Mexican soldiers arrested for drug trafficking

* March 4th, 2011 10:29 pm ET

On Thursday, it was announced that three officers and 10 enlisted will stand trial before a military tribunal on drug trafficking and organized crime charges after allegedly being caught with more than a ton of methamphetamines and 66 pounds of cocaine.

Last week, the Mexican military announced that a group of soldiers were taken into custody with a large amount of drugs at a checkpoint near Tijuana.

This is hardly the first time members of the Mexican military have been implicated in working on behalf of the drug cartels.

In August 2008, a Mexican military contingent held at gunpoint a U.S. Border Patrol agent. The incident occurred well inside the U.S. border, about 100 miles southwest of Tucson. The Mexican soldier eventually released the agent and returned to Mexico.

Shortly after the standoff, union Local 2544 of the National Border Patrol Council posted the following statement on their website: "Unfortunately, this sort of behavior by Mexican military personnel has been going on for years. They are never held accountable, and the United States government will undoubtedly brush this off as another case of 'Oh well, they didn't know they were in the United States.'

In January 2008, the Department of Homeland Security reported that since 1996, there had been 278 known incursions by the Mexican military into the United States. They are often seen providing armed escort to drug smugglers. Incredibly, the Mexican military now enters our nation at will, with no response from the U.S. government.

In 2008, active-duty members of the Mexican military went much farther than simply escorting smugglers across our border. They broke into a home in Phoenix firing more than 100 rounds, resulting in the death of the homeowner.

In the early morning hours of June 22, 2008 six men wearing helmets, body armor, and Phoenix Police raid shirts and armed with AR-15’s broke into the home at 8329 W. Cypress St. and shot and killed the resident, Mr. Andrew Williams. Phoenix police arrested three of the men, while the other three are still on the run. The three arrested and charged with first-degree murder are Manual Garcia-Trejo, Daniel Garcia-Saenz, and Rodolfo Madrigal Lopez, all are Mexican nationals.

One police report, which describes the crime reads: "Information from one of the suspects on McDowell indicated all the suspects are Mexican military coming into the United States with full tactical gear and police raid shirts to conduct home invasions. According to the same suspect, they were planning on ambushing the officers following them but didn’t only because they didn’t have any ammunition left.â€