perfidy

Yesterday, I posted a link to an article on WorldNetDaily regarding violence on the US Mexican border. Knowing that this particular news source is sometimes a little, shall we say, overeager; I included the word "apparently" in my link, not having had the time to research more thoroughly. Despite my caution, Phil jumped all over me. This morning, government work having slown down for the day off that has nothing to do with Christmas, I decided to check it all out.

It turns out that the story has some fairly solid basis in fact. The key incident is this – a dump truck laden with marijuana got stuck in the Rio Grande between Mexico and Texas. Border Patrol agents began unloading the truck until "men who looked like Mexican troops yanked the truck into Mexico, according to authorities."

The Austin-American Statesman relates:

Hudspeth County Chief Deputy Mike Doyal told the El Paso Times: "Everyone had the presence of mind not to cause an international incident or start shooting."

Thursday evening, Border Patrol agents tried to stop the dump truck on Interstate 10, sheriff's officials said. The truck fled to Mexico in the Neely's Crossing area.

The truck got stuck in the riverbed, and the driver took off running. Doyal said the driver returned with armed men, including men who arrived in official-looking vehicles with overhead lights and what appeared to be Mexican soldiers in uniform and with military-style rifles.
The standoff ended when the "soldiers" used a bulldozer to pull the dump truck into Mexico, sheriff's department officials said.

Officials with the Mexican army, used in anti-narcotics operations, could not be reached for comment.

The Border Patrol, however, disputes parts of that story. The El Paso Times reported that

Border Patrol officials now dispute the allegation by officials with the Hudspeth County Sheriff's Department that the men on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande were the Mexican military.

"We have no evidence of that. We don't believe it was true," Paul Beeson, deputy chief patrol agent in El Paso, said of the incident.

Border Patrol officials noted that the Mexican military uses G3 rifles, and not AK-47s, which were allegedly used by the men in the standoff.

Beeson said Border Patrol agents started to unload the drugs when the driver returned with smugglers who were dressed in camouflage fatigues and who carried AK-47s.

Sheriff's deputies, who were called for back-up, saw the smugglers, 15 to 20 of them, Sheriff Arvin West said. Some of them hooked the truck to a bulldozer and towed it out of the river, while others stood watch holding the weapons, but not pointing them.

"They appeared to have a military style to them -- their way of standing. It was military-style people," West said. But he added, "I don't know that they were (the military)."

West admitted that everything the men had, from the fatigues, to the red dashboard light in their vehicles, to their weapons, are readily available to people outside the military.

So, at the very least, we have "military looking people" confronting Border Patrol Agents and local law enforcement. Clearly, even if these "military looking people" were not actually members of the Mexican army; they outgunned the U.S. Law Enforcement presence on the border and no one did anything to stop the drug smugglers, either from a desire to avoid an international incident or a simple common sense desire not to get involved in a gunfight with heavily armed bad people.

And there certainly are a lot of heavily armed bad people on the border, and those bad people are growing increasingly willing to use those weapons on Border Patrol agents attempting to protect the border. The San Antonio Express-News offers some information on the drug smugglers:

Paramilitary enforcers for Mexican drug cartels are responsible for a wave of violence in Nuevo Laredo that poses a serious threat for residents on both sides of the Southwest border, U.S. law enforcement officials told a House committee Thursday.

Assassinations, kidnappings and daylight shootouts between military-trained gangs place citizens at risk along the border where violence has soared past historical norms, officials said.

"These paramilitary groups work for the cartels as enforcers and are a serious threat to public safety on both sides of the border," said Chris Swecker, the FBI assistant director for the criminal investigative division.

…The root of the escalating violence is the use of trained paramilitary enforcers known as Los Zetas by the Gulf Cartel, which is still supervised by kingpin Osiel Cardenas Guillen, despite his 2003 arrest, Reid said.

Los Zetas is comprised of former members of Mexico's special forces, many of them military deserters hired by the Gulf Cartel, according to the FBI.

While not as bad as actual Mexican army forces attacking U.S. Border Patrol agents, Mexican Special Forces-staffed and -trained paramilitary enforcers attacking U.S. Border Patrol agents is still pretty damned bad. And given the level of corruption and intimidation in and on the Mexican authorities - both civilian and military – the idea is not all that far fetched.

And the incident with the dump truck is not an isolated one. Back in the El Paso Times we learn that

Men in military gear protecting drug shipments are not an uncommon sight on the border, officials with the Texas Border Sheriffs Coalition said.

Earlier this year, investigators doing surveillance in Zapata County in South Texas spotted 25 armed people in dark fatigues carrying duffel bags, said Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez Jr., the coalition's chairman.

"The way they were dressed, they appeared to be military- oriented. Clean-cut. Some type of military organization," Gonzalez said.

The backdrop for all this is the fact that assaults on Border Patrol agents doubled in fiscal year 2005. According to the Arizona Republic,

Nationwide, the number of assaults nearly doubled, with attacks on agents based in Arizona making up more than half the incidents.

From Oct. 1, 2004, to Sept. 30, the Border Patrol registered 687 assaults on its agents, up from 349 during the same period along the Southwest and Canadian borders. All but one of the attacks occurred on the Southwest border, officials said. In Tucson and Yuma, there were 365 assaults during the past fiscal year, up from 179 the year before.

…Federal law enforcement officials told Congress last week that drug cartels from Mexico have gotten much more aggressive in smuggling drugs and people across the border, hiring local gangs on both sides of the international line and arming members with assault rifles, grenades and other weapons.

…Agents say they frequently are subjected to grapefruit-size rocks being thrown at their trucks from the Mexican side of the border.

Trucks carrying drugs or migrants have tried to ram Border Patrol vehicles when the agents attempt to stop the vehicles.

The Indianapolis Star adds,

Shootings are becoming more frequent as well. In the Tucson and Yuma sectors in fiscal year 2005, there were 45 shootings, up from 15 in 2004. Two agents from Nogales were hit in an ambush as they tracked drug smugglers through the desert on June 30 in one of the year's most serious assaults. Both are recovering. Neither is back on duty.

This should be worrying to anyone. The Border Patrol is unable to patrol the border. Local law enforcement can't fill the gap. Hundreds of thousands of people cross the border without our say-so every year. And when the border patrol does attempt to intervene, the response is ever more often a violent one, and the border patrol agents are outgunned.

As I've said many times before, it really doesn't matter what you feel about immigration. Whether you favor lots of immigrants or none, illegal immigration is, well, illegal, and should be stopped. And further, having a complete lack of control over the border is a serious problem in an era where terrorists would like to kill large numbers of Americans.

The Dallas Morning News has a fascinating article on the issue. Of all the articles I've linked, read all of this one. The authors interviewed Val Verde County Sheriff D'Wayne Jernigan, who has dealt with smugglers and drug gangs both as sheriff and customs agent.

But in the last year, the risks of drug-fueled terrorism have raised the stakes to scary levels. Rifles and handguns have been replaced by rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs, and high-caliber machine guns.

"Now the bad guys have more sophisticated training and better equipment," Sheriff Jernigan said. "They're better armed and willing to shoot."

One of the reasons they're more willing to shoot is explained by Jernigan's deputy:

"To make matters worse, a few months ago we picked up information that a new order went out from the Zetas that no more drug loads would be lost," he said. "It used to be that losing a load now and then was a cost of doing business. Now the Zetas are telling their people they can't give up a load. They're to fight the cops. ...

"We're caught in the middle until somebody wins," Chief Deputy Simons said. "It's not just drug smuggling anymore. You have to think of it as narco-terrorism."

To get an idea of the scale of the mismatch, there's this:

For the border sheriffs, it is, at best, an uneven battle.

Sheriff Jernigan has 13 deputies to patrol a county of 3,100 square miles – roughly three-fourths the size of New Jersey. Most of the county's 45,000 residents live in Del Rio. The rest are scattered across isolated ranches and small communities, connected to state highways via gravel ranch roads or private twisting dirt roads. The deputies also patrol roughly 90 miles of river frontage, including thick stands of carrizo (cane) and limestone cliffs.

"What we need is money to put more boots on the ground and give these guys better training and equipment," Sheriff Jernigan said.

"But this isn't just our fight. ... If border law enforcement doesn't work, than the rest of the country is going to lose."

To be sure, there are also the Border Patrol agents, but at 12,000 – many of whom are bureaucrats and not actually on the border – that's not really that many. The smugglers have the advantage of tactical surprise, as they can decide when and where they cross. They also can concentrate their forces to gain the advantage locally, even when it would be impossible for them to take on all the opposing U.S. forces. For a border as long, and as uninhabited, as this one, we certainly need more agents, and a more aggressive plan.

As for aggressiveness, the Homeland Security Department made a small step and addressed one of the border sheriff's biggest complaints when they ended the controversial "catch and release" policy for illegal immigrants from nations other than Mexico – the "OTMs." OTMs were released with a "notice to appear," pending deportation proceedings. Sheriff Jernigan said,

"The OTMs were coming through in droves from all over the world. They'd come up to us, asking where to find a Border Patrol agent. We'd see them later, waiting to hitch a ride along Highway 90. And no one had any idea of where they were going or what they might do once they got there."

And, it's not just drugs:

In Vega Verde, a neighborhood along the river west of Del Rio that borders a major smuggling route,thieves come across the river, hit the homes there and get back to Mexico before deputies can arrive.

"They're taking guns, jewelry, air conditioners, anything they can get on a raft and get across," Deputy Faz said. "Landowners are frustrated. And my concern is that people will start taking the law in their own hands. What's going to happen if residents take up their hunting rifles against some Zetas bringing a load of dope across?"

Recently, deputies frustrated with the inaction of Mexican authorities staged an impromptu raid, taking boats across the river and seizing stolen property.

"The funny thing is, with all this activity on the river, the Border Patrol never showed up," Deputy Jose Luis Blancarte said. "We're bringing back TVs and air conditioners and nobody saw it? We don't have to worry about terrorists sneaking suitcase nukes across the border. They could be bringing whole bombs, and no one would know."

The border sheriffs say their main concern is the safety of their residents. "We don't want to be immigration officers," Sheriff Jernigan said. "We just want to make sure our counties are safe. To do that we need help, and that help has to come from the federal government.

"My nightmare is that it will take another 9-11 attack to wake up this country about the vulnerability of the border," he said. "And some border sheriff is going to have to say it came through his county."