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 Editorials | Issues | January 2008 
US Working to Help Contain Drug Violence in Mexico
 David McLemore - The Dallas Morning News
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| | Sigifredo Gonzalez, sheriff of Zapata County, Texas, says it's not a question of whether drug violence will bleed over, just how bad it will get. (Louis DeLuca/DMN) | | |
U.S. officials are warily watching Mexico's fierce response to the escalating drug violence plaguing border cities, fearful that the bloody gunbattles erupting in places like Nuevo Laredo and Ciudad Juárez may soon break out on the U.S. side.
Helping Mexico and preventing an outbreak on the U.S. side of the border will require a multidimensional strategy that involves both nations, said U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo.
"We have to use all the tools at our disposal to work with Mexico to curb the violence in Mexico before we have gunfights in streets of American cities," Mr. Cuellar said. "We can't say we'll put up a fence and think that will curtail violence."
Mr. Cuellar and Michael McCaul, D-Austin, recently ended a three-day visit to Mexico to study that country's efforts to battle the drug cartels in advance of a congressional debate on a proposed $1.4 billion aid package to assist in Mexico's war on drugs.
More than 2,500 people died in drug-related violence in Mexico last year. Already in 2008, about 100 people have been killed in brazen gunfights between federal troops and police and drug trafficking gangs in Tijuana and just across the Rio Grande in Reynosa and Rio Bravo.
The U.S. side of the border has not been exempt from drug violence. Cartel leaders in Nuevo Laredo have successfully ordered hits on rival drug dealers on the U.S. side. And U.S. lawmen have increasingly become targets.
Border Patrol officials said violent assaults on agents along the Southwestern border totaled 987 in fiscal 2007, a 31 percent increase over the year before.
"The American public must understand that this situation is no longer about illegal immigration or narcotics trafficking," said David V. Aguilar, chief of the U.S. Border Patrol. "It is about criminals and smuggling organizations fighting our agents with lethal force to take over a part of American territory so they can conduct criminal activity."
The most recent assault occurred Jan. 19, when a civilian Hummer carrying drugs ran down a Border Patrol agent near the Arizona-California line. Border Patrol officials said the killing was intentional.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff called the killing of Border Patrol Agent Luis Aguilar a "heinous act."
Chief Aguilar said confrontations along the border in the past year have resulted in attacks on agents with firearms, knives, bats, firebombs, steel pipes, vehicles and rocks.
"U.S. Border Patrol agents protect and defend America's borders, but they also protect our border communities from the criminal element's attempts to turn communities into battlegrounds," he said.
Crackdown in Mexico
On Wednesday, Mexican federal police announced the arrest of Jesús Navarro Montes, 22, in Sonora state in connection with the killing of Agent Aguilar.
He was being held in Mexicali on Mexican charges of human smuggling.
Acting on Mexican President Felipe Calderón's vow to hit the cartels hard, heavily armed federal agents on Tuesday encircled police stations in Juárez, Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros to relieve police officers of duty, disarm them and search for evidence that may link them to drug traffickers.
A day earlier, Mexican federal authorities announced the capture of Alfredo Beltrán Leyva in Culiacán. He is purportedly a major operator in the Sinaloa cartel.
Border law enforcement officers, while watchful of the rising violence on the Mexican side, say that so far it hasn't shifted directly onto the U.S. side.
"All the sheriffs along the border are extremely concerned about the escalation in violence in Mexico," said Don Reay, executive director of the Texas Border Sheriff's Coalition. "Anytime we see the violence increase as it has recently, the more worried we get that will cross directly onto our side."
The violence that broke out in the streets of Reynosa and Rio Bravo, Mexico, hasn't spread across the border to Hidalgo County, Sheriff Guadalupe Trevino Jr. said.
Border Patrol officials held a closed-door briefing for Rio Grande Valley law enforcement officers Thursday on the outbreak of violence just across the river.
"We tell our guys to be careful out there, to make sure we know where they are and to make sure they have backup on calls to the river," Sheriff Trevino said.
Battle for entry points
The sheriff said the cartels are battling over control of entry points into the U.S., not U.S. turf.
"The cartels know we're better trained, better equipped and not as corruptible as our Mexican counterparts," Sheriff Trevino said. "If a gunbattle erupted in Hidalgo County and a police officer or a civilian was killed, the cartels know the wrath of God would fall on them."
Mr. Reay said the Texas Sheriff's Coalition has joined with border law enforcement agencies in three other states to form the Southwest Border Sheriff's Coalition to share intelligence and enforcement methods.
Mexico can't break the power of the cartels alone, Mr. Cuellar said. As a backstop to the enforcement by Mexican federal authorities, the U.S. government will add another 3,000 Border Patrol agents this year, as well as add more electronic surveillance and physical barriers along the border.
"We can add substantially to Mexico's efforts to bring stability to the border by working together to take the fight to the cartels," he said.
dmclemore(at)dallasnews.com |
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