The bloodshed in Ciudad Juarez being fueled by the drug war must have triggered a major alarm in Washington, D.C., this past weekend when the sister-in-law of a prominent U.S. Congressman was kidnapped while on a shopping excursion in the Mexican border town.

Juarez, located across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, has been the flashpoint for escalating tensions in the drug war in recent months, as evidenced by a rash of kidnappings and some 450 murders to date — including dozens of local Mexican cops. The causes are complex and layered, ranging from widespread political and law enforcement corruption, to turf battles among rival narco-trafficking cells, to increased street-drug consumption (ie., cheap heroin) to the frustration that comes with the desperation of poverty.

The abducted woman was the sister of the wife of U.S. Representative Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, chair of the House Intelligence Committee. The woman was eventually released by her abductors, after they discovered her relationship to the Congressman — indicating that it was a random kidnapping and the perpetrators had enough on the ball to understand the downside of snatching a U.S. Congressman’s family member.

But there is another subplot to this tragedy narrowly averted that the good Congressman might want to investigate.

Since 9/11, and through the creation of the Department of Homeland Security [DHS], our political leaders have sought to convince us that they were ushering in a new era of law enforcement cooperation. But in the case of this kidnapping, DEA and ICE sources tell Narco News, cooperation was not part of the playbook.

Matthew Taylor, spokesman for DEA’s El Paso office, confirms that the kidnapping did occur over the weekend. However, he adds that DEA was not involved in dealing with the matter.

“Initially, all aspects of the kidnapping were handled by ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of DHS] in El Paso,” Taylor says. “There was no immediate request for our [DEA’s] assistance. They [ICE] ran with it. ... All the negotiations and debriefings, etc., were handled by ICE.”

DEA and ICE sources, in fact, contend DEA actually first learned of the kidnapping through the agency’s own sources, prior to any official word from ICE — and did not know about the incident until a number of hours after it took place. It is not clear, at this point, how ICE ended up in the driver’s seat in the kidnapping case to begin with, or if ICE made any other agencies, such as the FBI or Border Patrol, aware of this high-profile abduction. However, Taylor’s statement seems to imply ICE ran with the case on their own.

If that is indeed the case, given that the victim was eventually released unharmed, it might seem that ICE merits some praise in this case.

However, a number of law enforcement sources say that is not at all how they view it. The problem, the law enforcement sources say, is that in the case of a kidnapping, contingency plans have to be made for the “worst-case scenario.”

“What happens if things had broken down at the last minute, and the kidnappers fled with the hostage, or took additional hostages?” one source explains. “That’s why you have to involve other agencies, at least at the supervisory level, so they know what’s going on and can react properly.”

ICE’s apparent hotdog handling of the kidnapping, law enforcement sources tell Narco News, has prompted high-level meetings and a great deal of consternation at the headquarters levels of both DEA and ICE.

Attorney Mark Conrad, a former high-level regional supervisor with U.S. Customs, ICE’s predecessor agency, says if ICE was, in fact, dealing with a live hostage situation and failed to include other agencies in the communications loop, then the consternation is understandable.

“I’d be very upset if ICE did not make notifications to other agencies when she [Reyes’ sister-in-law] was still in the custody of the kidnappers,” Conrad says. “… Time is absolutely essential in these cases. You can’t sit on information.”

Narco News contacted ICE’s El Paso office for a comment on the kidnapping and for insight into their version of the handling of the incident. Leticia Zamarripa, an ICE media spokesperson, said she would try to get a response back to us, but has not yet made that call.

Narco News also contacted U.S. Rep. Reyes’ office in Washington, D.C, for comment, but his office has not yet provided a response.

This is not the first case in which ICE El Paso has been accused of hogging the ball in a team sport.

Earlier this year, ICE agents in the Texas border city were accused of taking unilateral action in helping to transport a wounded Mexican state police commander (allegedly an ICE informant) across the border — creating more than a little risk for El Paso residents. The wounded man, shot several times in an ambush in Juarez, was transported to an El Paso trauma hospital that had to be placed on lockdown for several days due to the fear that narco-traffickers would make another attempt on his life. [See story here.]

In addition, ICE agents in El Paso were accused of refusing to share information with DEA in the case now known as the House of Death — which involved an ICE informant’s participation in some 12 murders in Juarez. ICE’s lack of cooperation in that case, DEA sources contend, nearly led to the murder of a DEA agent and his family and helped to assure the escape of a ruthless killer— a Mexican state cop who was one of the major players in the House of Death murders. [See link here.]

Stay tuned….

Check out the update to this report at this link.