I live in Laredo,Texas and I would say both their power is felt on how organized and controlled is the immigrant and drug trafficking is by the cartels. I think the cartels actually make the southwest safer than up north were street gangs kill each other for turf especially in areas with no significant cartel influence like Baltimore and other areas with very sparse hispanic population. Rival street gangs here like the Eme, Latinos Pistoleros and Texas Syndicate are so tied with the cartels that they all towards the same goal which is immigrant smuggling and drug trafficking which is huge in the city. The street gangs here kinda respond to the cartels in Mexico and like alice said through intimidation. Drug mules here in the U.S get beat up by the street gangs that kinda represent the cartels in Mexico if they caught too much often but yeah there is the discipline mules and smugglers have too follow if they dont want to get beat up badly. I guess the violence in Mexico is what people fear over here. I would say their power is felt through the discipline in the U.S street gangs/mules and intimidation. There are also cartel members here that party in the night clubs and are very notorious and feared. Its a pretty scary world/game. Yet we barely have any murders in the city and we have gotten years with no murders. There is a lot of stigma from my city(Laredo,Texas) from other nearby citie or towns saying Laredo is dangerous and all this BS because of the chaos across the bridge in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico. But like I said we barely have any murders. The leading cause of death here is car accidents lmao.