Thread: Change on the border / U.S.-Mexico partnerships show promise

San Diego Union Tribune Editorial

Change on the border / U.S.-Mexico partnerships show promise

Sunday, February 21, 2010 at 12:01 a.m.

Times have changed on the U.S.-Mexico border. Not long ago, it would have been unthinkable for Mexican federal police officers to team up with U.S. Border Patrol agents to battle the smugglers of drugs, guns and immigrants. There has long been a sense of mutual distrust between the agencies, and it got in the way of fighting common enemies.

But it’s a new day. A partnership is exactly what is occurring on the Arizona-Mexico border where hundreds of federal police officers from both countries are – for the first time – training together, sharing intelligence and even coordinating patrols. This idea of pooling resources could catch on. In fact, it might soon be coming to a sliver of the border near you.

Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Mexican Public Safety Secretary Genaro GarcÃ*a Luna signed a declaration in Mexico City agreeing to replicate the experiment elsewhere.

The idea of the federal agencies working so closely together is new, but what isn’t new is the larger concept of U.S. law enforcement agencies training Mexican counterparts. Agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have helped train Mexican police officers in the drug war. Closer to home, the San Diego Police Department helped to train members of the newly created Metropolitan Tourist Police, which operates in Tijuana, Rosarito Beach and Ensenada as part of an effort to reassure U.S. tourists that it is safe to venture into Mexico.

There is even an interesting, if limited, discussion of Mexico creating its own version of a federal border patrol. Mexican authorities have typically avoided interfering with Mexicans crossing north illegally if there is no evidence that they’re engaged in other criminal activity. The Mexican public frowns on that sort of enforcement, and it would quickly accuse its government of being a lackey of the United States. Besides, Mexicans have traditionally seen controlling the northward flow of illegal immigrants into the United States as its neighbor’s problem.

Now that kind of thinking is being reassessed. When someone smuggles immigrants out of Mexico, they have the apparatus to also smuggle drugs. When they sell those drugs in the north and come back with bundles of cash, those proceeds can then be used to buy automatic weapons that kill Mexican police officers. More and more these days, all these forms of lawlessness are interlocked.

So we need a constant law enforcement presence on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Partnerships like this help maintain continuity by ensuring that smugglers find no sanctuary. If they slip by U.S. Border Patrol agents and head south, they’ll have Mexican federales to deal with. If they evade the federales and head north, they’ll run into the Border Patrol.

We need to see more of these partnerships. It’s a better and smarter approach to border enforcement – and bad news for smugglers.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010 ... ge-border/

And how many stories have been posted here about the corruption within the ranks of Mexican law enforcement?