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Jaime Zapata (U
Jaime Jorge Zapata (May 7, 1978 – February 15, 2011) was an Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent who was ambushed and murdered by the Mexican criminal group Los Zetas in San Luis Potosí, Mexico. He was one of two agents who were ambushed in a part of the country that was increasingly under the influence of drug violence. Zapata's death was the second highest-profile killing of a U.S. agent in Mexico—the first one was Enrique Camarena, an undercover DEA agent who was tortured and murdered by the former Guadalajara Cartel. Early life and education Zapata was born in Brownsville, Texas, United States, a border city directly north of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico. He was one of five brothers, all in the field of criminal justice. Zapata attended Homer Hanna High School, and later graduated from the University of Texas at Brownsville in 2005, where he attained a degree in Criminal Justice and an associate degree in Applied Science. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brownsville, Texas
Brownsville () is a city in Cameron County in the U.S. state of Texas. It is on the western Gulf Coast in South Texas, adjacent to the border with Matamoros, Mexico. The city covers , and has a population of 186,738 as of the 2020 census. It is the 139th-largest city in the United States and 18th-largest in Texas. It is part of the Matamoros–Brownsville metropolitan area. The city is known for its year-round subtropical climate, deep-water seaport, and Hispanic culture. The city was founded in 1848 by American entrepreneur Charles Stillman after he developed a successful river-boat company nearby. It was named for Fort Brown, itself named after Major Jacob Brown, who fought and died while serving as a U.S. Army soldier during the Mexican–American War (1846–1848). As a county seat, the city and county governments are major employers. Other primary employers fall within the service, trade, and manufacturing industries, including a growing aerospace and space transpor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laredo, Texas
Laredo ( ; ) is a city in and the county seat of Webb County, Texas, United States, on the north bank of the Rio Grande in South Texas, across from Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico. Laredo has the distinction of flying seven flags (the flag of the former Republic of the Rio Grande, which is now the flag of the city, in addition to the Six Flags of Texas). Founded in 1755, Laredo grew from a village to the capital of the short-lived Republic of the Rio Grande to the largest inland port on the Mexican border. Laredo's economy is primarily based on international trade with the United States largest trading partner Mexico, and as a major hub for three areas of transportation: land, rail, and air cargo. The city is on the southern end of I-35, which connects manufacturers in northern Mexico through Interstate 35 as a major route for trade throughout the U.S. It has four international bridges and one railway bridge. According to the 2010 census, the city population was 236,091, ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Felipe Calderón
Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa (; born 18 August 1962) is a Mexican politician who served as the 63rd president of Mexico from 1 December 2006 to 30 November 2012 and Secretary of Energy during the presidency of Vicente Fox between 2003 and 2004. He was a member of the National Action Party (''Partido Acción Nacional'', PAN) for 30 years before quitting the party in November 2018. His father, Luis Calderón Vega, was one of the founders of the PAN and one of its most prominent members; Felipe joined the party in the 1980s. Prior to his presidency, he received two master's degrees and worked within the PAN when it was an opposition party during the PRI regime. Calderón served as National President of the party, Federal Deputy, and Secretary of Energy in Vicente Fox's cabinet. He served in the cabinet of the previous administration until he resigned to run for the presidency and secured his party's nomination. In the 2006 presidential election, he ran as the PAN candida ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Drug Cartels
A drug cartel is any criminal organization with the intention of supplying drug trafficking operations. They range from loosely managed agreements among various drug traffickers to formalized commercial enterprises. The term was applied when the largest trafficking organizations reached an agreement to coordinate the production and distribution. The term is used to refer to any criminal narcotics related organization. The basic structure of a drug cartel is as follows: * Falcons (Spanish: ''Halcones''): Considered as the "eyes and ears" of the streets, the "falcons" are the lowest rank in any drug cartel. They are responsible for supervising and reporting the activities of the police, the military and rival groups. * Hitmen (Spanish: ''Sicarios''): The armed group within the drug cartel, responsible for carrying out assassinations, kidnappings, thefts and extortions, operating protection rackets, as well as defending their ''plaza'' (turf) from rival groups and the military. * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Operation Fast And Furious
Gunwalking, or "letting guns walk", was a tactic used by the Arizona U.S. Attorney's Office and the Arizona Field Office of the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which ran a series of sting operations between 2006 and 2011 in the Tucson and Phoenix area where the ATF "purposely allowed licensed firearms dealers to sell weapons to illegal straw buyers, hoping to track the guns to Mexican drug cartel leaders and arrest them". These operations were done under the umbrella of Project Gunrunner, a project intended to stem the flow of firearms into Mexico by interdicting straw purchasers and gun traffickers within the United States. The Jacob Chambers Case began in October 2009 and eventually became known in February 2010 as Operation Fast and Furious after agents discovered Chambers and the other suspects under investigation belonged to a car club. The stated goal of allowing these purchases was to continue to track the firearms as they were tr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Straw Purchase
A straw purchase or nominee purchase is any purchase wherein an agent agrees to acquire a good or service for someone who is often unable or unwilling to purchase the good or service themselves, and the agent transfers the goods or services to that person after purchasing them. In general, straw purchases are legal except in cases where the ultimate receiver of goods or services uses those goods or services in the commission of a crime with the prior knowledge of the straw purchaser, or if the ultimate possessor is not legally able to purchase the goods or services. In some jurisdictions, straw purchases are legal even if the end user is not legally able to purchase the good or service themselves. Legal uses Examples of legal straw purchases would be purchasing groceries for senior citizens who are unable to go to supermarkets themselves because of poor health or financing an automobile for someone who cannot obtain a loan because of poor credit. In some cases, the agent in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bureau Of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms And Explosives
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE), commonly referred to as the ATF, is a domestic law enforcement agency within the United States Department of Justice. Its responsibilities include the investigation and prevention of federal offenses involving the unlawful use, manufacture, and possession of firearms and explosives; acts of arson and bombings; and illegal trafficking and tax evasion of alcohol and tobacco products. The ATF also regulates via licensing the sale, possession, and transportation of firearms, ammunition, and explosives in interstate commerce. Many of the ATF's activities are carried out in conjunction with task forces made up of state and local law enforcement officers, such as Project Safe Neighborhoods. The ATF operates a unique fire research laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, where full-scale mock-ups of criminal arson can be reconstructed. The ATF had 5,285 employees and an annual budget of almost $1.5 billion in 2021. The ATF ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dallas, Texas
Dallas () is the third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 million people. It is the largest city in and seat of Dallas County with portions extending into Collin, Denton, Kaufman and Rockwall counties. With a 2020 census population of 1,304,379, it is the ninth most-populous city in the U.S. and the third-largest in Texas after Houston and San Antonio. Located in the North Texas region, the city of Dallas is the main core of the largest metropolitan area in the Southern United States and the largest inland metropolitan area in the U.S. that lacks any navigable link to the sea. The cities of Dallas and nearby Fort Worth were initially developed due to the construction of major railroad lines through the area allowing access to cotton, cattle and later oil in North and East Texas. The construction of the Interstate Highway System reinforced Dallas's prominen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
WASR Series Rifles
Wassenaar Arrangement Semi-automatic Rifles (commonly referred to as WASR-series rifles) are a line of rifles sold in the United States by Century International Arms. The rifles are manufactured in Romania by the Cugir Arms Factory and are a semi-automatic variant of the Pistol Mitralieră model 1963/1965, a Romanian licensed derivative of the Soviet AKM assault rifle. Century imports them and modifies them in order to comply with national legislation before sale to the general public via licensed traders. The WASR series takes its name from the 1996 Wassenaar Arrangement, a multilateral export control regime to monitor and limit the proliferation of certain conventional weapons and dual-use technologies. Design and construction The rifles are semi-automatic firearms manufactured in Romania by the Cugir Arms Factory and based on the Pistol Mitralieră model 1963/1965 (PM md. 63/65), which in turn was patterned directly after the Soviet AKM, itself a modernized derivative ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
White House
The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800. The term "White House" is often used as a metonym for the president and his advisers. The residence was designed by Irish-born architect James Hoban in the neoclassical style. Hoban modelled the building on Leinster House in Dublin, a building which today houses the Oireachtas, the Irish legislature. Construction took place between 1792 and 1800, using Aquia Creek sandstone painted white. When Thomas Jefferson moved into the house in 1801, he (with architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe) added low colonnades on each wing that concealed stables and storage. In 1814, during the War of 1812, the mansion was set ablaze by British forces in the Burning of Washington, destroying the interior and charring much of the exterior. Reconstruction began ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Houston, Texas
Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in 2020. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the seat and largest city of Harris County and the principal city of the Greater Houston metropolitan area, which is the fifth-most populous metropolitan statistical area in the United States and the second-most populous in Texas after Dallas–Fort Worth. Houston is the southeast anchor of the greater megaregion known as the Texas Triangle. Comprising a land area of , Houston is the ninth-most expansive city in the United States (including consolidated city-counties). It is the largest city in the United States by total area whose government is not consolidated with a county, parish, or borough. Though primarily in Harris County, small portions of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael McCaul
Michael Thomas McCaul Sr. (born January 14, 1962) is an American attorney and politician serving as the U.S. representative for since 2005. A member of the Republican Party, he chaired the House Committee on Homeland Security during the 113th, 114th, and 115th Congresses. His district stretches from Austin to Houston. McCaul became the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in the 116th Congress (2019–2021); he retains that position in the 117th Congress (2021–present). Early life, education and legal career Born in Dallas, the son of Frances Jane (Lott) and James Addington McCaul, Jr., McCaul has English, Irish, and German ancestry. He graduated from Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas and earned a Bachelor of Arts in history from San Antonio's Trinity University in 1984 and a Juris Doctor from St. Mary's University three years later. McCaul also completed a Senior Executive Fellowship at Harvard Kennedy School. McCaul worked as an attorney ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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