Mexico off limits to military personnel

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Mexico off limits to military personnel
Special to the News-Herald
Del Rio News-Herald

Published April 17, 2007
Col. Mike Minahan, 47th Flying Training Wing commander at Laughlin AFB, has placed the border areas of Mexico, including Ciudad Acuña, Piedras Negras, Juarez and Nuevo Laredo, off limits to all military personnel beginning April 12.

In a news release base spokesmen said the action was taken to help ensure the welfare and safety of Laughlin personnel due to increased criminal activities and threats in Mexico, some apparently directed at the U.S. military.

All active-duty members, Reservist, and Guardsmen attached to Laughlin are prohibited from entering areas designated as off-limits. All other Laughlin personnel, including Department of Defense civilian employees, contractors and family members are strongly discouraged against travel in these areas of Mexico.

As a matter of policy, base spokesman Kent Cummins said, the Air Force cannot discuss specific intelligence in our threat assessments that led to the decision.

The title is a little bit misleading. That policy is set by a local command, and it set up for the worst of the worst cities.

You could not pay me to go to Nuevo Laredo, but these days Acapulco has quite a bit of violence too.

There was a major shoot out in Tijuana yesterday and I will add the clip. For the most part Americans are safe in Mexico, but it is also a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

At my command we have a few service members that live in Tijuana, and commute daily. Some days it seems like 50% of my command have Hispanic surnames, so you see there are no shortages of Hispanics in the Military.
AND YES THEY ARE ALL LEGAL (99.9%), or have green cards.

R/ Skip

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2 officers killed in gunbattle


2 in custody after shootouts at Tijuana hospital, bus station
By Sandra Dibble
and Anna Cearley

UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITERS

April 19, 2007

TIJUANA – A busy public hospital that serves the city's poorest residents was the scene of a shootout yesterday that claimed the lives of two law-enforcement officers and left hundreds of frightened patients and staff members locked inside for several hours as police searched for suspects.

JOHN GIBBINS / Union-Tribune
A federal police officer pointed his gun at a suspect in custody inside a patrol truck in Tijuana yesterday. A federal organized crime unit has taken charge of the investigation into the shootings.
As soldiers and police swarmed the area in the city's Rio Zone, the 120-bed General Hospital was partly evacuated shortly after noon, with some patients temporarily moved to a city park across the street and treated on cots set up on a basketball court. Others were driven to nearby hospitals.

Sixty patients were evacuated, according to Baja California health authorities, but it remained unclear yesterday how many were left inside.

Graphic: Shooting sites

The incident at the hospital caused a commotion that was rare even for a city plagued by drug-related violence. It began about 10:30 a.m., a couple of miles from the hospital, near the city's bus station, known as La Central Camionera.

By late afternoon, two suspects were in custody and another was dead, and the hospital was again admitting patients and visitors. But numerous questions persisted about the attack in the parking lot of the hospital and the emergency room area.

“Definitely we're talking about organized crime,” said Jaime Niebla, a top investigator with the Baja California Attorney General's Office.

State and federal officers on patrol had been chasing two armed men who were in a white pickup in a residential neighborhood behind the bus station. The suspects refused an order to stop, shot at the officers, then ran when their vehicle crashed into a bus, according to the Baja California Attorney General's Office. One of the suspects was injured, and another who apparently had been shot fell dead in the concrete channel of the Tijuana River.

JOHN GIBBINS / Union-Tribune

Bullet holes pocked the side of an ambulance after yesterday's shootout at General Hospital in Tijuana.

As a Red Cross ambulance carried the wounded suspect and an injured bystander to General Hospital, armed assailants were in pursuit.

State investigators said the assailants were trying to free the injured suspect as they shot their way through the parking lot and into the hospital's emergency room. Two state police agents who were at the hospital on unrelated matters were killed. They are José Adrian López Torres, a member of the State Preventive Police, and Rodolfo García Parrales, a state prison guard.

A federal organized crime unit has taken charge of the investigation, according to a statement released late yesterday by the Baja California Attorney General's Office. Among the items seized are three guns, three ski masks, and a bullet-resistant vest.

Hours after the men entered the hospital, signs of the battle were evident. Bullet holes pocked the glass door of the emergency room. Bullets had pierced a nearby ambulance and the metallic roof that covered an outdoor waiting area and chipped a wall and some concrete benches.

Inocencia López, 27, was in the first floor maternity ward after giving birth to her fourth child at 8:30 a.m. when she heard shots, she said.

“Someone came in to say there had been injuries, and then they closed the doors because we could hear a great commotion,” she said.

Meanwhile, her husband was outside in the emergency room waiting area, watching as the assailants fired their weapons and burst into the hospital. José de Solano said he saw four or five attackers and ran inside after them to find his wife. “I wanted to get to where she was, but I couldn't because there were too many people running in every direction.”

About two hours after the initial assault, gunfire resounded from inside the hospital, sending bystanders outside once again scurrying for cover. Law enforcement authorities had yet to clear up questions last night about the origin of that gunfire.

José Bustamante Moreno, Baja California's secretary of health, reported that part of the hospital had been flooded, apparently because a pipe had burst. In a statement late yesterday, the health department said the hospital would mostly be operating as usual today, and crews were working to repair the damage, which was affecting the blood bank and surgery area. Until the repairs are complete, emergency cases are being rerouted to other hospitals, the statement said.

Patients without any kind of insurance are treated at the hospital, which means many patients are those who work in the large informal sector of the Mexican economy. Those people are not on social security rolls and therefore do not qualify for treatment at social security hospitals.

Shortly after taking office late last year, Mexican President Felipe Calderón started a series of operations against organized crime in several states. Operation Tijuana, which also has been called Operation Baja California, started Jan. 2 with 3,300 soldiers and federal agents sent to the border region.

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