Miguel Sierra / EPA

Federal authorities inspect the site of the plane crash in El Tejote locality, Nuevo Leon State, Mexico, where Mexican-American singer Jenni Rivera along with six other people died as they were travelling from Monterrey, in northern Mexico, to Mexico City.

Updated 11:05 p.m. ET: Mexican-American singer Jenni Rivera died in a plane crash Saturday night, her father and brother confirmed on Telemundo.

"She never gave up and she was good to everyone," said her father, Pedro, about his daughter’s legacy outside of his home in Lakewood, Calif. 

The wreckage of the plane was found Sunday in northern Mexico with no apparent survivors, authorities said.

The wreckage was found in the Ejido La Colorada, Municipality of Nuevo Leon. Gerardo Ruiz Esparza, secretary of communications and transport, said that the plane was not recognizable, but the evidence suggested it was the aircraft carrying the singer, Telemundo reported.

NBC Latino obituary: Jenni River dies at 43

Jim Urquhart / Reuters file

Singer Jenni Rivera, seen here during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, in January, was aboard a plane that went missing shortly after leaving the northern Mexican city of Monterrey early Sunday.

Officials said Rivera's Learjet went off the radar about 62 miles from Monterrey after taking off at 3:15 a.m. local time. 

The National Transportation Safety Board dispatched investigators to assist the government of Mexico in its investigation of the crash.

Rivera was heading for the city of Toluca in central Mexico after a concert in Monterrey on Saturday night. The singer, two pilots and four other passengers were aboard, Mexican officials said.

Jorge Domene, spokesman for Nuevo Leon's government told Milenio television that civilian agency helicopters flew over the state searching for the plane. The missing included her publicist, lawyer, makeup artist and the flight crew, the ministry of transportation and communication said in a statement.

In a photo posted on her Twitter account on Friday, Jenni Rivera can be seen referencing her concert in Monterrey. In the photo she is seen holding up a sign with the words, "Nos Vemos este 7 en Colima, 8-en Monterrey. I love you!"  Translation: "See you this 7th in Colima, 8 in Monterrey."

Born in Long Beach, Calif., to Mexican immigrant parents, Rivera has sold some 15 million records in her career and won several awards and Grammy nominations, her website said.

The 43-year-old mother of five is renowned as an exponent of the Nortena and banda regional musical styles. 

AP

Jenni Rivera's driving license is seen of the ground at the crash site where a plane allegedly carrying Rivera crashed near Iturbide, Mexico, Dec. 9.

The so-called "Diva of the Banda" recently won two Billboard Mexican Music Awards: Female Artist of the Year and Banda Album of the Year for "Joyas prestadas: Banda." Her famous songs include "La Gran Senora" and "De Contrabando."   

The singer, businesswoman and actress appeared in the movie "Filly Brown," as the incarcerated mother of Filly Brown, and has her own reality shows including "I Love Jenni" and "Jenni Rivera Presents: Chiquis and Raq-C" and her daughter's "Chiquis `n Control."

Rivera had given a concert before thousands of fans in Monterrey on Saturday night. After the concert she gave a press conference during which she spoke of her emotional state following her recent divorce from baseball player Esteban Loaiza.   

"I can't get caught up in the negative because that destroys you. Perhaps trying to move away from my problems and focus on the positive is the best I can do. I am a woman like any other and ugly things happen to me like any other women," she said Saturday night, according to The Associated Press. "The number of times I have fallen down is the number of times I have gotten up."   

The mother and grandmother had announced in October that she was divorcing Loaiza after two years of marriage. It was her third marriage. 

Rivera is the sister of Mexican singer Lupillo Rivera.

Celebrities tweeted about Rivera's disappearance.

"OMG! Just heard about @jennirivera Praying for her and her family during this difficult & uncertain time!" Gloria Estefan tweeted.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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MALIBU, CALIF. -- On a starry night in the hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean north of Los Angeles, a two-man California National Guard special forces surveillance team sets up a sophisticated night scope. Their mission is to search the horizon and the waters below for an increasing number of Mexican drug traffickers offloading multi-ton loads of marijuana--and sometimes illegal immigrants--on remote U.S. beaches.

"These service members are the eyes and ears of federal law enforcement here," said Lt. Kara Siepmann, of the Guard's National Drug program. When asked about what specifically they are looking for, one of the surveillance team members said, "We're looking for blacked out vessels and any suspicious activity we can find, any unusual boats coming through the area." 

Used to smuggle drugs from Mexico, this panga boat was captured near Huntington Beach, Calif., in August 2011. The faces of the three men being arrested have been obscured at the request of the HSI.

The soldiers work quietly and in the dark, aware that the Mexican traffickers have their own spotters here watching out for U.S. law enforcement personnel. "They don't want to land where the National Guard or the Border Patrol are looking for them," said Siepmann.

Turning fishing boats into drug boats
In the last few years, law enforcement officials said they have seen a considerable spike in smugglers loading drugs or immigrants onto boats in Mexico's northern Baja Peninsula, then motoring north to offload their illegal cargo along a 300-mile-long stretch of California beaches, sometimes within sight of the many luxury homes on the coastline. 

Courtesy of HSI/ICE

Used to smuggle drugs from Mexico, this panga boat was found in California's Ventura County in January 2012.

Related: Debate rages over Mexico 'spillover violence' in U.S.

Federal agents said this is the latest smuggling technique employed by Mexico's notorious Sinaloa drug cartel, headed by that country's most-wanted criminal, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. The boats are small, open-hulled commercial fishing boats called pangas, which are commonly found in the inshore waters of Mexico and Central America. 

With their low profiles, the pangas are hard to spot in open water, but they can carry a large payload. Sometimes these 30- to 40-foot boats will have as many as four outboard engines, allowing them to outrun most vessels used by the authorities.

"The trend is pretty much going straight up," said Lt. Stewart Sibert, the captain of the US Coast Guard Cutter Halibut, which patrols in search of Mexican smugglers near the California coast. 

"The past few months have been very busy for us," he said. "We caught more drugs in these past two months than in the past two years."

According to arrest statistics reported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, there were 183 known "events" in fiscal year 2011 along the California coast involving the maritime smuggling of drugs or immigrants, up considerably from the previous three years. During the first seven months of this fiscal year, there have already been 113 such events as the numbers climb even faster than last year.

"We're seeing four and five tons of drugs come in per run and we're seeing dozens of runs. It's almost one or two per week at this point," said Sibert.

A dangerous trade heading north
Law enforcement officials have argued the rise in maritime smuggling is a direct result of their crackdown on smuggling operations along the U.S. land border with Mexico. As they first interdicted smuggling boats headed for beaches in southernmost California, near San Diego, they began to see the traffickers moving farther north to drop off their loads, which are then distributed across the country.

Related: Patrolling 'smugglers' alley' by air along the Rio Grande

"As we stop them in one area, they’re trying to go around us. We're sort of leapfrogging up the coastline," said Sibert. Recently, an abandoned panga and a hidden marijuana stash were found near San Simeon, Calif., more than 300 miles from the Mexican border.

"They go far out to sea to try to evade interdiction efforts along the border," said Claude Arnold, the special agent in charge for ICE Homeland Security Investigations. "They typically go 100 miles out or farther due west, and then they come north," to reach the U.S. coastline.

While the panga boats are considered relatively stable when used for fishing in calm inshore waters, officials said, they can be quite dangerous in rougher waters offshore, especially if they are overloaded with drugs or illegal immigrants. The boats rarely have adequate safety equipment and authorities speculate that many may have been lost at sea, along with their passengers.

Courtesy of HSI/ICE

Used to smuggle drugs from Mexico, this panga boat was found on California's Leo Carrillo Beach in August 2011.

"It's a direct indication of these criminal smuggling organizations' complete disregard for human life. They are driven by profit and nothing else," said Troy Matthews, of the U.S. Border Patrol in San Diego. "You'll have somebody driving the ship who is not necessarily highly-trained. You'll have poorly maintained vehicles that will break down and subsequently they are loitering out at sea for days."

A border security threat
As they find more boats on the beaches and make more arrests, U.S. authorities are learning more about how the smuggling operation work, and the degree to which they are coordinated with land-based trafficking operations.

"We've seen some pangas that run directly up onto the beach and upload their cargo," said Sibert. "And then we've seen some that will come in and transfer their load to recreational boats that look less suspicious and try to run them directly into the marinas and yacht clubs."

Many times the panga boat operators will land at night on remote beaches near roads or a highway where they met by other members of the smuggling group. "There's usually an offloading team that will have a rental boxcar, U-Haul, or something of that nature to take the payload and transport it to a stash house where an organization begins the distribution process," said Arnold. 

A particular concern voiced by many U.S. authorities is the potential national security threat these boats and smugglers represent.  "They're just as willing to smuggle perhaps a weapon of mass destruction as they are a load of narcotics," warned Arnold.  "And they're just as willing to smuggle a terrorist as people coming here to work."  

To coordinate their interdiction efforts, federal, state and local law enforcement officials have formed a coastal-area task force. "As they adapt, we will adapt, and they'll continually try to find new ways to get contraband and people into the country, and we're going to be right there nipping at their heels," said Arnold.

Authorities conceded, however, that so far they are seeing no let-up in the Mexican maritime smuggling trade, and, in fact, are actually seeing bigger drug loads on boats now than in recent years.

"It's a huge challenge," said Matthews, from the U.S. Border Patrol. "It's an immense geographical area that we have to cover. There is not only single agency that can cover it by itself."

By Mark Potter, NBC News correspondent

TUCSON -- On an isolated ranch 10 miles from the Mexican border in southern Arizona, Tangye Beckham worries about what the night will bring.  That's usually when her family's 100-acre ranch begins to crawl with drug and immigrant traffickers from Mexico heading north into the United States. 

"They're belligerent, they carry weapons," she said. "It's a nightly problem with them being on the property. They've already tried to break in." 

Recently, as she was closing one of her gates in the pre-dawn hours, Beckham found herself surrounded by a group of illegal immigrants and feared being attacked.  By running to her car, she said, she was able to get away, badly shaken. 

All three ranchers scoffed at claims from Washington that crime along the U.S. side of the Mexican border has dropped dramatically and that the area is safer than ever. "They don't know what they're talking about," McCuistion replied.

Beckham, a flight paramedic and firefighter, urged Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to pay a visit to her ranch. 

"I'll show her it's not a secure border," Beckham said.  "I'll have her talk to my kids.  And they can tell her how afraid they are, that they don't wanna go out after dark."

Southwest border among ‘safest areas in the United States,’ Napolitano says

Texas Department of Public Safety

Officers surround a truck loaded with marijuana in South Texas during a drug bust on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Along the Mexican border, an easy way to get into a fierce debate is to ask a simple question:  "How much violence and crime linked to Mexican drug traffickers has spilled over into the United States?" 

As it turns out, the answer varies wildly and depends on who you talk to, especially in a presidential election year when border security and immigration are sensitive topics. The argument is further complicated by the failure of federal and state law enforcement officials to even agree over how to define spillover violence and other related crimes.

"The danger in not having an accurate accounting of spillover violence is that we fail to see that our cities, American cities, are permeated by Mexican drug cartels who are heavily armed, who are criminals involved in multiple different enterprises," said Howard Campbell, an anthropology professor at the University of Texas at El Paso who has studied the drug cartels extensively.

The Obama administration, joined by some local officials and sheriffs, claim that because of a sizeable increase in the federal law enforcement presence along the border, crime there has dropped dramatically and the border is safer than it's ever been. 

“Everything that we are seeing along our nation’s Southwest border point to a much safer border today than it has been over the last 20 years,” said David Aguilar, acting commissioner for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. “It is not a war zone; it is not a border completely out of control.”

Federal officials cite the FBI Uniform Crime Report, which includes data on murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault, when claiming that border-area crime has actually dropped by more than in other cities far from the border.

"This [Obama] administration has deployed unprecedented resources to the Southwest border," said Napolitano during a news conference last month in McAllen, Texas.  "The violent crime in these areas has gone down significantly.  These are among the safest areas in the United States."

The Homeland Security Secretary said the horrific violence from the Mexican drug war, in which it's estimated that as many as 50,000 people have been killed, is a serious security concern for U.S. authorities.  But she insisted that very little of it has spilled over into the United States. 

"That kind of violence we have not seen," Napolitano said.  "While we may not be able to prevent every murder from occurring, I think we can be ahead of, and will be ahead of, any kind of systemic violence." 

Larry W. Smith / EPA, file

A U.S. Border Patrol agent inspects bundles of marijuana recovered after searching the brush along the Rio Grand river, near McAllen, Texas on Feb. 8, 2012. Smugglers brought the drugs across the river in rafts. The nearly two thousand mile United States-Mexico border is the most frequently crossed international border in the world.

During a speech last year in El Paso, President Obama noted the U.S. Border Patrol now has a record 22,000 agents along the Southwest border. "We have strengthened border security beyond what many believed was possible," he told a cheering crowd.  "We have more boots on the ground on the Southwest border than at any time in our history."

Obama even joked during his speech about Republican critics who call for even tougher security measures along the border.  "Maybe they'll need a moat, maybe they want alligators in the moat.  They'll never be satisfied.  And I understand that, that's politics."

Opposing view: border ‘more dangerous than it’s ever been’

In Cochise County, Ariz., which shares an 84-mile-long border with Mexico, Sheriff Larry Dever was among many border officials who did not laugh at President Obama's joke about moats and alligators.  "I can't tell you how angry it made not only me, but my constituents, to make a mockery of one of the most serious situations we face in our entire lifetime," he said. "I'd say the border is more dangerous than it's ever been."

Dever has lost four friends -- three police officers and a rancher -- to cartel violence, and insists Mexican traffickers crossing into his county are well-armed and much more aggressive now than they were just a few years ago. "We're getting overrun from the south, because the federal government isn't doing its job," he said.

The long-time sheriff argued that the FBI Uniform Crime Report statistics cited by the White House fail to include many of the crimes committed by traffickers, including kidnapping, extortion, public corruption, drug and human smuggling, and trespassing. "I invite them to come down here, come live with us and go camp out at some rancher's house and see what happens at night," he said.   When asked if anyone from Washington had ever agreed to do that, Dever said,   "Heck no, they come for photo ops.”.

Cherry-picking border statistics?

At the Austin headquarters for the Texas Department of Public Safety, director Steve McCraw, a former FBI supervisor and counter-terrorism specialist, studied a chart on the wall filled with red and green dots indicating where drug and money seizures have been made around the state.

"The border's not secure, clearly.  I think by any indication it's not secure," he said.  "We've identified 25 murders that are cartel-related, we've identified 124 kidnappings and extortions that are cartel-related.  We know of 61 instances in which cartel members shot at police officers while they're on the river trying to interdict trucks."

McCraw agreed with Dever that federal officials often use incomplete statistics to defend their arguments about border safety.  "You can't cherry pick your statistics," he said.  "We've got a duty to be very accurate about what's going on now and how we see the current threat."

According to Congressional testimony in 2009 and 2011, the current federal interagency definition of Mexican spillover violence is:  "…deliberate, planned attacks by the cartels on U.S. assets, including civilian, military, or law enforcement officials or physical institutions such as government buildings, consulates or businesses. This definition does not include trafficker on trafficker violence, whether perpetrated in Mexico or the U.S."

Many state officials say trafficker on trafficker violence should not be excluded, because cartel shootouts seen in Texas, Arizona and other states can put civilians in danger and in fear for their lives.  "That's ludicrous," said McCraw.  "Any time there's a murder, an assassination, or the death squads of ‘sicarios’ come over here and try to do a takeover like that, there's always consequences in that neighborhood." 

McCraw, Dever and other regional officials argue that all crimes linked to Mexican traffickers should be gathered to assess the true scope of border threats so that law enforcement needs can more accurately be determined. 

With presidential elections scheduled this year in both the United States and Mexico, the successes and failures of border security efforts have also come under intense scrutiny by the political campaigns.

"I think political assessments of the border have been very slanted, whether it be Democratic or Republican -- Democrats claiming everything is peaceful and quiet, no problem, Republicans arguing that the situation on the border is out of control with spillover violence," said Campbell of the University of Texas at El Paso.

Campbell said even though there have been relatively few homicides in the United States committed by Mexican traffickers, there is definitely a lot of other crime.

"There has been a spillover of crime and drug trafficking culture and a greater amount of violent encounters between Mexican drug traffickers and U.S. Border Patrol agents and other agents of the U.S. government," he said.  "I think claiming the border is safer than ever is absurd."

As for the failure between federal and state officials to agree on how to define the problem, Campbell says it is important to understand the issues in a "scientific, clear way," and to make effective policies based on that.  He also suggested that collecting crime statistics is not the only way to gather this important information.

"I think it would be better to talk to people who actually live on that border that experience this on a day to day basis," he said. 

EDINBURG, Texas – While flying an afternoon patrol along the twists and turns of the Rio Grande, Lt. Johnny Prince, a veteran pilot for the Texas Department of Public Safety, spotted something suspicious: "Look here, we got a raft, a raft right here." 

Below him, in the middle of the river which separates Mexico from the United States was a group of men frantically paddling back to the southern riverbank, their attempt to reach the American side thwarted by the helicopter patrol.

Prince said he suspected the men were a team of drug cartel scouts who were planning to search the U.S. side of the river to make sure there were no law enforcement officers nearby.  If they determined the area was clear, he explained, they would then signal others to sneak a load of narcotics across the river in a raft.

Mike Avila, the helicopter's tactical flight officer, said that this was happening near an area nicknamed "Smugglers' Alley," because of all the illicit activity here.  Well-worn trails and a narrowing of the river have made this area a favorite for Mexican drug traffickers.

‘That car's loaded to the gills’
Earlier that same day, Prince and Avila found themselves flying inland in hot pursuit of two vehicles –a car and a truck –loaded with Mexican marijuana.  As the vehicles sped through city streets on the American side of the river, Avila trained the helicopter’s high-powered camera on the fleeing smugglers and Prince called out their locations by radio to pursuing troopers on the ground.

Mark Potter / NBC News

Lt. Johnny Prince, the pilot on the right, and Mike Avila, the tactical flight officer on the left, patrol the Rio Grande in a helicopter looking for drug smugglers.

One of the drivers sped along the wrong side of the road, then he raced through an intersection, almost striking two cars with his pickup truck.  "Oh no, oh no," groaned Prince.  Avila described another close call as the driver raced through a school zone before crashing into a building: "He nearly struck two school buses."

In both cases, the drivers – a man and a woman – were apprehended and troopers seized loads of marijuana from both their vehicles. Even from the sky, the pilots could see that one of the cars was carrying a lot of drug bundles.  "That car's loaded to the gills," said Prince. 

Increased aggression along a ‘porous’ border
For the helicopter teams, chasing smugglers along the Rio Grande in South Texas is virtually a daily occurrence. Pilots say they've seen the Mexican traffickers pushing larger amounts of illicit drugs into the United States over the last few years and have watched them become more menacing toward law enforcement officers and U.S. citizens.

"I've been working along the border for 14 years and in those 14 years I've seen the level of aggression increase exponentially.  The sheer volume of narcotics that's being pumped into our border has risen," said Capt. Stacy Holland, of the Texas Department of Public Safety Aircraft Section.

It's not unusual, Holland said, for smugglers to take only a couple of minutes to move more than a ton of marijuana across the river, up the U.S. side of the riverbank and into a vehicle which then heads north. "Our border is very open, our border is very porous," he said.

The pilots said they are convinced traffickers are much more likely now than they were a few years ago to confront U.S. law enforcement officials.  "We have video of them carrying AK-47's and side arms during these operations and they are not afraid to use them," said Holland. 

While flying in his helicopter, Prince has more than once been eye to eye with smugglers on the ground upset with his presence above.  "I've seen guns pointed at me, long guns.  I've seen rocks thrown at us.  One of the things they do is use sling shots with ball bearings in them," he said.  "A ball bearing with a good slingshot can do damage to this helicopter and that's been done."

Another serious concern is for the safety of Texas troopers and U.S. Border Patrol agents who have to tangle with the traffickers on the ground.  A particularly dangerous scenario involves agents coming upon a large group of smugglers loading a car with illegal drugs on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande. 

"Usually there's only one or two officers that first arrive at the particular vehicle on the river and they are encountering 15 or 20 cartel members," said Prince.  "On the other side, you will see another 10 to 15 cartel members, and if you see them armed they are going to be trying to cover the guys on the U.S. side."

Splashdowns
A highly unusual technique used by Mexican smugglers to elude capture by American authorities involves them driving trucks loaded with drugs into the waters of the Rio Grande.  It happens after Border Patrol agents or Texas troopers spot a drug-laden vehicle on the U.S. side of the river and give chase. 

If the smugglers can't elude their pursuers – either by speeding up or by throwing spikes into the road to flatten the tires of the officers behind they – they will then head back to the same spot along the river where traffickers brought the drugs ashore after floating them across from Mexico.

"If the loads get compromised, they will drive around in the United States, in Texas here, until they get their recovery teams set up on the river, to return the drugs back to Mexico," said Prince. 

The Texas Department of Public Safety has shot numerous helicopter videos of Mexican smugglers paddling over to the American side of the river to await the arrival of the truck racing toward them.  When the truck reaches the riverbank, it keeps going – right into the water. 

Texas Dept. Of Public Safety / Texas Dept. of Public Safety

Photo taken of a "splashdown" taken by the Texas Department of Public Safety. Drug smugglers drove their truck back into the Rio Grande river to escape U.S. law enforcement.

"Bam! All units, we have a splashdown, a splashdown in the river," a pilot on one of the videos can be heard transmitting on the radio. 

Before the truck sinks, the driver climbs out through the window and the recovery teams move quickly to save as much of the drug load as possible, throwing the tightly-wrapped bales into rafts. 

"Ok, we've got rafts in the river, a bunch of people on the U.S. side; that thing is loaded," said a pilot watching from above in one video.  "Suspects are in the water, trying to unload the vehicle," said another pilot hovering over a different scene.

As soon as the rafts are filled with off-loaded drugs, the smugglers paddle back to the Mexican side of the river where they are safe from arrest by American authorities.  Sometimes, the traffickers are so brazen they will make obscene hand gestures toward U.S. agents watching from across the river, or from above in helicopters.

The agents' only recourse at that moment is to notify Mexican authorities and hope they arrive in time to apprehend the smugglers.  Or, they can hope to catch the loads of drugs next time, when inevitably they are floated back across the Rio Grande during another smuggling attempt – sometimes on the very same day the drugs are recovered after a splashdown.

No end in sight
The pilots who routinely fly along the Rio Grande said they see nothing that would suggest there is any let up in the amount of smuggling along the river.  In fact, they predict increased violence on U.S. soil.

"You get a lot more home invasions, a lot of crook on crook crimes, a lot of kidnappings, the cartels coming over here maybe trying to collect money and then retreating back over to Mexico," said Holland. 

Texas newspapers have reported recently on cartel shoot-outs in Houston and McAllen, the wounding of a deputy, the arrests of alleged cartel leaders in the Rio Grande Valley and the seizure of cartel property in the U.S.—along with the almost daily news of major drug seizures.

Statements by the Obama Administration and by some local officials that the U.S.-Mexican border is safer than ever are derided by many of the pilots.

"Our citizens in our border towns are caught in the crossfire, and I mean that in the most literal sense sometimes," said Holland.  "It's important that our citizens, not only in the state (of Texas), but in the United States are aware of how porous our border is and what the threats are, and could be."

More coverage from Mark Potter: Along Mexican border, US ranchers say they live in fear

See more of Mark Potter's reporting on NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams Tuesday evening.