Last weekend, a group of drug cartel members killed a border state police commander during an ambush. According to Breitbart News, the slain commander received a number of threats by drug cartels prior to the fatal attack.

The murder occurred on October 31, 2020 in the Mexican state Tamaulipas. Commander Tomas Charles Ortiz and his brother Alejandro drove to a local pharmacy close to the police commander’s neighborhood. At that moment, a number of gunmen approached the two men and began firing shots at them and briskly fled the scene. Onlookers immediately called the police to report the killing. State authorities arrived at the scene and sealed off the area while they carried out the initial investigation.

Tomas Charles Ortiz was the Tamaulipas State Police Delegate in Reynosa and presided over numerous operations by state police officers. So far, there has been no motive discovered for the murder.

According to law enforcement correspondence with Breitbart Texas, there is speculation that the gunmen are part of the Cartel Del Noreste faction of Los Zetas. State authorities recently seized a number of weapons and armored vehicles from cartel assailants in La Ribereña, an area that is across the border from Starr County. This part of Mexico is known for its Gulf Cartel activity.

Mexico has been the site of some of the most bizarre forms of public disorder in recent memory. The Mexican government has tons of trouble keeping cartels in check and often is outgunned by them. One of the most notable incidents that BLP previously reported was when security forces were over-powered by gunmen of the Sinaloa cartel during an attempt to arrest Ovidio Guzman, the son of notorious drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, in the city of Culiacán.

Certain estimates point to drug cartels controlling 20 percent of territory in the country, illustrating the Mexican government’s inability to maintain a monopoly of violence within its jurisdiction. Donald Trump raised the issue of immigration and border control, when no other politician had the guts to so. Win or lose, Americans should follow Trump’s lead and become concerned with what’s going on in Mexico. The very least we could is to secure our border and make sure that Mexico’s instability does not spread over to our side of the border.