A member of the Gulf Cartel was arrested while guiding a group of migrants across the Mexico border, Texas Department of Safety (DPS) spokesperson Lt. Chris Olivarez said in an Aug. 25 tweet. The alleged cartel member, Salvador De Jesus Romero Nunez, will face state criminal charges for smuggling, Olivarez said.
The Texas Department of Safety Brush Team and U.S. Border Patrol agents tracked the group as they crossed into the Rio Grande Valley. Six illegal immigrants were apprehended alongside Romero, who is a scout and smuggling guide for the Gulf Cartel, Olivarez said in his tweet.
Authorities have noticed an increase in cartel activity at the border. A similar incident occurred in June, when a Gulf Cartel member was arrested for helping five migrants cross the border illegally, Fox News reported.
Along with human trafficking, the Gulf Cartel is responsible for much of the drug trafficking and violence, as it is one of the oldest crime organizations in Mexico, according to a drugabuse.com blog published by American Addiction Centers.
The Gulf Cartel’s origins can be traced to 1984, and over the succeeding years, it gained a lot of territory and notoriety, an Insight Crime article says. Its heyday was in the 1990s and 2000s, but many of the cartel’s leaders were either murdered or arrested, leading to a fragmentation of the group. Currently, there is no single, unified organization that constitutes the Gulf Cartel, but rather a loose assortment of criminal enterprises, Insight Crime says. Many powerful groups use the Gulf Cartel name and vie for control over the old cartel’s territory, the article says.
The traditional center of the Gulf Cartel’s operations is the northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, the Insight Crime article says. Primarily from the cities of Matamoros, Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa, the Gulf Cartel facilitates the flow of drugs, migrants, and guns into the United States. Matamoros is directly across the border from Brownsville. At its peak, the group was also prevalent in 11 other Mexican states.
Several cartels have splintered off of the Gulf Cartel in its prime, including the Zetas, an especially violent group that was initially a protection unit for the Gulf Cartel, Insight Crime says.
