Thread: U.S. officials brace for spillover violence from Mexico

Saturday, Mar 7, 2009
U.S. officials brace for spillover violence from Mexico

By DAVE MONTGOMERY
dmontgomery@star-telegram.com

AUSTIN -- The state and federal governments have prepared contingency plans to deal with "spillover violence" from across the border as Mexican troops clash with ruthless drug cartels terrorizing the United States’s southern neighbor.

"Anything you can think of that’s happened in Mexico, we have to think could happen here," said Steve McCraw, Gov. Rick Perry’s director of homeland security. "We know what they’re capable of."

A crackdown by Mexican President Felipe Calderon has turned the City of Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, into a war zone as federal troops battle feuding cartels.

Thousands of soldiers and agents have surged into the border city in the government’s latest effort to free Mexican citizens from a daily spectacle of assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings ordered by rival drug czars. McCraw predicted that the violence in Mexico "will get worse before it gets better."

Mexico’s active duty armed forces total more than 130,000 and are being aggressively used to combat the cartels. But U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told reporters last week that Mexico’s two largest drug cartels have fielded a combined army of 100,000 foot soldiers to battle not just government forces, but also each other.

The potential threat

The state’s contingency plan was developed under the umbrella of Operation Border Star, a multi-agency law enforcement offensive led by Perry’s homeland security office. The plan, which has not been released publicly, envisions differing scenarios of violence, such as kidnappings or a takeover by hit squads, with a corresponding response by law enforcement, said McCraw.

While declining to elaborate on specifics for security reasons, McCall called it a "very aggressive plan to deal very quickly with all threats that might be posed."

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has also prepared contingency measures to respond to cross-border violence, said DHS spokeswoman Amy Kudwa. Like the state plan, the federal response "contemplates a number of contingencies that could result from violence" in Mexico, said Kudwa.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, interviewed last week on the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, said the grisly murders and kidnappings that are signatures of the Mexican drug wars haven’t made their way north.

"But let’s be very, very clear," she added. "This is a very serious battle. It could spill over into the United States. If it does, we do have contingency plans to deal with it."

Fears of instability

A Defense Department study raising the possibility that the narco-violence could undermine the Mexican government has also prompted fears of a mass migration of refugees that would require a large-scale humanitarian response.

The U.S. Joint Forces Command, in a speculative assessment of global security threats, listed Mexico and Pakistan as two countries that "bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse."

"The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels," said the report. "How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state.

"Any descent by ... Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone,â€

I'd call whats been happening for the last 20 or 30 years as spill over and our corrupt government still has not did anything to stop them.

WAIT A SEC! I thought the new head of DHS, Janet Napolitano, said that this violence does not exist! Who am I suppose to believe -- the head of our federal Department of Homeland (In)Security or people on the ground? Arrrghhhh. What a conundrum. (This is all sarcastic-speak, btw)