Threats From Mexico May Move to U.S. Littorals, Official Says

Despite plenty of bumps and bruises along the way, the Department of Homeland Security says that it now has a viable, sustainable, affordable plan for using a mix of technology and border patrol agents to provide security along the southern and northern borders. Note that I didn’t say absolute security—DHS and Border Patrol officials will be the first to tell you that perfect security along the border is a chimera not worth chasing, even with the addition of National Guard troops along the southern border. 

As a matter of fact, those 1,200 troops sent by president Obama last year are scheduled to leave in June of this year, to be replaced by 1,000 new Border Patrol agents. Speaking at a border security symposium Monday morning in Washington, David Aguilar, deputy commissioner of the Customs and Border Protection, called the National Guard deployment a “bridge” to growing the Border Patrol and getting new technologies in the field.

If the growth in the number of officers on the ground and the new commercial off the shelf technologies work the way the government envisions—leading to some high-traffic smuggling routes being choked off—Aguilar predicts that the problem will simply move rather than disappear, just as it did in the 80s and 90s from the Caribbean to Mexico as the point of transit north. Aguilar sees the next drug smuggling battleground being in the littoral waters along the Gulf Coast and along the Pacific coast. He said that the Department of Homeland Security is working through the Coast Guard to prepare for such a future.

But reducing drug smuggling, cross-border gun running, money laundering, and illegal immigration must come from some serious cross-border coordination said K. Jack Riley, director, RAND National Defense Research Institute. He said that Mexico’s “fractured law enforcement and security service” and “tremendous command and control problems” need to be addressed with more American help, but this assistance shouldn’t be relegated to technology transfers. 

Over the last decade the U.S. has done a pretty good job of helping Mexico with technology such as helicopters and surveillance systems, but what we haven’t done enough of is to “engage with them in institution building and capacity” development, in an effort to assist with programs the Mexican government already has in place to clean up and reform an often corrupt and ineffective Mexican police force.

Mexican officials were in Washington on Monday to defend the conduct of its war on drug cartels before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, part of the Organization of American States. Mexico’s under-secretary for Juridical Affairs and Human Rights, Felipe de Jesus Zamora, squared off with representatives from 18 aid groups who criticized the conduct of Mexican security forces. 

While Zamora claimed that his government is conducting the fight “with strict respect for human rights,” Carlos Karin Zazueta of Citizens in Support of Human Rights told the organization that the war on the cartels is failing, since “violence, the murder rate and citizen insecurity have skyrocketed.” Complaints about human rights abuses by Mexican security forces have been well documented, and are something that the United States can help with, if it decides to focus on training, and capacity building.

Pic: National Guard

Posted by Paul McLeary

American Missionary Killed by Gunman in Mexico, Husband Says

A U.S. missionary working in Mexico who brought his mortally wounded wife to the border told authorities in the United States that gunmen in a pickup truck shot her in the head, police in Texas say. Nancy Davis, 59, died in a South Texas hospital Wednesday about 90 minutes after her husband drove the couple's truck against traffic across the Pharr International Bridge, according to a statement issued by the Pharr Police Department. The husband relayed to Texas authorities and U.S. Customs agents a frantic episode of the couple being fired upon in Mexico and then flooring their truck at top speed to border. Police described the couple as missionaries who travel extensively into Mexico. The scene echoed one described four months ago by an American tourist, who said her husband was gunned down by Mexican pirates on a border lake as the couple tried fleeing on Jet Skis...more

Posted by Frank DuBois

20 Killed Over Weekend in Mexican Border City

AP
Nov. 7: Relatives of fallen police officers react as they arrive to the scene after gunmen attacked a municipal police car in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- At least 20 people were killed in drug-gang violence over the weekend in this northern Mexican border city, including seven found dead outside one house.

The seven men were believed to have been at a family party when they were gunned down Saturday night, said Arturo Sandoval, a spokesman for the attorney general's office in Chihuahua state, where Ciudad Juarez is located. Five were found dead in a car, and the other two were shot at the entrance of the home.
There have been several such massacres in Ciudad Juarez, a city held hostage by a nearly three-year turf battle between the Juarez and Sinaloa cartels.

Few residents now venture out to bars and restaurants. And like those attacked on Saturday, others have discovered that they aren't even safe in their own homes: Last month, gunmen stormed two neighboring houses and massacred more than a dozen young people attending a party for a 15-year-old boy.

Eleven other people were killed Saturday in the city, including two whose bodies were found dismembered, Sandoval said. On Sunday, two city police officers, a man and a woman, were shot to death inside their patrol car.

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20 Killed Over Weekend in Mexican Border City - FoxNews.com

Juarez Newspaper Pleas With Drug Cartels

The El Diario de Juarez newspaper wrote an open letter to the city’s drug cartels Sunday asking for mercy. In the editorial, the paper asked the cartels to let the journalists do their jobs without the threat of being killed. Friends and family buried slain photographer Luis Carlos Santiago Orozco Sunday, after he was shot several times Thursday while sitting inside of a car outside of a Juarez shopping mall. Authorities have not linked the death to the drug cartel, but after having two journalists killed, in just two years, the newspaper is now pleading with the cartels through an editorial published Sunday. In addition to last week's incident, the paper cites the 2008 death of crime reporter Armando Rodriguez. He was gunned down in his car outside of his home. The newspaper says in it's editorial, it is clear the cartels are the city's authorities, especially since the Mexican government is not protecting journalists. The editorial said, "We ask you to explain what you want from us, what we should try to publish or not publish, so we know what to expect."...more

Posted by Frank DuBois