Brandon Darby

I miss this guy. He had nothing to gain from defending me and promoting me, yet he did it anyways — that’s just who he was.

“Nectar of the Cods” lol

Border & Cartel update 11 November 2026 THE PRESS •Ecuador: gunmen shot and killed journalist Tomás Beltrán Conforme, founder and editor of the Facebook news site Calcetines, Sunday night outside his home in Calceta, Manabí. He had received threats after reporting alleged corruption by local officials and was in the prosecutors' protection program; two of the outlet's collaborators were killed earlier this year. CPJ and IAPA have called for an urgent investigation into whether the killing was tied to his work. •No new killing of a journalist in Mexico turned up in the past 24 hours. •Mexican reporters can't cover the cartels the way U.S. outlets can. Many fear being killed for it, so much of what follows rests on official statements. THE BORDER •The "Dios con Nosotros" caravan, more than 1,000 people, mostly Hondurans, left Tapachula, Chiapas, on Tuesday after two days in a city park. It is walking the coastal highway toward Arriaga, where members hope immigration officials will give them papers to keep going. AFP notes that the two caravans before it this fall got no more than about 250 km past the border before Mexican authorities broke them up with temporary permits. MEXICO •Federal Protection Service officers seized about 35 metric tons of a granular chemical, preliminarily identified as lead acetate, from a refrigerated tractor-trailer on the Mazatlán–Culiacán highway. The SSPC says the substance is allegedly used to make synthetic drugs. Three people were detained. •Sinaloa: at least seven people were killed Monday and early Tuesday, including a woman shot from a motorcycle while riding her bicycle in Mazatlán, as Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch's team visited the state. On Tuesday afternoon in Culiacán, gunmen in a car killed José Armando, a 16-year-old Conalep student, and wounded a 21-year-old who hid on rooftops. •Guanajuato prosecutors arrested Yovani Uriel "N," "El Gio," in Yuriria. They call him the right hand of "El Gordo de Zempoala," an alleged Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel regional boss, and a judge ordered him held on federal weapons and drug charges. •Chihuahua: a state operation in Aldama freed two kidnapping victims and detained three people, then turned into a firefight with gunmen; no one was killed or hurt. Police seized two explosive devices built to be dropped from drones, plus weapons and tactical gear. GOVERNMENT & CARTELS •President Sheinbaum said Tuesday that nothing in U.S. relations has changed since the midterms or Stephen Miller's appointment as White House chief of staff. She repeated that Mexico does not share Washington's "terrorist" label for the cartels and said the designation does not authorize U.S. operations in Mexico, a position she says everyone "from President Trump to any agency director or Northern Command itself" understands. •Sinaloa follow-up: interim Gov. Graciela Domínguez says the federal security package is worth about 900 million pesos and that equipment should arrive within a month. Uno TV reports the plan adds 4,200 National Guard troops, mainly for Mazatlán, where homicides rose in September and October. •Tamaulipas AG Jesús Eduardo Govea Orozco says investigators are looking into the father, grandfather and other relatives of Aranza, the 7-year-old Brownsville girl killed Oct. 29 in Matamoros, after finding that some have criminal records and that the shot-up truck was allegedly used in that day's blockades. As Breitbart Texas reported, the state has confirmed its police fired the fatal shot. Govea said gangs on the border commonly use civilians, even children, as shields, but he has reached no conclusion in this case. WASHINGTON •Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday called the Counter-Cartel Coalition of the Americas "mutually beneficial," saying partner nations told Washington they don't want "China, Russia and Iran dominating our hemisphere." He called an impeachment resolution in Congress that cites the boat strikes a "political spectacle"; AFP says a vote could come this week. •The Justice Department says 36 people have been charged in South Carolina in a case against a Mexico-based trafficking and money laundering network that allegedly supplied hundreds of kilograms of fentanyl and cocaine since 2021. DEA seized 346 kilograms of fentanyl, 43 guns, more than $2.8 million and 15 luxury cars. •An indictment unsealed Tuesday in Los Angeles alleges that Edgar Aarón Vázquez Alvarado, "El General," killed by Mexican forces last week, gave Ryan Wedding near-daily code words to get cocaine loads past Mexican police and military checkpoints, plus doctored law enforcement credentials, for a $500,000 entry fee and about $100,000 a month. A second case charges Roberto Gomez, a South Los Angeles gang member and fugitive in Mexico, with feeding Wedding sensitive U.S. and Mexican law enforcement information, CBC reports. LATIN AMERICA •Haiti: President Bukele says Salvadoran forces destroyed the headquarters of the 400 Mawozo gang and the house of its leader, Lanmò San Jou, in Croix-des-Bouquets. The Sunday operation, led by Haitian police, reportedly killed 20. Amnesty International called on both governments to publish the deal governing the roughly 2,000 Salvadoran troops. •Axios reports that El Salvador formally rebuked the top U.S. diplomat in Haiti on Monday after the U.S. embassy in San Salvador protested that Salvadoran troops weren't coordinating with the UN-backed force and that their fire allegedly hit the embassy. El Salvador denies both claims. The State Department says it appreciates El Salvador's efforts but wants operations deconflicted. •Ecuador's National Assembly passed an "anti-mafia" law, drafted with Italian help, that allows combined sentences of up to 60 years and protects the identities of judges in organized crime cases. Separately, the FBI and Ecuador's prosecutors signed an agreement to share intelligence and run parallel investigations into drug trafficking, money laundering and arms trafficking.

You want to sail to the fjords of Patagonia, round Cape Horn, maybe cross the Drake Passage to Antarctica. But you also want to cruise warm waters in the tropics. Do you pick a Garcia or a Boreal?

Mexican federal officers pulled 35 tons of a suspected meth chemical off one tractor-trailer on the Mazatlán–Culiacán highway, Mexico's security chief says. Preliminary tests point to lead acetate, in 25-kilo bags on 18 pallets inside a refrigerated trailer. Three people were detained. Lead acetate is used in the P2P method that Sinaloa's meth labs rely on. A load this size feeds industrial-scale production, not small cooks. The next answer that matters is where it was headed.

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Michoacán's murder rate fell 42% in a year, Mexico's security chief says, one year after Uruapan Mayor Carlos Manzo was killed. That compares daily averages for October 2026 vs. October 2025. The real test in Michoacán is extortion: 188 arrests, 42 of them for squeezing lime and avocado growers, and 34 held so far in Manzo's killing. Growers stop paying when the collectors stay in prison.

Congo's military court sentenced 66 of its own soldiers to death for fleeing the front against rebels. The 71 troops were arrested Oct. 20 in Walikale, North Kivu, accused of abandoning their positions during clashes with the FRN, the rebel coalition that includes M23. Four were acquitted and one got 10 years. Another 27 soldiers got death sentences last month. Congo lifted its death penalty moratorium in March 2024, though no executions have been carried out since.

Mexico's security cabinet says it has arrested 74,000 people and seized 2,000 kilos of fentanyl plus 9 million fentanyl pills since Sheinbaum took office in October 2024. Those are arrest and seizure counts, not convictions. The number that tells you whether cartel operators stay off the street is how many of those cases end in a prison sentence.

Border & Cartel update 10 November 2026 THE PRESS •No new killing of a journalist in Mexico or Latin America turned up in the past 24 hours. •Mexican reporters can't cover the cartels the way U.S. outlets can. Many fear being killed for it, so much of what follows rests on official statements. THE BORDER •The Supreme Court on Monday lifted El Paso U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone's order halting border wall construction in Texas's Big Bend region, so work can resume. The unsigned ruling said the government is "exceedingly likely to prevail"; only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson would have denied the request. Cardone had noted that Big Bend accounts for between 0.3% and 2.2% of border apprehensions. •A federal grand jury in the Western District of Texas charged 14 people in an alleged Del Rio smuggling ring that used cargo trains to move migrants inland. Prosecutors say seven people, including a 14-year-old Honduran, died in May after smugglers locked them in an unventilated shipping container on a Union Pacific train; six were found in Laredo and one by the tracks in San Antonio. Twelve defendants face charges that carry up to life in prison. •The newest caravan, which calls itself "Dios con Nosotros," reached Tapachula, Chiapas, on Sunday with more than 1,000 people, mostly Hondurans, and plans to head north along the coast. The earlier "Fe y Esperanza 2" group has shrunk to about 400 to 500 at Arriaga, on the Oaxaca line, and has not been confirmed crossing into Oaxaca. MEXICO •R2 follow-up: the total detained in Sunday's Zapopan raid has risen to 21, Infobae reports. They include Fernando Omar Farías Chávez, "El Fénix" or "El Prángana," whom investigators call CJNG's regional boss in Uruapan and tie to avocado extortion and to the circle around the alleged killers of Uruapan Mayor Carlos Manzo. An Argentine, a Californian and four members of the norteño band Los Arras were also held; authorities have not said whether they have any criminal ties. Breitbart Texas (Ortiz & Darby) covered the capture Monday. •Jalisco state police arrested Alberto Alonso Alencastro, "Beto El Mexa," 27, a Californian described as an FBI priority target, in Autlán. He is wanted on a California homicide warrant issued in June. •Guanajuato: six people were killed Sunday, among them a soldier who died of wounds from a Saturday night ambush in Valtierrilla, Salamanca. In Celaya, gunmen on a motorcycle shot a family as they parked, killing a man of about 70 and a man of about 20 and wounding a 2-year-old girl. GOVERNMENT & CARTELS •Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch went to Sinaloa Monday with a plan that includes about 200 vehicles for police, mostly for Culiacán and Mazatlán, and a federal highway command center with 720 cameras along the Culiacán–Mazatlán–Durango corridor. Interim Gov. Graciela Domínguez said in the same event, "we have not yet achieved the restoration of peace," after more than two years of fighting between the Chapitos and the Mayo faction. WASHINGTON •The Justice Department says Saiful Islam, 39, a Bangladeshi extradited from Brazil, pleaded guilty Monday to smuggling migrants through South America, Central America and Mexico into the United States. LATIN AMERICA •Colombia's ELN says commander Silvana Guerrero survived the Oct. 30 bombing of a camp in Apure, Venezuela, and denies any of its fighters were hit, claiming the dead were Venezuelan civilians. Fundaredes counted 23 dead, and Colombian army sources told Infobae the toll could reach about 45. Four Trump administration officials told The New York Times the U.S. provided drones and intelligence for the strike.