| | |  Americas & Beyond 
U.S. Agents Placed with Mexico Cops
 William Booth - Washington Post
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February 25, 2010
| | A soldier stands guard during a presentation to the media in Tijuana, Mexico, Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2010. According to the army, they found 15, 445 kilograms of marijuana inside a truck on Monday at a check point on the Federal road 3 near the nearby town of Ensenada. (AP/Guillermo Arias) | |
For the first time, U.S. officials plan to embed American intelligence agents in Mexican law enforcement units to help pursue drug-cartel leaders and their hit men operating in the most violent city in Mexico, according to U.S. and Mexican officials.
The increasingly close partnership between the two countries, born of frustration over the exploding death toll in Ciudad Juárez, would place U.S. agents and analysts in a Mexican command center in this border city to share drug intelligence gathered from informants and intercepted communications.
U.S. law enforcement agencies had been reluctant to share sensitive intelligence with their Mexican counterparts, fearing they were either corrupt or incompetent. And they had been wary of operating inside Mexican command centers for fear of being targeted for execution in the violence and lawlessness of Ciudad Juárez, which left more than 2,600 people dead last year.
But those attitudes are changing amid strong support from Washington for President Felipe Calderon's war against the cartels, including a $1.4 billion aid package. The Obama administration views spiking drug violence in Mexico as a direct threat to U.S. security and has taken unprecedented steps toward on-the-ground cooperation with Mexican authorities. Washington is seeking an additional $310 million for drug-enforcement aid for Mexico in its 2011 budget.
Under the new arrangement, U.S. officers, most likely from an agency such as the Drug Enforcement Administration, would work alongside recent graduates of the new Mexican federal police academy, who were trained by FBI and DEA advisers as part of the U.S. aid package.
In another departure from past practice, vetted federal police agents from Mexico might gain greater access to drug-intelligence centers in the United States.
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