Federal Cops Won’t Leave Juarez, Mexican Government Says

The 5,000 federal police currently deployed in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico’s murder capital, will not be withdrawn, interior minister Francisco Blake said, contradicting an earlier statement by the mayor of the border city. Mayor Hector Murguia said Tuesday that he was officially informed the federal cops will begin to leave Juarez in September. His announcement came hours after a score of federal agents fired on the convoy of Juarez’s police chief, the latest in a series of ugly incidents between the feds and local authorities. “The federal forces will not abandon Ciudad Juarez nor its citizens in the face of the criminal phenomenon the city is experiencing,” Blake said in a statement after meeting Wednesday with the governor of the surrounding state of Chihuahua, Cesar Duarte. The efforts of the federal forces in Juarez have been “successful,” Blake insisted. Ciudad Juarez, a metropolis of roughly 1.2 million people just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, has suffered nearly 9,000 homicides since the beginning of 2008...more