July 25, 2012
By: Jim Kouri
Examiner.com



The Obama Administration is deceiving Americans by underreporting serious crime along the Mexican border, according to the Texas lawmaker who chairs a congressional Homeland Security committee.

The Obama Administration “is not giving the American people a complete picture of security on our border with Mexico” and data on crimes and violence along the southern border is “deceiving and underreported,” Michael McCaul, the Texas congressman who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security.

Federal, state and local law enforcement officials who deal firsthand with violent Mexican drug cartels will deliver testimony to prove it at a special committee hearing, according to a public-interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption.

Authorities at every level will tell the “real story” of how they are “outmanned, overpowered and in danger of losing control” of communities to “narco-terrorists,” says McCaul.

In a Judicial Watch investigative report, the lawmaker asserts that the Obama Administration “is not giving the American people a complete picture of security on our border with Mexico” and that data on crimes and violence along the southern border is “deceiving and underreported.”

Among those scheduled to speak at the hearing in Washington D.C. are the director of the Department of Homeland Security’s counternarcotics enforcement office, the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, Arizona’s attorney general and the sheriff of Zapata County Texas.

Their testimony is expected to contradict Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s claim that security along the Mexican border is “better now than it has ever been,” McCaul says.

The House Homeland Security committee held a similar hearing in late March to address the crisis along the southwest border. A top Homeland Security official delivered gripping information outlining how Mexican cartel drugs, money and weapons are part of a “complex interconnected system of illicit pathways and transnational criminal organizations that span the globe.”

In a separate but related story on the administration’s handling of border security, Arizona lawmakers are seeking online donations to build fencing along the border with Mexico since the federal government won’t do it, said Judicial Watch officials.

The plan includes using prison labor and launching a web site to help raise money for the project. The state already used donated funds to defend its immigration control law from the Obama Administration’s legal challenges.

Special Thanks to Jill Farrell, director of public affairs for Judicial Watch and Rep. McCaul's staffers.

Mexican border crime underreported, says Texas lawmaker - National Law Enforcement | Examiner.com