Bersin touts increased inspections at U.S. border

By Sandra Dibble
Union-Tribune Staff Writer
2:00 a.m. September 11, 2009

Stepped-up inspections of vehicles heading to Mexico from the United States have yielded more than $40 million in seizures of bulk cash since April, Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Alan Bersin told reporters yesterday.

The searches were ordered border-wide by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to cut down on weapons and large sums of cash smuggled from the United States to Mexico to support activities of drug cartels.

Bersin met with reporters before addressing the Institute of the Americas at UC San Diego. During his talk, Bersin touched on a broad range of subjects relevant to the U.S.-Mexico relationship, including immigration reform, drug cartels and travel safety in Mexico.

“You'd have to be awfully unlucky as an ordinary tourist to be caught in a crossfire that's taking place between cartels, or between the government and cartels,â€