For anyone who’s been paying attention, violence is rapidly escalating in Mexico. At this point, there appears to be a three-way battle going on between rival drug organizations and a corrupt Mexican government. Particularly at the border, matters are just about out of control. Places like Laredo, Juarez and Tijuana are now battlefields. And yes, it’s spilling over the border – as observers have been warning for years. Finally, our supine Homeland Security Department has taken notice. From the New York Times:
The soaring level of violence in Mexico resulting from the drug wars there has led the United States to develop plans for a “surge” of civilian and perhaps even military law enforcement should the bloodshed spread across the border, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Wednesday.
Mr. Chertoff said the criminal activity in Mexico, which has caused more than 5,300 deaths in the last year, had long troubled American authorities. But it reached a point last summer, he said, where he ordered specific plans to confront in this country the kind of shootouts and other mayhem that in Mexico have killed members of warring drug cartels, law enforcement officials and bystanders, often not far from the border.
“We completed a contingency plan for border violence, so if we did get a significant spillover, we have a surge — if I may use that word — capability to bring in not only our own assets but even to work with” the Defense Department, Mr. Chertoff said in a telephone interview.
Officials of the Homeland Security Department said the plan called for aircraft, armored vehicles and special teams to converge on border trouble spots, with the size of the force depending on the scale of the problem. Military forces would be called upon if civilian agencies like the Border Patrol and local law enforcement were overwhelmed, but the officials said military involvement was considered unlikely.
Mr. Chertoff has expressed concern in recent months about the violence in Mexico, but the contingency plan has not been publicly debated, and the department has made no announcement of it. Department officials said Mr. Chertoff had mentioned it only in passing.
Mentioned only in passing? Well, Mr. Chertoff, in case you hadn’t noticed, sheriffs in the border counties have had their hands full for years. If you even wanted to know, there are stories everywhere – and law enforcement professionals more than willing to tell you about heavily armed members of the Mexican military who’ve entered the US and tangled with the border patrol and others. From the August 8, 2008, Washington Times:
A U.S. Border Patrol agent was held at gunpoint Sunday night by members of the Mexican military who had crossed the border into Arizona, but the soldiers returned to Mexico without incident when backup agents responded to assist.
Agents assigned to the Border Patrol station at Ajo, Ariz., said the Mexican soldiers crossed the international border in an isolated area about 100 miles southwest of Tucson and pointed rifles at the agent, who was not identified.
It was unclear what the soldiers were doing in the United States, but U.S. law enforcement authorities have long said that current and former Mexican military personnel have been hired to protect drug and migrant smugglers.
“Unfortunately, this sort of behavior by Mexican military personnel has been going on for years,” union Local 2544 of the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) said on its Web page. “They are never held accountable, and the United States government will undoubtedly brush this off as another case of ‘Oh well, they didn’t know they were in the United States.’
“It is fortunate that this incident didn’t end in a very ugly gunfight,” said the local’s posting.
Let’s face facts: Mexico is a basket case and could very well slide off into narco-anarchy. But Mexican upheavals of one form or another are, regrettably, not particularly unusual. And the violence does ’spill over’ into the U.S.
Let’s take the Mexican Revolution of 1910-20. Rival factions battled it out for years with the famous Pancho Villa burning the town of Columbus, New Mexico, which is approximately three miles inside U.S. territory. This prompted the Wilson administration in 1916 to send General John Pershing and 10,000 infantry up to 150 miles into Mexico on a manhunt for Villa. Known as the ‘Mexican Punitive Expediton’, U.S. forces spend nearly a year inside Mexico.
Do the contingency plans cover another ‘expedition’? Just curious, Mr. Chertoff.
