A group of robbers on the south side of Chicago appear to have taken a page out of the Gulf Cartel or Los Zetas manual for setting up roadblocks in order to carry out violent robberies. Just last week a group of three or four robbers have used a construction area in the city’s south side to set up roadblocks as a trap for motorists.

Once the motorists stop, they were assaulted and robbed, UPI news reported.

The practice bears a striking similarity to a practice already established by both the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas who set up roadblocks around Mexican border cities to keep their enemies out or to rob unsuspecting motorists.

Cartel roadblocks are so common in the border state of Tamaulipas, as Breitbart Texas previously reported, that Mexican Federal Police officers actually set up convoys to escort tourists from southern cities in that state to the border cities of Matamoros and Reynosa.

“It’s already known that Mexican cartels control a significant amount of illegal drug trade in Chicago, but for local criminals to start using tactics that cartels in Mexico have been using for years, that is truly disturbing,” said Sylvia Longmire, a border security expert and Contributing Editor for Breitbart Texas. “The question is did these robbers intentionally copy cartels or are they coming up with these tactics on their own? Was this an isolated incident, or will we be seeing more of these roadblocks across Chicago in the future? The answers to these questions, if they ever are resolved, could become a huge concern to the city of Chicago and its residents.”

While the Gulf Cartel is known for having its operations along the Texas-Mexico border, in the past its tentacles have reached Chicago in order to carry out kidnappings and executions tied to missing drug loads, Breitbart Texas Managing Editor Brandon Darby previously reported. In that article, members of a street gang called the Two Six Nation, which had ties to the Gulf Cartel, were indicted on kidnapping and murder charges. They directed “members of the Two Six Nation to kidnap the family of Julio Cartagena (Cartagena was also a member of the Two Six), in an effort to recover a large quantity of cocaine stolen by Cartagena from Fuentes.” The drugs had been fronted by the Gulf Cartel to the Chicago gang before they were stolen. A second kidnapping attempt proved fatal when Two Six Nation members tried to take Cartagena but ended up murdering him instead.

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