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Ed Calderon has been squaring up with Mexico's ruthless drug cartels for the majority of his professional career, if not his entire life.
Calderon, who served as a paramilitary law enforcement officer in the Baja region of Mexico - home to major border cities like Tijuana - says many of his childhood friends "went to work for the cartels right off the bat."
And in a new Fox News Investigates podcast, "Alchemy of Violence: Narcos, Reapers, and Survival," he argues that these criminal syndicates should be treated by the U.S. government like the terrorist groups they truly are.
Listen to Ed's full story on Fox News Podcasts+ exclusively on Apple Podcasts.
One such group is the relatively new Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG), a group described in a June 2021 Department of Justice news release as "one of the most dangerous transnational criminal organizations in the world... [and] one of the most powerful Mexican cartels operating within the United States."
That particular announcement outlined the arrest of a group of CJNG enforcers, who apparently planned more than 150 murders over the course of just 6 and a half months. Those same enforcers, known as Los Cabos, were also allegedly responsible for the murders of two United States citizens in Tijuana in November 2018.
A State Department travel advisory updated as recently as June 17, 2021, still advises American citizens to "reconsider travel due to crime and kidnapping" in the Baja/U.S. border region of Mexico, primarily due to cartel & criminal activity. "U.S. citizens and Lawful Permanent Residents (LPRs) have been victims of kidnapping," the release warns.
Ed Calderon, a former paramilitary law enforcement officer from Mexico and the subject of a new Fox podcast - "Alchemy of Violence: Narcos, Reapers, and Survival." (Courtesy: Ed Calderon)
Mexico began military-backed efforts to eradicate the cartels in earnest back in December 2006, when Calderon himself was operational. He can't reveal too many specifics about his exact unit, because of the risks that still exist for himself and his colleagues, but he saw his fair share of the more than 80,000 deaths that have been attributed to the conflict since then. By the end, Calderon had experienced the murder of colleagues, their family, and even childhood friends.
When an American family was massacred south of the border, a case of what Calderon says was nothing more than mistaken identity, he was convinced the United States would be pushed to classify these groups as terrorists instead of simply criminals.
TOP CARTEL LEADER, 2 OTHER MEMBERS ARRESTED IN CONNECTION TO MORMON MASSACRE
As of today, there are still no Mexican cartels among the groups designated as terrorist organizations by the United States.
"A lot of people make the argument that cartels are not terrorists or terrorist organizations, and they always mention the fact that they don't have a clear political kind of aim," Calderon says. "But political candidates get killed, mayors get killed... So clearly, some of these cartel groups do have political motivations," he added.
Calderon says groups like the CJNG "meet every single definition to most Mexicans of a terrorist organization: they hang people from bridges, they torture people to death in videos - actually, ISIS was influenced by the cartel videos being placed online, how they were basically used as psychological warfare tool. You know they meet all these definitions, but for some reason, the U.S. government decided to walk back that designation."
Calderon goes into detail about his experience confronting Mexico's cartels in a new Fox News Investigates podcast, "Alchemy of Violence: Narcos, Reapers, and Survival." He also discusses how his former career led him to literally run for his life, his internationally recognized "Sneak Reaper" philosophy of self-reliance, and how years spent fighting crime led to his new existence helping others heal.
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The series launches Monday, exclusively on Fox News Podcasts Plus on Apple Podcasts. But you can listen to episode one right here for free.
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