Two alleged Gulf Cartel leaders arrested last week in South Texas likely were hiding out north of the border to avoid the extreme violence caused by warring cartels in Mexico, analysts said.

These cartel capos are potential gold mines of information for law enforcement, but the schisms they're fleeing may have spilled into the U.S. in two recent incidents, they said. And the demise of these bosses works to the benefit of their opponents across the river.

Border Patrol agents on Thursday arrested Eudoxio Ramos Garcia, 34, at a house in Rio Grande City. Ramos is the Gulf Cartel's former plaza boss, or regional commander, for the Mexican border city of Miguel Alemán, according to court documents.

He'd been living in the U.S. only for a few days, paying $500 to cross the border illegally because his visa expired, according to court documents.

The day before, agents near the river in Santa Maria arrested Jose Luis Zuniga Hernandez on a weapons charge. There's no reference to his position within the cartel in the court documents, but a former top official at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said agents think Zuniga was at one point the plaza boss for Matamoros, across the Rio Grande from Brownsville.

“He's a major player,” said Alonzo Peña, ICE's former Deputy Director. “I think he would come across whenever things got hot over there. ... He had several locations where he'd get refuge, safe houses, but nothing permanent here in the U.S.”

All this comes on the heels of the Oct. 21 arrest of Rafael Cardenas Vela, the 38-year-old nephew of jailed Gulf leader Osiel Cardenas Guillen and allegedly an important player in the cartel.

It's common for people from all walks of life in the border region to move back and forth across the river, and drug traffickers are no exception, said Scott Stewart, vice president of tactical intelligence for Austin-based global intelligence firm Stratfor.

Narcos often flee to the U.S. when things get hot in Mexico, Stewart said, and right now the Gulf Cartel is engaged in a war with its former enforcers, the Zetas, as well as dealing with an internal strife pitting two powerful factions against each other.

Those warring factions will find any way to eliminate each other, including ratting out rivals to U.S. authorities, he said. These arrests can provide a “bonanza of information” for agencies like the Drug Enforcement Administration, Stewart said.

“Especially if they've got an ax to grind,” he said. “I think that was pretty clear in the Cardenas arrest. They kept him on ice for several days before the arrest was announced. So he was probably singing like a bird. And that was linked to this feud, so he was probably dropping a whole roll of dimes” on his rivals.

That feud started in September, with the death of Samuel “Metro-3” Flores Borrego, the Gulf's No. 2 who was wanted in the U.S. on drug trafficking charges, according to an advance copy of a report by the Washington D.C.-based intelligence security consultant firm Grupo Savant.

As with much of the murky world of drug traffickers, it's unclear who's behind Flores Borrego's death. The Grupo Savant report says it was the Zetas, whom the Gulf has been fighting for control of northern Mexico since early 2010. Stratfor's Stewart says it was a rival faction of the cartel.

Regardless of who killed Flores Borrego, his death touched off a power struggle inside the organization. Those who worked for him, calling themselves Metros, are squaring off against a faction known as the Rojos, led by Juan Reyes “R-1” Mejia Gonzalez.

And Flores Borrego's death is being felt on this side of the Rio Grande. Stewart said the September killing of 32-year-old Jorge Zavala in McAllen may have been tied to the fighting between the Metros and the Rojos.

After a Hidalgo County sheriff's deputy was wounded in a shootout Sunday with suspected kidnappers, Sheriff Lupe Treviño said the suspects had been hired to track down a load of marijuana lost in the chaos after Flores Borrego's killing.

Such incidents are rare, and Treviño said it was the first confirmed case of spillover violence in his county.

Staff Writer Lynn Brezosky contributed to this report from Edinburg.