Mexico cartels empty border towns

The 14-year-old boy tied a few mattresses and a bedstead to the family truck. He went back into his single-story yellow house for the cat, and chained up the gate. Then he drove off with his family, which was abandoning home, jobs, school and country.

All because the drug smugglers told them to.

Hundreds of families are fleeing the cotton-farming towns of the Juarez Valley, a stretch of border 50 miles east of Ciudad Juarez. In a new strategy, Mexican drug cartels seeking to minimize interference with their operations are using terror to empty the entire area.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36605713/ns/world_news-americas/The Associated Press — MSNBC.com