Congressional Testimony on Mexican Violence Reveals Bush Administration Efforts

Friday, March 13, 2009
By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer


Alonzo Pena, Department of Homeland Security Attache, U.S. Embassy, Mexico City, left, and John Leech, acting director, Office of Counternarcotics Enforcement with DHS, were among the many Obama administration officials who testified before House committees on securing the border between the U.S. and Mexico and the ongoing violence from drug trafficking.


(CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)(CNSNews.com) – Officials from the Department of Homeland Security have been testifying this week about ongoing efforts to secure the U.S.-Mexico border and quell the drug-related violence that has killed more than 7,000 people over the last 14 months.

While the Obama administration says it is achieving success in some areas, the testimony revealed that the groundwork and policy measures aimed at combatting the violence were put into play by the Bush administration, in some instances many years ago.

With President Obama in office for less than two months, many of the statistics touted by Obama administration officials date back to the Bush years, including the more than 700 arrests of drug cartel operatives in the United States announced recently by Attorney General Eric Holder. Those arrests were the climax of an intelligence operation launched two years ago.

At recent House hearings on Mexico, many of the figures cited came from Homeland Security’s U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) annual report for Fiscal Year 2008, which was issued the day after Obama was elected president on Nov. 5, 2008.

Many of the statistics in the report provide evidence that the CBP is having measurable success on borders issues, as noted in the introduction to the report, which is posted online. (See:
http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/newsroom/hig ... review.xml

“During fiscal year 2008, U.S. Customs and Border Protection made significant progress toward securing our nation’s border at and between the ports of entry,â€