Yuma-area law enforcement agencies keep eye toward violence in Mexico

The Yuma area and neighboring Mexican cities have largely escaped the drug-related violence that has plagued other border areas, prompting Sunday's State Department advisory to Americans to avoid certain areas of Mexico.

But the war between rival drug trafficking organizations — and between the traffickers and the Mexican military — is fluid and could spread to this area at any time, law enforcement agencies say.

The State Department on Sunday issued a warning to U.S. citizens traveling to or living in Mexico about security risks in the northern border states of Chihuahua, Coahuila and Nuevo Leon, all of which border Texas, as well as for Tijuana, Baja Calif. It also authorized the departure of dependents of U.S. government employees assigned to consulates in Tijuana and the border cities of Nogales, across from Nogales, Ariz., as well as Ciudad Juarez, Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros, all next to Texas.

The travel advisory came after suspected drug gang hit men separately ambushed two cars carrying families with ties to the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juarez, killing an American couple and a Mexican man. Three young children survived, although two suffered wounds. The slayings came amid a surge in bloodshed along Mexico’s border with Texas and drew condemnation from the White House.

The Yuma County Sheriff's Office has had several discussions with other area law enforcement agencies in recent months about the topic of a potential spillover effect of violence from Mexico, including in the Yuma area, sheriff's spokesman Capt. Eben Bratcher said.

Drug smuggling corridors into the United States frequently shift along the border as the traffickers to try skirt U.S. law enforcement officers, Bratcher said. And as the smuggling routes move, the drug violence follows, he said.

"If they should choose San Luis, the real potential for violence there exists," he said. "We have to be prepared on this side for spillover."

Recent talks between the agencies have covered the topic of how best to coordinate their response to any violence.

"We've been planning and testing and conducting exercises for sometime in preparation" for possible violence. "We hope it doesn't ever happen, but in reality the potential does exist."

The Border Patrol said it has noted no trend of violence in the area of San Luis Rio Colorado, Son., which borders San Luis, Ariz. But this area is being closely monitored, given that the drug war in Mexico is wide ranging and can potentially bring violence to any part of that country, the patrol said.

The advisory comes days ahead of spring break, when many Americans head south for vacation to such places as Rocky Point and El Golfo de Santa Clara, both in Sonora.

Tourism officials in San Luis Rio Colorado were not available for comment Monday regarding the State Department advisory. Mexico's consul in Yuma, Miguel Escobar, was in Mexico City on Monday and unavailable for comment, his office said.

In the Ciudad Juarez killings, Mexican authorities put suspicion on a gang of hit men allied with the Juarez drug cartel based on ‘‘information exchanged with U.S. federal agencies,’’ according to a statement Sunday from the joint mission of soldiers and federal police overseeing security in Juarez.

But police offered no information on a possible motive in the slayings. U.S. State Department spokesman Fred Lash said only that the three dead people were at the same party before the attacks that occurred minutes apart Saturday afternoon.

Several U.S. citizens have been killed in Mexico’s drug war, most of them people with family ties to Mexico. It is very rare for American government employees to be targeted, although attackers hurled grenades at the U.S. consulate in the northern city of Monterrey in 2008.

The atmosphere of violence in Juarez had been creeping closer to U.S. offices for some time: on Friday, the consulate put a bar just around the block from its office off limits to U.S. government personnel ‘‘due to security concerns.’’

Lash said the decision to evacuate consulate employees' dependants was based not only on Saturday’s killings but also on a wider pattern of violence and threats in northern Mexico in recent weeks.

The consulate employee and her husband, both U.S. citizens, were shot to death in their car near the Santa Fe International bridge linking Ciudad Juarez with El Paso, Texas.

The woman was shot in the head, while her husband suffered wounds in his neck and arm. Their baby, who appeared to be about 1 year old, was found unharmed in the back seat, said Vladimir Tuexi, a spokesman for the Chihuahua state prosecutors office.

The pair was identified as consular employee Lesley A. Enriquez, 35, and her husband, Arthur H. Redelfs, 34, by Robert Cason, Redelfs’ stepfather. Redelfs was a detention officer at the El Paso County Jail, he said.

Civilians have increasingly gotten caught in the middle of drug gang violence that has made Ciudad Juarez one of the deadliest cities in the world, with more than 2,500 people killed last year alone.

The three died during a particularly bloody weekend in Mexico, with nearly 50 people killed in apparent gang violence. Nine people were killed in a gang shootout early Sunday in the Pacific resort city of Acapulco, one of Mexico’s spring break attractions.

Other stretches of the frontier with Texas that had been relatively quiet have seen a surge of killings recently. U.S. officials briefly closed the consulate in Reynosa because of violence, which Mexican authorities have blamed on the breaking of an alliance between two drug gangs.