over. She hired 10 and will add five more.

"Let's hope it is not a reckless act on her part," said Miguel Sarre, a professor who specializes in Mexican law enforcement at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico. He said that "a municipal police force cannot protect itself against such powerful forces."

Local residents like farmer Arturo Gomez are willing to give her a chance.

"This is a town without law," Gomez said. "It is not likely things will change from one day to the next, but let's see what a woman can do ... things can't get any worse."

Drug cartels in many drug-plagued parts of Mexico have killed or threatened police chiefs and their departments, buying off some officers and prompting some others to quit en masse.

In past months, soldiers and then federal police largely took over patrols in the Juarez Valley, but they stick mainly to the main road, afraid to venture down unfamiliar dirt roads that are well-traveled by drug traffickers.

"Here, everybody is afraid, and anything that can be done to remove that fear would be good," said Fidel Vega, a 46-year-old gas station employee. "You can see that this girl has a desire to get things done."

But some question whether a young inexperienced chief can handle a problem that has stumped even Mexico's federal government: how to cope with the drug cartel threat and underpaid, untrained local police, who are easily corrupted by criminal gangs in Mexico's roughly 2,022 municipal police forces.

President Felipe Calderon has recognized the problem faced by local police forces, whose officers earn average monthly salaries of only 4,000 pesos (about $300). Most of them have completed less than 10 years of schooling and are either at basic education levels or illiterate, according to the report.

Calderon has proposed a "unified command" structure in which Mexico's 32 state governments would have state police take on the main responsibility, backed up by federal officers and soldiers where needed.

While the cartels have been more than able to penetrate much tighter security details — killing mayors and police chiefs throughout northern Mexico — Valles Garcia says she isn't afraid.

For residents, her personal courage may not be enough.

Amalia Garcia, 58, had to send her five children to live in Ciudad Juarez for their safety, but now lives in Praxedis with her husband.

"Whoever is here, man or woman, things are not going to change," said Garcia. "Things are bad here, and nobody pays any attention." '

___

Associated Press Writer Mark Stevenson contributed to this report from Mexico City.

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Justice Department, New Mexico Reach Agreement on MOVE Act Enforcement

The Department of Justice has reached an agreement with New Mexico election officials to force compliance with a federal law aimed at protecting military voting rights — the latest in a series of enforcement actions against states that failed to send out all their military and overseas absentee ballots by federally mandated deadlines.

The New Mexico agreement was part of a lawsuit filed late Tuesday charging election officials from six counties with violating federal law; it came just hours after the Justice Department filed a complaint against the state of New York, and it followed filings against Guam earlier this month and against Wisconsin in September.

“The Department continues to work with states to investigate and remedy any problems that will prevent our men and women serving overseas from having the opportunity to vote and have their votes counted,” Justice Department spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa told FoxNews.com.

These actions come amid the ongoing debate over how to enforce compliance with the 2009 Military and Overseas Voters Empowerment Act, known as the MOVE Act, which is intended to ensure that overseas ballots are sent, received and counted on time. A provision of the law requires states to mail out absentee ballots 45 days before an election.

The complaint against the state of New Mexico and its secretary of state, Mary Herrera, charges that six counties — Curry, Los Alamos, McKinley, Rio Arriba, Sandoval and Taos — failed to transmit their ballots in time and were in violation of the law.

The Justice Department’s agreement with New Mexico, called a consent decree, says that without the filing, military and overseas voters “will not be provided the time specified under Federal law to receive, mark, and submit their ballots in time to have those ballots counted in the November 2, 2010 Federal general election.”

Secretary of State Mary Herrera’s office issued a press release on Wednesday in response to the lawsuit.

“While we have every reason to believe that all of these ballots have sufficient time to be returned, we want to do everything possible for our service men and women, and other overseas voters, to have their votes count,” Herrera said. “Every vote must count, and our coordination with the DOJ will make sure our military and overseas voters have every possible chance to return their ballots.”

“This coordinated action will give our voters every available opportunity to return their ballots,” she said. “We want to ensure that every vote counts!”

This month, former Justice voting section attorney Eric Eversole’s nonprofit organization, Military Voter Protection Project, sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder saying that it had conducted surveys with election officials around the country and found that numerous states and counties were in possible violation of the MOVE Act.

The MVP Project letter named numerous New Mexico counties that appeared in the Justice Department’s lawsuit against the state.

"We are obviously pleased that the Justice Department has taken action in New Mexico in response to our Sept. 27 letter," Eversole told FoxNews.com on Wednesday. "That letter, however, identified a number of counties in several other states with suspected MOVE Act violations. We will not be satisfied until each and every military voter is protected." 

J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department voting section attorney who is now a conservative blogger, says these actions might be too little, too late.

“The New Mexico lawsuit demonstrates that a private organization was able to detect noncompliance with the law when the DOJ could not," he said. "The MVP Project detected the problems in New Mexico; the DOJ did not. In contrast, the same private organization detected failures in Alabama and Arkansas, and the DOJ hasn’t done a thing yet.".

“The DOJ knew months ago that states including New York, Wisconsin and Colorado were violating the law," Adams continued. "They could have sued in June. Instead they waited until the last minute and military voters there don’t enjoy the 45 days before the election that Congress promised them.  [Attorney] General Holder doesn’t have the power to rewrite laws.  Forty-five days before means 45 days before.” 

Earlier on Tuesday, the Justice Department filed a complaint against the state of New York and its board of elections for its "failure to ensure that election officials in Niagara, Putnam, Westchester, Erie, Richmond, Bronx, New York, Kings, and Queens Counties transmitted absentee ballots by October 1," which was the second deadline missed by the counties, after the state had been given a waiver for missing its earlier deadline. The last five counties named compose all of New York City.

“Our laws guarantee that uniformed service members and other overseas citizens will have a meaningful opportunity to participate in the elections of our nation’s leaders,” said Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division.

“This suit seeks both immediate and permanent relief to ensure that New York’s military and overseas voters, many of whom are members of our armed forces and their families serving our country around the world, can exercise their right to vote and have their votes counted in the upcoming federal elections.”

Douglas Kellner, co-chairman of the state board, told FoxNews.com earlier Tuesday that he expected an agreement to be filed in conjunction with an official complaint outlining how the violations would be corrected. But no agreement was filed.

On Sunday, FoxNews.com reported exclusively that the four New York counties and New York City had missed the deadline.

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Despite warnings, Mexico still draws Americans

FALCON LAKE, Texas –  Despite a bloody drug war raging just across the border, some Americans living near Mexico act as if it's still a backyard playground.

In the last two weeks alone, two American tourists have been killed in Mexico in vicious attacks — one while riding a Jet Ski and another when his bus was hijacked. And a Mexican police commander investigating one of those deaths was killed this week, his severed head delivered in a suitcase to a local Army post.

But Texas officials keep encouraging boaters to enjoy the bass fishing on a border lake. And Gov. Rick Perry has not urged people to take any special precautions, suggesting only that U.S. and Mexican authorities increase the law enforcement presence in the area.

"There's like a psychological aspect to these kinds of warnings, that folks just don't take them seriously, or perhaps they believe the authorities are simply issuing these for liability reasons," said Fred Burton, vice president of intelligence for Stratfor Global Intelligence, which analyzes the drug war.

"There are people that say, 'Well, I know this area. I'm comfortable. Nothing will ever happen to me.'"

Tiffany and David Hartley may have been two of those people. They were working in Reynosa, a Mexican border town rife with drug violence, when Hartley's company moved them to McAllen, Texas, just across the Rio Grande, for safety.

The couple decided to take Jet Skis across Falcon Lake, which is divided by the border, to photograph a historic church. They were on their way home when pirates opened fire, killing Hartley, according to Tiffany Hartley.

Just days later, a student from the University of Texas-Brownsville was shot and killed in Mexico. Jonathan William Torres, 19, was one of two people killed when his bus was hijacked in Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville.

David Hartley's father, Dennis, said his son was not aware of any violence on the lake.

"My son is a history buff. He wanted to get a picture of that church. Not hearing of any recent activity there, David and Tiffany decided to go there and snap some pictures."

The State Department has issued repeated travel warnings to Americans traveling to or living in Mexico, with a particular focus on the area just south of the border. The warnings say that kidnappings are occurring at "alarming rates" with U.S. citizens often the target.

In response, Texas universities have canceled their sponsored spring break trips across the border and have warned spring breakers at South Padre Island near the border not to cross into Mexico.

In May, the Texas Department of Public Safety warned boaters to avoid the international boundary that zig-zags through Falcon Lake, which is 25 miles long and 3 miles across at its widest point. The warnings came after men armed with assault rifles twice robbed fishermen on the Mexican side of the lake. They traveled in the low-slung, underpowered commercial Mexican fishing boats that are familiar here. They asked for money, drugs and guns, and took what cash was available. No one was hurt.

Even as the headlines carry grisly reports of murders and torture, thousands of Americans still trek across the border for work and to visit family.

"People here on the border go back and forth all the time," said state Rep. Aaron Pena, who represents a portion of the border near his hometown of Edinburg. "Many people have to go because they have family over there. Funerals happen, weddings happen, grandmas get sick or they have businesses over there. For many of them, they feel safe because they live it daily. But it can strike you in a moment."

In the days after Hartley disappeared, Texas officials stood on the shore of Falcon Lake and encouraged Texas boaters to enjoy the fishing on the American side. Officials insist the lake is safe, as long as boats stay in U.S. waters. The border is marked only by buoys.

"As far as I know, it's fine if you stay on the U.S. side," said Rob McCorkle, a spokesman for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. "Traditionally, it's been a very good bass fishing lake."

Still, Perry says many Texans living on the border, particularly farmers and ranchers, understand and respect the threat.

"I don't know that the city dwellers have engaged, but the rural dwellers, I promise you, the vast majority of those people understand the threat for their safety," Perry said.

The disappearance of Hartley and the decapitation of Tamaulipas State Police Commander Rolando Flores did not even make major news in Mexico, where the drug war has killed more than 28,000 people since President Felipe Calderon declared war on the cartels in December 2006. More than 2,000 of those have been police.

Leading Mexican daily El Universal noted Flores' death in the last two sentences of a story on violent events Tuesday in Tamaulipas state, including the kidnapping of four university students and a series of shootouts that killed 12 people.

"Unfortunately, this is nothing new," Perry said. "Mr. Hartley, the UT student murdered over there, now this commander, all this in a two-week period of time, and this is a direct threat to people in communities on the border, including Texas."

___

Associated Press Writer Alexandra Olson in Mexico City contributed to this report.

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