Thread: Military Lacks Resources to Stop Trafficking Across U.S.-Mexico Border

Military Lacks Resources to Stop Trafficking Across U.S.-Mexico Border

Top military commander requests more drones, ships

AP

BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff
July 7, 2014 12:56 pm

A top U.S. military commander says his forces lack the resources to stop criminal networks from trafficking illegal drugs, persons, and potentially arms across the U.S.-Mexico border, presenting a grave national security threat, Defense One reports.

Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly, head of U.S. Southern Command in Central and South America, is requesting more drones and ships from Congress to help combat the threat of criminal and gang networks. Security threats in Central America have received heightened scrutiny in recent weeks as tens of thousands of children flee violence in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to seek refuge at the U.S. border.

Kelly said he disagreed with the notion that “these threats are not existential and do not challenge our national security”:

“All this corruption and violence is directly or indirectly due to the insatiable U.S. demand for drugs, particularly cocaine, heroin, and now methamphetamines,” Kelly told Defense One, “all of which are produced in Latin America and smuggled into the U.S. along an incredibly efficient network along which anything—hundreds of tons of drugs, people, terrorists, potentially weapons of mass destruction or children—can travel, so long as they can pay the fare.”

While some lawmakers support more funding for the region, the Obama administration is unlikely to meet Kelly’s request:

The Democratic coalition wants increased funding and resources for SOUTHCOM and the State Department’s Central American Regional Security Initiative. For fiscal 2015, the Obama administration requested $130 million for the program, which covers seven countries, but that ask is a decrease of $30 million from the current year, the senators noted. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson has said an additional $161.5 million will be provided for CARSI programs to “respond to the region’s most pressing security and governance challenges”—but the administration has made no mention of additional resources for the U.S. military.

The Washington Free Beacon previously reported that SouthCom only has about 5 percent of the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets it needs to monitor smuggling networks in the Americas.

http://freebeacon.com/national-secur...mexico-border/

So that means AmeriKa is a Paper Tiger