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Mexican police help fight border violence
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published February 3, 2006

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More than 300 Mexican federal police officers have been ordered to help combat a surge in alien and drug smuggling in the border city of Matamoros, across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas, where an explosion of violence has targeted both Mexican and U.S. authorities.

The Mexican lawmen, who are members of an elite anti-smuggling force, arrived Sunday night aboard a Mexican military plane and dispatched immediately into the city of 400,000, which has emerged as second only to the border city of Nuevo Laredo in its level of violence.

Much of the border violence has been described by U.S. and Mexican law enforcement as retaliation for increased efforts by two agencies within the Department of Homeland Security -- the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

As U.S. law-enforcement efforts have increased, so have the number and intensity of reprisal attacks, with some areas averaging one assault on a U.S. Border Patrol agent every two days.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff recently acknowledged "an uptick in violence" against border agents after months of intensified initiatives targeting alien and drug smugglers. He told reporters in Texas last week that the smugglers "will want to fight back."

Assaults on Border Patrol agents along the 1,951-mile U.S.-Mexican border nearly doubled last year from 2004 -- from 349 to 673. The attacks include shootings, rock attacks and vehicular assaults.

Border Patrol agents along the Rio Grande have increasingly come under fire from snipers in Mexico, with 25 incidents reported in the past four months. None of the agents was hit, but several vehicles and two patrol boats were damaged.

Law-enforcement authorities in both countries think the "uptick" is also tied to a war between two powerful Mexican drug cartels vying for control of northbound cocaine and marijuana trade routes.

Nuevo Laredo, a city of 335,000 on the Rio Grande about 200 miles north of Matamoros, experienced a wave of killings last year that claimed more than 150 lives -- including the police chief, a city council member and 13 police officers.

In October, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales sent a task force to Texas to combat the border violence that will focus on firearms violations, gang activity, illegal drug organizations and organized crime in Laredo, Texas -- across the river from Nuevo Laredo.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced a security plan for the Texas-Mexico border that month, saying the state would "increase the law-enforcement presence in the border region ... and make our border region more secure."