The BBC reports on the escalation in response to the counter-attack by La Familia:

Late on Thursday Interior Minister Fernando Gomez Mont said the government was sending 1,500 police, 2,500 soldiers, and 1,500 navy personnel to the western state.

LA FAMILIA
Previously believed to answer to Gulf Cartel, listed as separate group in March 2009 government report
Combines code of violence with idea of protecting people in Michoacan from outsiders
Also involved in counterfeiting, extortion, kidnapping, armed robbery, prostitution, protection rackets

They will provide extra support for several hundred federal police officers already deployed in the state.

"For the members of these criminal groups, there is no alternative... but to obey the law," Mr Gomez Mont said.

The Narcosphere reported a few days back about the retreat of federal forces from their hands on role in drug interdiction:

Today the strategy of Joint Operation Chihuahua is changing in Ciudad Juarez, where groups of soldiers who patrol the streets will stop doing so in order to devote themselves to military intelligence and policing activities.

The Chihuahua state Secretary of Public Security, Víctor Valencia de los Santos, announced that the decision was made after a meeting with federal Public Security Secretary Genaro García Luna.

...
He stated that the thousands of soldiers and municipal police have not done anything other than march through the whole city daily, and that surveillance strategy has not produced results other than "it winds up being too expensive in terms of gasoline and diesel consumption alone."

...

Since the inauguration of Joint Operation Chihuahua in April 2008, about 1,026 soldiers, 180 tactical vehicles, and three military aircraft have participated in permanent patrols.

Moreover, 425 Federal Police, 63 agents from the Federal Attorney General's Public Prosecutor's Office, and eight from the Assistant Secretary General's Office for Specialized Investigation of Organized Crime (SIEDO) [operated in Juarez].

For the slow folks reading this, let me reiterate that the drug wars in Mexico are 100% the result of our prohibition policies which have resulted in higher prices and higher demand for illegal drugs. Mexico is the planet orbiting our black market, they've been sucked in and are being torn apart. We've funded this war. We architected it. The notion that we can somehow "seal our borders" and ignore it is farcial and based on lazy, ignorant, hateful magical thinking.

Get up off your couches America. Put down the bong. The drug war that ate the American inner cities, that is eating rural America, that is consuming Mexico is heading your way.

We can talk tough all we like, but we're running out of money for prisons and military interdiction doesn't work as we see in Juarez.

All it does is fund the police state and make things worse for everyone.

Here's a report on how great the military presence has been for the citizens of Juarez, from the Narcosphere:

The manuel that was edited by the city council for good coexistence with soldiers states that you should identify yourself when they ask you to and follow their instructions. If they don't object, they will let you continue on your way.

In every street you will bump into men in olive-green uniforms, 7,500 to be exact, and 2,500 federal police dressed in blue with their faces covered. They will point their weapons at you while they patrol the streets, they will direct traffic where traffic lights are lacking, or they will question you for not wearing your seat belt. Don't be frightened; they're doing the transit cops' jobs.

Sometimes you will see them helping to push cars that broke down in the middle of the street, breaking up fights between drunks outside bars, subduing armed people, or slowing down the line of cars that are trying to cross the international bridge to El Paso, Texas. You will find them outside your children's schools, or even inside your own home.

Yes, inside. This will occur if the ion scanners that they use detect something near your home. Don't be offended, they have to make sure that you're not a criminal. So let them inside unimpeded so that they can rummage through your closet, your refrigerator, and your jewelry box; move your furniture; and thoroughly search every corner of your house.

You should feel proud to be part of the experiment in a city that is considered to be the spearhead of the anti-drug strategy that Calderon is showing off to Obama due to its "good results."

Right. Here the 10,000 soldiers and federal police contained the wave of murders that was killing 10 people per day and they abated it during the month of March. Although since April Juarez has regained its title as the most violent city in the country (with an average of four homicides per day, although sometimes six will occur in six hours or 19 in a weekend).

The heaps of soldiers, anonymous tips, and house-to-house searches, however, have produced results: now murders aren't committed with automatic rifles that leave dead bodies lying around with 80 holes in them. Now 9mm pistols are the weapons of choice, along with penknives and ice picks. And those that are killed aren't experienced adults--they're adolescents.