Battling cartels: Feds use El Paso assets
El Paso Times Staff
Article Launched: 08/13/2008 12:00:00 AM MDT

Frightening data was shared in El Paso this week in regards to the joint efforts of the U.S. and Mexico to fight the illegal drug trade. Numbers were staggering.

Ways to address that were also shared. And at least two major points came out of the two-day conference:

It became clear that a joint effort by the U.S. and Mexico is imperative. That seems to be ongoing, according to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller. Good.

And Homeland Security's decision to place the National Center for Border Security and Immigration at the University of Texas at El Paso was a wise one. El Paso/UTEP is the obvious place for such a center -- an educational institution located at the largest border community in the world.

We were informed at the Border Security Conference that the global drug cartels work with an annual budget that is larger than nine out of 10 countries in the world. Global drug trade is $323 billion annually, according to Anthony Placido of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Frightening is the data that show two reasons for the cartels' strengths can be pinpointed in El Paso and in all southern border states:

Huge amounts of money, billions of dollars, pass back into Mexico through Texas. A lot of that comes through here. It's the cash drug pushers collect from drug users, piles of it.

Just about all of illegal guns seized in Mexico are from gun sellers, including gun shops, in all states in the U.S. A good share of those weapons pass through Texas. A lot of that traffic, it can be easily speculated, would come through El Paso and into the violent ongoing drug-cartel war in Juárez.

Stopping the drug trade, then, means cutting off the cartels' supplies of money and arms. El Paso will be a part in handling those ways to cripple the cartels.

We must beef up efforts to seize more ill-gotten money headed to the cartels.

And, as Mueller said, continue perfecting better and better ways to track the flow of guns; the joint U.S./Mexico effort has been dubbed "Project Gunrunner."

Truly, the shared information at the conference was both frightening and staggering.

And the joint U.S.-Mexico efforts to combat the cartels, and using El Paso as a major player, is a good way to fight that battle.
http://www.elpasotimes.com/opinion/ci_10180343