Violence erupted just across the border from Laredo, Texas, in its sister city of Nuevo Laredo, after the Mexican military apprehended a regional leader of the Northeast Cartel (CDN) on Monday, February 3, 2025. The US Consulate General in Nuevo Laredo issued a “shelter in place” security alert to all US workers on Monday owing to “reports of multiple gunfights throughout the city.”
Since late last month, the State Department has warned US residents against traveling to the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, which includes Nuevo Laredo, after cartels began laying roadside bombs and engaged in “frequent gun battles” there.
According to the US State Department, on Thursday, January 23, 2025, a cartel IED damaged a Government of Mexico (Conagua) vehicle in Rio Bravo, Tamaulipas (across the river from Donna, Texas). The driver was injured.
On Sunday, February 2, 2025, Breitbart News reported that “Mexican law enforcement sources” confirmed numerous unofficial reports that began circulating in Mexico that a Brownsville, Texas resident was killed when an improvised explosive device (IED) planted by a Mexican Cartel exploded under his truck (which bore Texas license plates) on a Tamaulipas road.
Official Tamaulipas State Media outlets also mentioned the fatal occurrence (two males were killed in the blast and a lady was injured), but no information about the victims’ nationalities was provided. The blast took place in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, one of the localities expressly identified by the US State Department in its warnings concerning cartel violence in the Mexican state.
A cross-border shoot-out between Mexican Cartel gunmen in Tamaulipas and US Border Patrol agents in Starr County, Texas, on January 27, 2025, adds to fears about violence along this stretch of the Texas-Mexico border.
The cartel was attempting to transport migrants from Mexico across the Rio Grande when Border Patrol agents arrived to stop them on the US side. The subsequent shootout followed accusations that the cartels gave the “green light” to open fire on U.S. federal law officers in retribution for Trump’s border crackdown.
The shootout left no one hurt, and cartel gunmen attempted to shoot down a Texas Department of Public Safety drone that had been dispatched to the location.
The map below depicts the area to which US people are advised against traveling:
The “Do Not Travel” advise for US residents entering Tamaulipas applies to all international border crossings from Laredo southward along the Rio Grande all the way to Brownsville.
The worsening border security situation (coupled with the prospect of US tariffs) has prompted Mexico’s President to agree to send 10,000 Mexican National Guardsmen (such as those depicted here) to their northern border with the US.
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