This is bad.

But the killings Saturday of Lesley Enriquez, who worked at the U.S. Consulate and was four months pregnant; her husband, Arthur Redelfs, a corrections officer in El Paso, Texas; and Jorge Alberto Salcido Ceniceros, whose wife worked at the consulate, brought the murderous mayhem even closer to home in United States than perhaps it has ever been.

Two of the victims were U.S. citizens; one of them a U.S. government employee. The apparently coordinated attacks took place in broad daylight as the three were leaving a consulate children’s party. Three children were with them when the two separate assaults took place.

Now, the international investigation has expanded to both sides of the border in the search for clues about the killers as well as their motives.

via Mexican drug war killings hit closer to U.S.

Two things come to mind, if this indeed proves to be a truly unprovoked Drug Cartel murder of innocents:

• If this was some orchestrated killing there is at least one drug cartel in operating in Mexico and the US that have no fear of US Federal reach and that does not bode well for our border states.
• If the first point is true, then this helps confirm what we all know: our drug war is a losing one and the cartels actively thought to murder targets that would involve both governments. Why? As a crude warning? As retaliation for some law enforcement operation? If this was a consulate children’s party, they could have murdered more people.

We need to change our drug policy so that we can properly focus our resources, reduce incarceration rates and provide law enforcement some breathing room to operate.