U.S. Informant or Mexican Cartel Member? Or Both?

See if you can unravel this twisted U.S. story with a textbook Mexican origin: A mid-level member of the Juarez cartel hires a U.S. soldier and another man to kill an alleged fellow cartel-member in El Paso, but … he and the victim were also ICE informants???

Pace yourself when you read the AP version of the story.

Here’s the affidavit against 18-year-old Pfc. Michael Jackson Apodaca, pictured right. Arrested this week, he allegedly shot and killed Jose Daniel Gonzalez Galeana on May 15 in El Paso. A man named Ruben Rodriguez Dorado hired Apodaca to pull the trigger, police say. El Paso police also say Dorado, now in custody, is both a member of the Juarez cartel — and another ICE informant. What?

Makes you wonder how deeply ICE, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, is monitoring cartel activity on the U.S. side. ICE isn’t talking. In any case, on Thursday, the agency and its parent the Department of Homeland Security, along with counterparts in Mexico, signed a “letter of intent” to go after cross-border weapons smuggling.

On the same day in San Diego, 17 people were charged with kidnapping and killing nine victims between 2004 and 2007 as part of a rogue cell of Tijuana’s Arellano Felix cartel. The gang called themselves Los Palillos, or The Toothpicks. Charges against them say the criminals donned “FBI and police uniforms and caps while snatching victims outside homes and public places.”

* Post edited.