Thread: Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano to speak at Bor

Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano to speak at Border Conference
By Diana Washington Valdez / El Paso Times
Posted: 07/09/2009 12:00:00 AM MDT


EL PASO -- Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is among the top-ranking U.S. officials who plan to address the Border Security Conference in El Paso next month.

U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-El Paso, who helped establish the annual conference, said this year's event is especially timely because policymakers are dealing with such issues as Mexico's drug-related violence, U.S. immigration reform and binational trade in a recession.

"I am pleased that Secretary Napolitano and other high-ranking officials have accepted my invitation to come to El Paso to participate in this year's Border Security Conference," Reyes said.

"As the largest border community in the world, the El Paso-Juárez region is the ideal location to bring together top leaders from the U.S. and Mexico to address the many border security issues that continue to challenge communities such as ours."

Other featured speakers at the Aug. 10-11 event will include John Brennan, White House counterterrorism official and a CIA veteran; Kenneth Melson, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Alan Bersin, the U.S. border czar; David Aguilar, chief of the U.S. Border Patrol; Sigrid Arzt Colunga, a Woodrow Wilson Center scholar and security consultant for Mexico's president; and Joseph Arabit, special agent-in-charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration's office in El Paso.

DEA officials have testified before Congress that weapons and bulk cash from the U.S. were fueling Mexico's drug cartel violence.

Earlier this year, Melson announced that 100 people were added to the agency's Houston field office in support of Project Gunrunner, which was created to reduce the flow of weapons from the United States to Mexico.

Napolitano, a former governor of Arizona, was in El Paso in April to name Bersin the border czar and to announce initiatives aimed helping Mexico fight the drug cartels.

She said then that more federal agents would be assigned to the border, and that better technology and strict inspection of car traveling from the U.S. into Mexico would be part of the initiatives.

"El Paso, the largest binational metroplex in the world, is where the many challenges and opportunities of the U.S.-Mexico border are most salient," said Diana Natalicio, president of the University of Texas at El Paso, where the conference will take place.

Howard Campbell, a sociology and anthropology professor at UTEP who also was invited to speak at the conference, said he planned to discuss the Merida Initiative, a U.S. aid package intended to help Mexico in its crackdown on the drug cartels.

"I don't think Mexican President Felipe Calderón is winning the war on drugs in Mexico," said Campbell, who will elaborate during his presentation at the conference.

The conference at UTEP's Undergraduate Learning Center is free and open to the public.

Panelists for Sixth Annual Border Conference

Janet Napolitano, Homeland Security secretary

Alan Bersin, Special representative for Border Affairs

John Brennan, Homeland Security and counterterrorism

John Morton, Immigration and Customs Enforcement

Kenneth Melson, Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives

David Aguilar, U.S. Border Patrol chief

Roger Garner, USAID mission director for Mexico

www.elpasotimes.com

As the largest border community in the world, the El Paso-Juárez region is the ideal location to bring together top leaders from the U.S. and Mexico to address the many border security issues that continue to challenge communities such as ours."




It's also the ideal location to bring together our troops to lock it down.

How about they leave off with all of the conferences and discussions and try actually DOING something for a change?

If they spent even half the time acting on the problems as they do talking about them, we'd be in really good shape by now

would you not like to be a fly on the wall and be able to listen to everything said????

Originally Posted by jamesw62

would you not like to be a fly on the wall and be able to listen to everything said????

LOL......actually, I'd prefer to be a wasp or africanized bee on the wall listening to everything being said.

Originally Posted by azwreath

Originally Posted by jamesw62

would you not like to be a fly on the wall and be able to listen to everything said????

LOL......actually, I'd prefer to be a wasp or africanized bee on the wall listening to everything being said.

LOL....actually I'd prefer to be allowed in with a video camera!

She said then that more federal agents would be assigned to the border, and that better technology and strict inspection of car traveling from the U.S. into Mexico would be part of the initiatives.

Didn't I read in another story posted on ALIPAC that many of the federal agents being sent to the border are DHS agents? If so, you know what that means - less interior enforcement!

Alipac needs our help! Please join in!

http://www.alipac.us/ftopicp-922472.html#922472
_________________

Originally Posted by Rockfish

Originally Posted by azwreath

Originally Posted by jamesw62

would you not like to be a fly on the wall and be able to listen to everything said????

LOL......actually, I'd prefer to be a wasp or africanized bee on the wall listening to everything being said.

LOL....actually I'd prefer to be allowed in with a video camera!

Just think, if you could find a cam that tiny, going in as an insect would be the perfect cover

The United States has 35,000+ troops in Korea who would be better utilized Securing our National Borders from the ILLEGALS, the growing lawlessness, and civil war in mexico. Of course the answer concerning the decisions of an Elitist Politician from our nation; "Just follow the money"!