EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – The office of Juarez Mayor Cruz Perez Cuellar has confirmed the arrival of 300 Mexican soldiers and 100 National Guard members to a city experiencing a spike in violence.
The troops will patrol the streets in military vehicles, support the municipal police in crime prevention operations and back up police agencies that come under fire from criminals, city officials said.
The soldiers’ arrival comes as Juarez recorded 124 homicides in January, the highest total in more than a year and a double-digit increase over December, which recorded 96 murders.
Juarez Municipal Police Chief Cesar Omar Muñoz last week attributed the spike to violence among drug gangs for control of crystal meth distribution in the city.
According to Observatorio Ciudadano, a nonprofit that tracks long-term crime trends in Juarez, the city across the border from El Paso, Texas, homicides declined substantially from 2015 to 2018. One month, November 2015, recorded only 14 murders, while April 2017 experienced 26 events.
The decline came in the wake of unprecedented cartel violence in the city between 2008-2012, traced to the Sinaloa cartel taking over the “plaza” or springboard for drug exports to the U.S., from the Juarez cartel.
Observatorio Ciudadano documented an upward trend in homicides beginning in the summer of 2018. U.S. crime experts have told Border Report that’s when the remnants of the Juarez cartel spearheaded by La Linea began regaining old turf in the border state of Chihuahua. That also coincides with street sales of drugs, particularly methamphetamine, proliferating throughout the city.
Juarez has averaged more than three murders per day since then.
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