Drug Cartels attack United States Consular Staff and their Families in Mexico
Suspected drug cartel “hit teams” gunned down a United States consular employee and her husband in the Mexican border city of Cuidad Juarez and killed a co-worker’s Mexican husband in a separate attack, a U.S. official said Sunday. They came under fire in separate locations as they were driving Saturday.
Ciudad Juarez is a major hub for smuggling illegal drugs into the United States. It is directly across the border from El Paso, Texas.
The victims included a United States Citizen (“USC”) employed in the American Citizenship Services Section of the United States Consulate General in Cuidad Juarez (the “Consulate”), who was with her USC husband and infant daughter when they came under fire. The infant, who was in the back seat, survived the attack unharmed, but the woman and her husband were killed.
In the second attack, a Mexican employee of the Consulate was following her husband and two children in a separate car, when her husband’s vehicle came under fire, killing him and wounding the two children. Both families had attended the same social event earlier in the afternoon off-post away from the Consulate but it has not been determined if the victims were specifically targeted.
President Barack Obama said that he was “deeply saddened and outraged by the news of the brutal murders.” Shortly after the killings were disclosed by the White House, the U.S. Department of State issued a travel warning for Mexico. The travel warning said that due to the “recent violent attacks,” USCs were urged to “delay unnecessary travel to parts of Durango, Coahuila and Chihuahua states.”
The U.S. Department of State also announced that USCs working at consular posts in the northern cities of Tijuana, Nogales, Ciudad Juarez, Nuevo Laredo, Monterrey and Matamoros were authorized to send family members home until April 12 because of security concerns. The departure authorization only affects relatives of U.S. Government personnel in those cities.