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2006-12-21 Home Front: WoTMexican Soldiers Freelancing for Drug Cartels on US Soil(CNSNews.com) - Gun-toting members of the Mexican military are crossing regularly into U.S. territory, where they are partnering with drug cartels and criminal gangs to protect sophisticated smuggling operations, according to Texas sheriffs and lawmakers.

Some of the Mexican infiltrators are suspected to have been trained by the U.S. military.

U.S. Border Patrol agents and local law enforcement officials operating along the southwestern border have come under attack from the Mexican side in recent months, with automatic gunfire frequently erupting, Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas) told Cybercast News Service.

Mexican military units and drug cartels have access to weaponry and communications equipment far more advanced than resources made available to U.S. officials on the state and federal level, Culberson said. "The U.S. Border Patrol is telling its agents to just lay low and report on what they see," he said. "They are instructed to determine the size of the [Mexican military] unit, the number of personnel, the direction of travel."

The U.S. ambassador to Mexico has sent diplomatic notes to the Mexican government complaining about incursions into U.S. territory by "individuals dressed in military uniforms," according to a congressional report. Culberson plans to meet with the Mexican ambassador to discuss border issues early in the new year.

More than 200 incursions by the Mexican military of the U.S. southern border have been documented since the late 1990s, Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) said in an interview. "Our federal government denied it occurred until the Texas sheriffs took photos," he said. "There is no nation in the world that would allow this invasion to occur except for the United States."Link Top
2006-10-17 Home Front: WoTBorder Patrol, lawmen outgunned by cartelsHomeland Security panel also says traffickers are forming ties with U.S.-based gangs

The U.S. Border Patrol and other law enforcement agencies at the U.S.-Mexico border are outgunned by increasingly ruthless and well-armed Mexican drug cartels, a new congressional report concludes.

"The cartels use automatic assault weapons, bazookas, grenade launchers and improvised explosive devices," the House Homeland Security oversight subcommittee report said. "In contrast, U.S. Border Patrol agents are issued 40-caliber Beretta semiautomatic pistols."

The report, scheduled to be released today by U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, said drug cartels are able to break the encryptions on Border Patrol and sheriffs' deputies' radios.

"Lookouts for the cartels, using military grade equipment, are positioned at strategic points on the U.S. side of the border to monitor movements of U.S. law enforcement," it continued.

Fear of terrorism
Even as the traffickers expand their drugrunning routes to smuggle immigrants into the United States, they are forming dangerous alliances with U.S.-based criminal gangs such as MS-13 and the Latin Kings, according to the congressional panel.

McCaul, whose district stretches into western Harris County, chairs the subcommittee.

The former federal prosecutor expressed concern that trafficking networks could use their delivery routes to smuggle terrorists or weapons of mass destruction into the U.S.

"The thing that keeps me up at night when I think 'What can we do to prevent another 9/11?' is that they own these delivery routes," he said in an interview Monday.

Hezbollah members already have entered the U.S. from Mexico, the report confirmed.

"As if narco-terrorist violence were not enough, extensions of Middle East terrorism have crept into the United States," the report stated. "Islamic radical groups that support Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamiya Al Gamat are all active in Latin America."

McCaul said he commissioned the report to bring focus to the national security threat and rising violence at the border, which has witnessed a spree of murders and kidnappings linked to warring drug cartels, particularly in Nuevo Laredo.

The federal government has added Border Patrol agents, detention beds and high-tech surveillance systems to deter illegal crossings, he said, with less attention to the border's other problems.

"We put billions of dollars in trying to stop the flow coming in, in a more reactive way, and what I'm suggesting is we also need to take a look at the other piece of this problem and identify what is the root cause and attack the root cause head on," he said. "In my view, the head of the snake is the cartels."

McCaul urged better intelligence gathering in Mexico and Latin America. And he called for greater cooperation with the Mexican government to crack down on the cartels.

Still, he acknowledged that expanding the partnership is difficult in light of persistent corruption in Mexican law enforcement ranks and the deadly attacks the cartels have launched on Mexican authorities.

Growing population
Citing federal estimates that the Border Patrol apprehends only 10 percent to 30 percent of illegal crossers, the report said as many as 10 million illegal immigrants may have entered the U.S. last year.

Estimates by the Pew Hispanic Center and other experts peg the illegal immigrant population in the U.S. at 11 million to 12 million.

And while federal law enforcement seized 1.1 million pounds of cocaine and 6.8 million pounds of marijuana, McCaul's staff estimated the total cocaine flow may have topped 11 million pounds.

"While the United States has taken positive steps to secure its borders, much more is needed to combat an increasingly powerful, sophisticated, organized and violent criminal network which seeks to move illegal contraband ... into our country for profit," the report concludes.Link Top
2006-06-14 Home Front: WoTU.S. Border Patrol Agents Angry with ‘Amnesty John'With lawmakers from the House and Senate yet to reconcile their competing immigration bills and President Bush still touting a temporary worker program, some rank-and-file defenders of the border are lambasting the notion that deporting illegal aliens is impractical. Moreover, they view this solution as a betrayal to those who have risked their lives patrolling the borders.

The National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) union represents the U.S. Border Patrol's 10,000 non-supervisory agents. The largest local of the NBPC is Local 2544, headquartered in Tucson, Arizona - a busy sector accounting for more than half of the 1.15 million illegal aliens apprehended last year by the Border Patrol. Local 2544 members serve on the front lines, and they are hopping mad with the administration and with some lawmakers in particular. Mike Albon, Local 2544's public information officer, told NewsMax, "All the comments on our Web site are the opinions of the Local and can be taken as the Union's point of view."

To say the least, the Senate bill's gradual amnesty program for many who have crossed the border illegally is unpopular with Local 2544: "We strongly oppose any attempts to reward illegal alien lawbreakers. We have risked our lives to keep them out of this country. The slick politicians can call it ‘guest-worker' or ‘earned legalization' all they want, but it's amnesty."

Particular union vitriol is reserved for the man they call "Amnesty John," who voted for the Senate bill. "Amnesty John" is the union's handle for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. "Senator McCain has never been a friend to rank-and-file Border Patrol agents," says the union. "He routinely ignores correspondence from Border Patrol agents and often gives the impression that he is just too big and too important to deal with us. He attempts to undermine our mission at every turn and actively supports the criminals who violate our laws. He always tries to downplay the fact that illegal aliens knowingly and willingly violate our laws."

According to Albon, the root of the rank-and-file frustration is that McCain and others who want a road to citizenship for some of those already unlawfully in the country are at best unrealistic when it comes to the paperwork burden of proving who was where and when: "Your government is nowhere near being capable of handling all those claims. "They will buckle at the slightest hint of pressure from any activist/social services group. They will issue waivers like candy to any illegal alien who says he or she can't afford the 'fines' levied by the government. They will accept one fraudulent document after another. The entire thing will be mass chaos."

The union fears a reprise of what they say occurred under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of Nov. 6, 1986. Under that act, say union officials, many who had just entered the United States falsely claimed they had entered years before so they could qualify for amnesty.

Case-in-point: a large group was tracked down and apprehended on the Tohono O'Odham Indian reservation about 10 miles from the border. Two of them had freshly minted "amnesty" cards. The cardholders claimed they had entered years before and were just visiting the rest of the group: "We were told that if we wanted to prove their claims false we would have to ‘back track' them all the way to the south side of the border to prove they were in Mexico. It was logistically impossible to do this under the circumstances."

As to the argument of Sen. McCain to simply say to those "undocumented workers, who are working the jobs that the rest of us refuse, come out from the shadows," the union is adamant:

"Senator, they put themselves in those ‘shadows' by breaking our laws and they need to go home. They weren't forcibly placed in the ‘shadows' by some murdering tyrant from the Middle East. They freely chose to break our laws, steal our jobs, and take advantage of our wobbly-kneed politicians who let them do it. Instead of using all that energy to fix their own corrupt country, they sneak into ours and then demand that we change our system to fit their crimes. It's pretty simple stuff . . ."

The local has a simple solution to the border crisis: Shut the border down to illegal crossings, and then start hammering the greedy employers who hire them:
"Start deporting, we repeat, deporting, the illegal aliens who are here in violation of law. It may take years, but you don't build a house overnight."

As to criminalizing the illegals – one of the great sticking points in the immigration reform debate – the union does not understand what all that fuss is about. They explain that it is already a federal crime to enter the country without inspection – specifically under title eight of the U.S. Code, section 1325. Under that current law, a first offense is punishable by a fine and up to six months in jail, a second offense is punishable by a fine and up to two years in jail.

Says the union: "Many media outlets are incorrectly reporting that it is only a ‘civil offense.' No, it's just that we can't persuade the U.S. attorney's office to prosecute anyone for 8 USC 1325 – unless they're also an axe murderer, so they are charged with the ‘civil offense' and sent home."


Had to cut this short, due to space..but this is just one item.