Here’s How the Obama Administration Defended DEA Agents Who Put a Gun to a Little Girl’s Head

Mike Riggs | June 19, 2012

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that the DEA’s use of force against the 11-year-old and 14-year-old daughters of Thomas and Rosalie Avina–which included putting a gun to the youngest girl’s head–was “excessive,” “unreasonable,” and constituted “intentional infliction of emotional distress.”

Attorneys for the Obama administration defended the raid, and Reason has obtained the brief the DOJ filed to the Ninth Circuit. In it, the Obama administration argues that “the DEA agents’ conduct was plainly reasonable under the circumstances.”

After subduing their parents, agents broke into the two girls’ bedrooms during a wrong-door raid in January, 2007. The oldest of the two girls dropped to the floor and was handcuffed by agents before being dragged into the living room and laid next to her mom and dad. The 11-year-old, however, was sleeping when agents came into her room. As they began to shout at her to “get on the fucking ground,” the girl woke up and “froze in fear.” Agents then dragged her from her bed to the floor. One agent handcuffed her while another aimed a gun at her head.

Citing Muehler v. Mena, the unanimous 2005 Supreme Court decision that established the right of law enforcement agents to detain residents during a raid for an unspecified amount of time—Iris Mena and several of her tenants were handcuffed and left in a garage for three hours while federal agents ransacked her home looking for evidence to use against a suspected gang member boarding with Mena—the Obama administration argued to the Ninth Circuit that the DEA agents were acting within the law when they handcuffed the entire Avina family.

The Obama administration’s argument is based on the agents’ belief that the home they were preparing to raid on January 20, 2007, belonged to suspected drug trafficker Louis Alvarez, who “had a history of violence and resisting arrest.” The agents anticipated that Alvarez would be armed, and that the only way they could safely arrest him would be with an early morning raid. While agents would later learn that they had the wrong house, they didn’t know that when they battered down the Avinas’ front door, guns ready.

To a certain extent, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the DOJ’s brief. It upheld the lower court’s ruling that the treatment of Thomas and Rosalie Avina—Thomas resisted the agents’ commands and was tackled to the ground and handcuffed at gunpoint; Rosalie voluntarily dropped to the floor—was not unreasonable or unlawful.

But what of the children? To sway the court, Obama administration lawyers softened their depiction of the agents’ treatment of the 11-year-old and 14-year-old girls:

Agents also entered the bedrooms of plaintiffs B.F. and B.S. Avina, who were then fourteen and eleven years old, respectively. Both girls were in bed at the time, and B.S. was sleeping. B.F. complied with the agents’ instruction to get on the ground, and the agents thereafter handcuffed her. B.S. initially resisted the instruction, and agents responded by assisting her to the floor and handcuffing her. The agents did not use profanity in speaking to the girls.

Compared to the Ninth Circuit’s ruling, which uses the facts presented by the Avinas, this is an utter white-washing. The girl identified as “B.S.” is the Avinas’ 11-year-old daughter. She did not “resist the instruction,” but was “frozen in fear.” Agents did not “assist her to the floor,” they dragged her off her bed. They did not just handcuff her, they held a gun to her head.

The Obama administration also white-washed the agents use of profanity during the raid. According to the Ninth Circuit’s ruling (which–again–is based on the Avinas’ brief), the agents told both girls to “get down on the fucking ground.” According to the Obama administration’s brief, however, the use of profanity was spare:

In response to plaintiffs’ contention that “the allegedly extensive use of profanity somehow contributes to a finding that the agents used unreasonable force,” the [lower] court noted that there was “no evidence that suggests any use of profanity was extensive.” To the contrary, the court observed that “the evidence demonstrates that the agents sparsely used profanity,” and “did so only in association with commands during entry directed solely at the adults.”  Id.  “Though B.F. Avina testified that she heard profanity used in the background during the agents’ entry, neither B.F. nor [B.S.] Avina testified that any of the agents used any profanity directed at them.”  Id. (internal citation omitted).

If neither of the daughters testified about the officers’ profanity, why is it in the Ninth Circuit’s Ruling? And why did the Obama administration omit from its own brief that an officer aimed a gun at the 11-year-old’s head?

Also, there’s something insidious about the word “assist”: According to the Obama administration’s brief, the agents “assisted” Thomas Avina to the floor as well, but the Ninth Circuit described the action thusly: “Agents ‘forcefully pushed’ Thomas Avina to the ground during the initial minutes of the search.”

Based on a recollection that is unique to the briefs filed by DOJ lawyers, the Obama administration asked the Ninth Circuit to uphold the lower court’s ruling on the following grounds:

Having probable cause to believe that a drug-trafficker was living at plaintiffs’ residence, DEA agents obtained warrants to arrest the suspect and to search the residence for firearms and other evidence of illegal drug-trafficking.  Plaintiffs were home when agents executed the warrants, and the agents reasonably detained plaintiffs, in handcuffs, while securing the premises.  Finding no evidence that the agents used force beyond that necessary to handcuff the plaintiffs, and concluding that the agents’ use of strong language was not excessive, the district court granted summary judgment for the United States on plaintiffs’ claims of assault and battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress.  This Court should affirm the district court’s judgment, as plaintiffs have adduced no evidence indicating that state law would impose liability in like circumstances.

And yet, of all the precedents the Obama administration cited, it did not name a single case in which a court had upheld the use of force against children.

But the administration’s brief doesn’t end there. Secondary to the question of whether the DEA agents committed assault and battery, and inflicted emotional distress, was the question of liability for a wrong-door raid. The DEA after all, made a big mistake. Not only were the Avinas innocent, but after being released, traveled immediately to a clinic where the whole family was medicated for anxiety.

Should the DEA be held unaccountable, at the very least, for raiding the wrong house? The Obama administration says no:

Plaintiffs [the Avinas] offer no argument or evidence suggesting that the agents did not in good faith act within the scope of the warrant in this case.  As plaintiffs note, evidence exists that the affidavit supporting the warrant erroneously stated that Alvarez’s car was registered to plaintiffs’ address.  But this deficiency was not apparent from the face of the warrant and therefore does not implicate the limited exception to Leon; there is no indication of any kind that the agents executing the warrant had reason to know of the error and acted other than in good faith.  To the contrary, the statement in the affidavit regarding the registration would tend to confirm the existence of probable cause to search the residence.

Any argument that the existence of an error in the affidavit undermines the validity of the warrant would similarly be unavailing in this case.  To challenge the validity of a warrant on that basis, a plaintiff “must make 1) a ‘substantial showing’ of deliberate falsehood or reckless disregard for the truth and 2) establish that, but for the dishonesty, the [search] would not have occurred.”  Liston v. Cnty. of Riverside, 120 F.3d 965, 973 (9th Cir. 1997) (quoting Hervey v. Estes, 65 F.3d 784, 788-89 (9th Cir. 1995)); see Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154, 171-72 (1978).  Plaintiffs have alleged no facts that could satisfy that standard.  Indeed, there is no suggestion that the error with respect to the vehicle registration was the result of anything other than inadvertence.  Plaintiffs have additionally failed to establish a triable issue of fact 20 Case: 11-55004   06/24/2011   Page: 26 of 32    ID: 7796875   DktEntry: 16with respect to whether the remaining evidence in the affidavit was nevertheless sufficient to establish probable cause.

Shorter version: Unless the victim of a wrong-door raid can prove that the mistake was an act of malice–it is almost never that–there is absolutely no legal recourse for suffering the shock-and-awe of a wrong-door raid.

The Obama administration has 45 days to decide whether it will appeal the Ninth Circuit’s decision.

Previously: Ninth Circuit to DEA: Putting a Gun to an 11-Year-Old’s Head Is Not OK

Source

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Is ‘El Chapo’ back in border city of Nuevo Laredo?

By Dudley Althaus and Dane Schiller

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

MEXICO CITY — Drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman purportedly has come gunning for the vicious Zetas gang on the South Texas border, leaving 14 of their butchered bodies and a message vowing to rid Nuevo Laredo of its criminal scourge as a calling card.

“We have begun to clear Nuevo Laredo of Zetas because we want a free city and so you can live in peace,” proclaims a banner, under which were posed the bodies, as well as the gunmen presumably in Guzman’s employ. “We are narcotics traffickers and we don’t mess with honest working or business people.”

Guzman’s first attempt to seize Nuevo Laredo, bordering Laredo, in 2005 sparked a gangland war with the Zetas and their then-paymasters in the Gulf Cartel. The battles, complete with rocket attacks and massacres, killed more than 300 that year and gave birth to the hyper-violence still tormenting the borderlands and Mexico’s interior.

The Zetas and the Gulf Cartel won that earlier contest. Now Guzman, one of the most wanted men in the hemisphere, looks to be back.

This time he’s presenting himself as a White Knight, succeeding where Mexico’s military and federal police so far have failed in defeating the Zetas and restoring order.

“I’m going to teach these scum to work Sinaloa style,” the banner purportedly signed by Guzman sneers, “without kidnapping, without payoffs, without extortion.”

“As for you, 40,” the banner says, addressing Zetas boss Miguel Treviño by his code name Z-40. “I tell you that you don’t scare me.”

The message also warns Nuevo Laredo’s citizens that anyone who continues paying extortion money to the Zetas would be considered “a traitor.”

“Don’t forget that I’m your true father,” the banner advises in its sign off.

Photos of the mangled corpses first appeared Wednesday on Blog del Narco, a website that often posts up to date crime news in Mexico, and came a day after the 14 bodies were discovered stuffed into a minivan parked near Nuevo Laredo’s city hall. A note left with the bodies declared the victims “traitors.”

“Chapo is going to step up to the plate and become the protector of the poor people against the Zetas,” predicted Mike Vigil, retired chief of international operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration. “Obviously it is a vested interest because it behooves him and the other cartels to get rid of the Zetas that are causing a lot of problems for them.”

Vigil is a consultant in Mexico and in regular contact with senior government officials there.

While the banner and the threat it contains appear genuine, its authenticity couldn’t be verified. But officials in Laredo are watching closely.

“There is continued concern but we have dedicated all the resources necessary to ensure we don’t have a spillover on the Laredo side,” said Laredo Mayor Raul Salinas, a retired FBI agent. “Obviously any time we have a situation like this — and other cities on the border would react the same way — we monitor very carefully what happens on the other side of the river.”

Listed by Forbes magazine as one of the world’s wealthiest men, Guzman also is arguably Mexico’s most powerful crime boss. Though widely considered an old-school narcotics trafficker who generally has left civilians in peace, Guzman has been blamed for a number of atrocities in recent years.

The Sinaloan’s four-year struggle for Ciudad Juarez, bordering El Paso, has been blamed for the nearly 10,000 murders tallied there since. Some have credited Juarez’s nearly 40 percent decline in murders in recent months to Guzman’s reported victory in that battle.

Mexico’s other gangs, including Guzman’s have pushed back with the same brutality, dramatically escalating the bloodshed.

“The Zetas are trying to take over the country and they are a tremendous force to be reckoned with,” Vigil said. “It is a situation of fighting fire with fire and I think that you are going to see much more of that as the cartels engage them.”

dudley.althaus@chron.com

dane.schiller@chron.com

Read more: MySA.com

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Texas (Laredo): Arrest of Would-Be ‘Zetas’ Shows Risk of US Military Infiltration

Written by  Geoffrey Ramsey

United States drug enforcement agents have broken up a ring involving former and current US military personnel attempting to work for Mexico’s brutal Zetas drug cartel, illustrating the group’s alarming potential to penetrate the US military.

On March 24, First Lt. Kevin Corley (pictured, at left) and arrived with a three-man team at a warehouse in the border city of Laredo, Texas, armed with two semiautomatic rifles, a combat knife and a .300-caliber bolt-action rifle equipped with a scope. The men believed they had been hired by the Zetas to carry out a contracted killing and raid of a rival drug trafficking group’s storehouse, and had been called to receive the final details of the assignment.  What they didn’t know, however, was that they were targets of an elaborate sting operation organized by the US Drug Enforcement Administration.

For the past six months, Corley had been speaking with DEA agents posing as Zetas representatives, and had promised both to carry out “wet work” (a military euphemism for assassinations) for the cartel as well as equip and train Zetas members in military tactics. According to a federal indictment (.pdf), Corley claimed that his status as an active duty soldier made it easy for him to pilfer weaponry from his post in Colorado, and demonstrated this by providing the agents with bulletproof vests, training manuals and other stolen military equipment.

However, after receiving phony instructions from the undercover operatives in the warehouse, the four men found themselves surrounded by federal law enforcement officers. Although agents killed one of the suspects while attempting to make an arrest, the remaining three were taken into custody. Two other accomplices based in South Carolina were arrested in conjunction with the sting operation.

While the fact that six US citizens were so completely willing to work for the Zetas is disturbing, the most worrisome aspect of this case is the fact that all four members of the would-be “kill team” (with the exception of the individual killed by federal agents, who was a cousin of Corley’s) were either current or former members of the US military.

This is a troubling reminder that US military personnel are not immune to the kinds of incentives that lure their military counterparts in Mexico into joining the Zetas. The Zetas’ links to the Mexican military have been a trademark of the group since their early days working as the enforcement wing of the Gulf Cartel. Their original 31 founders were all ex-members of the Mexican special forces, and today the group is thought to have deeply penetrated the military in the states of Hidalgo, Chihuahua and Tabasco, as well as other parts of the country. As the drug gang’s trafficking networks have grown, they have expanded their recruitment pool to include members of security forces in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

Until now, however, there had been no hard proof evidence that the cartel was capable of hiring US-trained military professionals to carry out its work.  These arrests show that there is a very real possibility of such a trend, no doubt sounding alarm bells for US drug enforcement agents already concerned about the prospect of “spillover violence” in the American southwest.

The case is especially relevant in light of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s recent warnings that the US military is facing “significant criminal threat” from gangs within its ranks. In the 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment released in October, the FBI names some 50 criminal organizations that count both current and ex-soldiers among their members. The list includes the Zetas, as well as a handful of transnational street gangs such as Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), Barrio 18 and Barrio Azteca. Although they represent only a tiny fraction of veterans and servicemen, the FBI cautions that many gang members enlist in order to “receive weapons and combat training that they may transfer back to their gang.” The report also notes an uptick in gang-related graffiti in military bases overseas.

This phenomenon is a threat not only to the US, but to other countries in the hemisphere as well. If enough members of transnational criminal organizations acquire military expertise in the US, there is a chance that they will share these skills with affiliate cells in other countries in the region, potentially giving them a leg up against local officials. As InSight Crime has pointed out, many gangs already have the organizational infrastructure in place to do so. Both of El Salvador’s largest “maras” (street gangs) got their start in US prisons, and still maintain a strong presence in major cities like Los Angeles and Washington, DC.

Despite these concerns, the US military is a long way from seeing the kind of criminal penetration that plagues the Mexican army. That all six members of the “Zetas” plot had been under surveillance for months and eventually apprehended is a testament to the success that US law enforcement has had in foiling such criminal endeavors. Even still, with the Zetas growing more and more sophisticated, the risk of infiltration grows greater, and the US military may need to step up its internal monitoring to prevent this.

Source

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Texas (Austin): Yassine Brothers Funneled Money To Hezbollah

Owners of some of Austin’s most lucrative nightclubs were dealing in drugs, laundering the money through the clubs then funneling it to a family member with ties to a terrorist group in the Middle East, according to federal authorities.

During bond hearings in federal court in Austin Tuesday, an Internal Revenue Service investigator said Hussein “Mike” Ali Yassine and Mohammed “Steve Austin” Ali Yassine sent money in $2,500 increments to their uncle, Mohammed Ishmael in Lebanon.

Authorities say he is associated with Hezbollah, a militant group and political party in Lebanon.  The U.S. Department of State lists Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

The Yassines, their brother, Hadi Ali Yassine and seven business associates were arrested last week on narcotics trafficking, money laundering and firearm charges.

Yassine Enterprises owns nine nightclubs — Pure, Stack, Fuel, Spill, Kiss & Fly, Hyde, Roial, Malaia and Treasure Island.  The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission has temporarily shut down the clubs.

Tuesday Hussein Ali Yassine and Mohammed Ali Yassine were denied bond.  Four were granted bond — Hadi Yassine, Marisse “Madi” Marthe Ruales, Amar Thabet Araf and Sami Derder.  No decision has been made on bond requests for Nizar “Nino” Hakiki, Karim Faiq, Edgar Orsini and Alejandro Melendrez.

During three hours of testimony, Assistant U. S. Attorney Gregg Sofer questioned Randall Gillette, special agent with the U. S. Drug Enforcement Agency and James Neff, criminal investigator with the Internal Revenue Service.

The agents explained its undercover sting operation in which a confidential source was used to arrange two sales of cocaine between Steve Yassine and Nizar Hakiki.  The agents testified the proceeds from the deals were then funneled through Yassine`s nightclubs and Famous Vodka, owned by Hadi Yassine, the third brother.

Neff also stated in the hearing that the business was reporting income of $1 to $2 million when it actually was taking in between $7 and $10 million.

According to testimony, the Texas Comptroller‘s Office has frozen Mike Yassine’s accounts.  It was also revealed that he has bank accounts in Switzerland and Lebanon.

Several of the defendants are under investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Source

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Mexico’s cartels build own national radio system

By Associated Press, Updated: Monday, December 26, 4:26 PM

MEXICO CITY — When convoys of soldiers or federal police move through the scrubland of northern Mexico, the Zetas drug cartel knows they are coming.

The alert goes out from a taxi driver or a street vendor, equipped with a high-end handheld radio and paid to work as a lookout known as a “halcon,” or hawk.The radio signal travels deep into the arid countryside, hours by foot from the nearest road. There, the 8-foot-tall (2-meter-tall) dark-green branches of the rockrose bush conceal a radio tower painted to match. A cable buried in the dirt draws power from a solar panel. A signal-boosting repeater relays the message along a network of powerful antennas and other repeaters that stretch hundreds of miles (kilometers) across Mexico, a shadow communications system allowing the cartel to coordinate drug deliveries, kidnapping, extortion and other crimes with the immediacy and precision of a modern military or law-enforcement agency.

The Mexican army and marines have begun attacking the system, seizing hundreds of pieces of communications equipment in at least three operations since September that offer a firsthand look at a surprisingly far-ranging and sophisticated infrastructure.

Current and former U.S. law-enforcement officials say the equipment, ranging from professional-grade towers to handheld radios, was part of a single network that until recently extended from the U.S. border down eastern Mexico’s Gulf coast and into Guatemala.

The network allowed Zetas operatives to conduct encrypted conversations without depending on the official cellphone network, which is relatively easy for authorities to tap into, and in many cases does not reach deep into the Mexican countryside.

“They’re doing what any sensible military unit would do,” said Robert Killebrew, a retired U.S. Army colonel who has studied the Mexican drug cartels for the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank. “They’re branching out into as many forms of communications as possible.”

The Mexican army said on Dec. 4 that it had seized a total of at least 167 antennas, 155 repeaters, 166 power sources, 71 pieces of computer equipment and 1,446 radios. The equipment has been taken down in several cities in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz and the northern states of Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, San Luis Potosi and Tamaulipas.

The network was built around 2006 by the Gulf cartel, a narcotics-trafficking gang that employed a group of enforcers known as the Zetas, who had defected from Mexican army special forces. The Zetas split from the Gulf cartel in 2010 and have since become one of the nation’s most dominant drug cartels, with profitable sidelines in kidnapping, extortion and human trafficking.

The network’s mastermind was Jose Luis Del Toro Estrada, a communications expert known as Tecnico who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute cocaine in federal court in Houston, Texas, two years ago.

Using millions of dollars worth of legally available equipment, Del Toro established the system in most of Mexico’s 31 states and parts of northern Guatemala under the orders of the top leaders in the Gulf cartel and the Zetas. The Gulf cartel boss in each drug-smuggling territory, or plaza, was responsible for buying towers and repeaters as well as equipping his underlings with radios, according to Del Toro’s plea agreement.

Source

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Bank ledgers reveal Hezbollah drug racket

Jo Becker, Beirut
December 15, 2011

LAST February, the Obama administration accused one of Lebanon‘s famously secretive banks of laundering money for an international cocaine ring with ties to the Shiite militant group Hezbollah.

Now, the bank’s ledgers have been opened to reveal the clandestine ways the ”Party of God” finances its operations.

Intelligence from several countries points to the direct involvement of high-level Hezbollah officials in the South American cocaine trade. On Tuesday, federal prosecutors in Virginia announced the indictment of the man at the centre of a case involving the Lebanese Canadian Bank, charging that he had trafficked drugs and laundered money for Colombian cartels and the Mexican gang Los Zetas.

US intelligence analysts believe that for years Hezbollah received as much as $US 200 million ($A198 million) annually from its main patron, Iran, along with additional aid from Syria. But that support has diminished as Iran’s economy buckles and Syria’s government battles rising unrest.

”The ability of terror groups like Hezbollah to tap into the worldwide criminal funding streams is the new post-9/11 challenge,” said Derek Maltz, a Drug Enforcement Administration official.

US Treasury officials said senior bank managers had helped a handful of account holders in a scheme to wash drug money by mixing it with the proceeds of used cars bought in the US and sold in Africa.

In all, hundreds of millions of dollars a year sloshed through the accounts, held mainly by Shiite Muslim businessmen in the drug-smuggling nations of West Africa.

Many of these were known Hezbollah supporters, trading in everything from rough-cut diamonds to cosmetics and frozen chicken.

Founded three decades ago as a guerilla force aimed at the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, Hezbollah has never before had such a prominent place in the country’s official politics. Yet much of its power derives from its status as a state within the Lebanese state. In South America and in Europe, prosecutors began noticing Lebanese Shiite middlemen working for drug cartels. But the strongest evidence of an expanding Hezbollah role in the drug trade comes from the two investigations that ultimately led to the Lebanese Canadian Bank.

The trail began with a man known as ”Taliban”, overheard on Colombian wiretaps of a Medellin cartel.

In reality he was a Lebanese transplant, Chekri Mahmoud Harb, and in June 2007, he met in Bogota an undercover agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration and sketched out his route.

The undercover agent casually remarked that he must have Hezbollah connections. Mr Harb smiled and nodded, the agent reported. Agents had known that there was a major money launderer whose phone sat in Lebanon.

Now they had a name: Ayman Joumaa, owner of the Caesars Park Hotel, Beirut.

Eventually, an American team sent to look into Joumaa’s activities uncovered the used car operation.

The administration decided to invoke a rarely used provision of the Patriot Act. Since the bank had been found to be of ”primary money-laundering concern”, the Treasury Department could turn it into an international pariah by forbidding US financial institutions to deal with it. President Barack Obama was briefed, and in February, Treasury officials acted.

The indictment announced on Tuesday charges Joumaa with co-ordinating shipments of Colombian cocaine to Los Zetas in Mexico for sale in the US, and laundering the proceeds. The US has no extradition treaty with Lebanon, and Joumaa’s whereabouts are unknown.

Treasury’s Daniel Glaser said Lebanon’s Central Bank had shown its willingness to co-operate with the US in shutting down the Lebanese Canadian Bank and selling it to a ”responsible owner”.

Source

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