Thread: Mexico has misgivings over Pentagon map plan

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/ ... rmaps.html

Mexico has misgivings over Pentagon map plan

Chris Hawley
Republic Mexico City Bureau
Jul. 15, 2006 12:00 AM


MEXICO CITY - Mexico is warning National Guard troops to toe the line, literally, as they begin surveying the U.S.-Mexican border in an attempt to create more precise maps.

A Foreign Ministry official said Friday that Mexico is uncomfortable with the Pentagon's plans to use a mapmaking unit from the Alabama National Guard to chart the border, noting that there is a binational committee that has sole authority over the border and its markers.

"We have expressed to the United States government our worry that the National Guard may enter into some matters over which it does not have authority," said Juan Bosco Martí, the Foreign Ministry's director-general for North American affairs.

"If some case were to arise in which the National Guard tried to delineate the border zone, then there would be total opposition by the Mexican government."

The mapping plan, which was first reported by The Arizona Republic on Thursday, is part of President Bush's deployment of 6,000 National Guard troops to help secure the border.

The Pentagon says its mapping techniques could help Border Patrol agents better navigate the line, which is poorly marked in some areas.

But Martí said most Mexican and U.S. border agents don't rely on maps: They use Global Positioning System devices and their knowledge of the terrain to avoid crossing the border.

The current border was set by a series of nine treaties from 1848 to 1970, and it is enforced by the International Boundary and Water Commission, which includes representatives from both countries.

The U.S. troops are free to map their side of the border line, but they must not try to change it, Martí said.

"The border line is the border line, and it will stay where it is forever," he said.

In some places, the only visible sign of the border is a series of obelisk-shaped markers. Those border markers can be placed only by the International Boundary and Water Commission.

In March, the two countries asked the commission to improve the marker system. Mexican members of the commission presented a proposal for modernizing the markers two weeks ago, and the U.S. side is expected to do the same within a month, Martí said.



Reach the reporter at chris.hawley@arizonarepublic.com.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/ ... re-ON.html

National Guard to mark poorly mapped U.S. border

Mike Madden
Republic Washington Bureau
Jul. 12, 2006 04:31 PM


WASHINGTON - For some National Guard troops heading to the U.S.-Mexico border to bolster security, the mission couldn't be more basic: find out exactly where the border is.

Pentagon officials plan to assign a mapmaking unit from the Alabama National Guard to research and develop new charts of the region, updating maps of a boundary that originally was delineated more than 150 years ago. Accurate maps will help U.S. government agents find their way around rugged terrain and show where the territory they are patrolling ends and where Mexico beings.

Though some of the border follows rivers and the rest is marked by monuments and some fencing, a number of the markers are so far apart that it's hard to tell where the boundary is in some remote desert areas. So, planners see mapping the region using satellite imagery and military technology as a good use of some of the Guard resources that President Bush has ordered deployed.

"There's parts of that border that are very, very poorly marked and very difficult to discern when you're in the United States or when you're in Mexico," said Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, head of the Pentagon's National Guard Bureau. "(The Guard's mapping unit) can go down there and actually chart and map the borders in areas where it's contentious or it could be misinterpreted."

That the government is devoting military time and money to making better maps underscores how difficult patrolling and securing the border is. Immigrants and smugglers can sneak into the country illegally through harsh and remote territory, often crossing mountains along the way. Though sensors and cameras are scattered around the region, it can take hours for U.S. Border Patrol agents to reach areas where migrants are suspected of hiding.

Agents do sometimes accidentally enter Mexican territory while pursuing suspects, and Mexican military units have crossed into the United States, as well. The new maps may not stop this from happening, but could reduce confusion about where the line is.

But most Border Patrol agents rely on knowledge of their patrol area and high-tech global positioning satellite systems, not maps.

"It's (updated mapping) one of those things that falls into the category of useful information, but not essential information," said T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union that represents 10,500 rank-and-file Border Patrol agents. "From the vantage point of the troops on the ground, front-line Border Patrol agents, it's not that we don't welcome the help, but we look at the amount of money that's being spent on something that's marginally helpful, and we wonder what else could that $1.9 billion be spent on that's more useful to us."

That figure represents the cost of the entire Guard deployment, which is supposed to last until the end of 2008 . The Bush administration has ordered 6,000 Guard troops to the border to help Border Patrol agents carry out their mission.

The Pentagon still is working out details of the assignment for the mapping unit, the 1203rd Engineering Battalion of the Alabama National Guard. Exactly what parts of the border the maps will focus on still is undetermined, as is when the unit will begin work.

Maintaining the boundary between the United States and Mexico is not the responsibility of the Border Patrol or the military. A joint U.S.-Mexican agency, the International Boundary and Water Commission, is in charge of marking the border and making official maps of the region. The guard is making the maps for law enforcement purposes, not to redraw the boundary.

The exact location of the border has been agreed to by both countries in a series of treaties, beginning in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in which Mexico ceded most of the present-day southwestern United States, including Arizona.

The Mexican government declined to comment on the Pentagon's plans to map the border, but Rafael Laveaga, a spokesman for the Mexican embassy in Washington, D.C., said the boundary commission was the only proper forum for settling any disputes over territory.

Outside of urban areas and places where the Border Patrol has put up fencing to stop illegal immigration, some barbed-wire fencing originally erected in the early 20th century after a disease outbreak among Mexican cattle still stands. People who work on the border said it's hard to know how well the fence tracks the boundary.

"You can find a marker that says this is where the border is, but you don't know that for sure (if you can't see a marker)," said the Rev. Robin Hoover, founder of Humane Borders, a group that puts water stations in the desert for migrants and has produced its own maps of the border region to keep people from getting lost in dangerous terrain.

Hoover said the border does need to be mapped better.

"There are areas out there where you don't know (which side you're on)," he said. "Americans have this concept that there's either a river or a fence, and that's simply not true."



Reach the reporter at mmadden@gannett.com or 1-202-906-8123.

... and we wonder what else could that $1.9 billion be spent on that's more useful to us.

I dunno, like maybe ..... a fence?

Originally Posted by Ladydrake

... and we wonder what else could that $1.9 billion be spent on that's more useful to us.

I dunno, like maybe ..... a fence?

FENCE? Surely you jest, Lady.......wouldn't that be too, oh maybe....EASY?

NOT in the Poison PENCE Plan!

the International Boundary and Water Commission ?

W

FENCE? Surely you jest, Lady.......wouldn't that be too, oh maybe....EASY?

Who... me?

Or perhaps that it makes too much sense so naturally can't have that.

Originally Posted by Ladydrake

FENCE? Surely you jest, Lady.......wouldn't that be too, oh maybe....EASY?

Who... me?

Or perhaps that it makes too much sense so naturally can't have that.

Ahhhh........you're making sense that, if it makes sense, the government won't abide making sense.

Sooooo, those of us that do make sense are basically SCREWED by the very government that refuses to make any sense at all.


What a pile of heiferdust they have laid!

"The border line is the border line, and it will stay where it is forever," he said.

I REST MY CASE............MEXICO SAYS IT'S A BORDER LINE.
Let's get them people

However this is how Mexico looks at the border lines.

They forgot Seattle, WA