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Thousands of women are smuggled each year from Tenancingo, Mexico, to Queens, New York through an elaborate sex trafficking ring. The BBC's Laura Trevelyan followed the route and spoke with female victims, pimps and law enforcement officials along the way.

Jeffrey S. Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, talks about a new report: "Net Migration from Mexico Falls to Zero - and Perhaps Less," and what those findings mean on both sides of the border.

Each year, more than 25,000 undocumented immigrants are apprehended as they attempt to cross the border from Mexico to the United States. In most cases, we hear very few details about these apprehensions. But in one case, the details — which are especially gruesome — have become widely circulated.

During the GOP Primaries, likely nominee Mitt Romney preached an immigration policy of "self-deportation". It just so happens that in the wake of the passage of SB 1070, Arizona's controversial immigration law, many of that state's undocumented immigrants are practicing self-deportation. But they're not necessarily going back to Mexico. Instead, many are crossing the border into surrounding states with more lenient immigration laws on the books. We're joined by Peter O'Dowd, News Director at KJZZ.

Walmart, the Arkansas-based retail giant, may bank its brand on family values, but in recent years, the company has faced criticism as its executives try to balance high moral standards with extremely rapid growth. A new investigation from our partner The New York Times investigates a potential corruption scandal, stemming from a network of bribery in the company's Mexico stores. Ben Heineman, senior fellow at Harvard Law School and expert on corporate governance, explains the aftermath for Walmart.

Alondra de la Parra, the New York-born conductor who made a splash by forming her own orchestra while in her mid 20s, has a new job, as the artistic director of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Jalisco.

For their first collaboration with another group, Mexican guitar virtuosos Rodrigo y Gabriela reworked their own songs with a 13-piece orchestra from Havana known as C.U.B.A. We hear selections from the album that resulted, “Area 52,” when the duo joins us with a backing band to play live in our studio.

David Shirk director of the Trans-Border Institute (TBI) at the University of San Diego, and Viridiana Rios of Harvard University discuss the new report from TBI about drug violence in Mexico and discusses President Calderon's visit to the White House.

This week, the Mexican Senate approved a constitutional amendment that would give the federal government jurisdiction over murders of journalists, taking over that responsibility from local officials who are often either ineffective, corrupt, or both. Brooke speaks with Eugenio Herrera, the General Counsel for Groupo Reforma, the largest newspaper publisher in Mexico about the amendment. 

In 2010, after another staff journalist had been killed by the drug cartels, the Ciudad Juarez newspaper El Diario published a front page editorial – it’s title was ‘What Do You Want From Us?”  Brooke spoke with El Diario editor Gerardo Rodriguez about his plaintive, angry and very public question for the cartels.

Oddisee - All Along the River

Each year, millions of dollars of Mexican drug money pass through the hands of American Drug Enforcement Administration officials. Undercover American narcotics agents launched the money laundering operation in order to trace the drug cartels. This is not the first instance of a U.S. governmental agency using illegal means to fight the war against drugs in Mexico. While the effectiveness of either program stopping the flow of drugs into the U.S. remains unclear, their impact on Mexican citizens is less ambiguous.

Journalist Ioan Grillo, who has spent a decade in Mexico reporting on the drug wars from the front lines, draws a portrait of Mexico's drug cartels and how they have radically transformed in the last decade. His book El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency includes testimonies from inside the cartels, firsthand dispatches, and analysis.

Since 2006, when President Felipe Calderón declared war on Mexico's drug cartels, 45,000 Mexicans across the republic have been disappeared, murdered, or mass-executed. Victims of this violence include journalists, over two thousand public officials, and bystanders. While drug-related activity was previously relegated to only a few Mexican states, the dramatic spread of violence — and its severity — is attributable to governmental policy north and south of the border.

The emotions that the decision is invoking pits two key sections of the Republican party against each other – the pro-business movement which sees a move like this as a cut in costs and the hardliners who are advocating higher walls and more security around the border to limit any opportunity for people to enter the United States illegally.

In an exclusive story, The New York Times reports today that the United States has a network of highly placed informants in Mexican drug cartels, often operating without the knowledge of the Mexican government. The informants have been instrumental in capturing or killing a number of important traffickers. Eric Olson, senior associate at the Woodrow Wilson Center's Mexico Institute, comments on what this revelation means for U.S.-Mexican relations.

Extortion has tripled in Mexico since 2004, and the latest victims are teachers in Acapulco, one of the country's biggest tourist spots. Gang members are plaguing teachers there with threats demanding they give over half their pay by October 1. Hundreds of schools have closed because of the threats, but thousands of teachers are not sitting quietly, and instead are taking to the streets in protest.

Last week the mutilated bodies of a man and a woman were found dangling from a pedestrian overpass in the Mexican boarder town of Nuevo Laredo, with notes explicitly warning that those posting the wrong things on the internet will share the same fate. As Drug cartels in Mexico turn their sights on blogs and twitter feeds, the mostly-anonymous social media may have an advantage that eludes mainstream journalism. Louis Nevaer of New America Media discusses the drug wars and the possibility of a newly empowered Mexican social body.

Ken Ellingwood, correspondent for the LA Times' Mexico City bureau, discusses Mexican President Felipe Calderon's remarks at the UN yesterday; Jon Gambrell, chief correspondent in Lagos, Nigeria for The Associated Press, reacts to Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan's speech; and Brian Winter, chief correspondent in Brazil for Thomson Reuters, discusses Brazilian president's Dilma Rousseff's opening address.

Did your head of state speak yesterday at the UN? What's your reaction to their speech? Let us know!

Mexico's War on Drugs, which President Felipe Calderón declared in January of 2007, has already resulted in the deaths of some 40,000 Mexicans, according to the Congressional Research Service. The epicenter of the violence is Ciudad Juárez, a city in northern Mexico less than five miles from El Paso, Texas. Last year, over 4,500 federal police began patrolling there, replacing army units that had been stationed there previously. Today, those police will leave the city.