Thread: U.S. allows Mexican police to stage cross-border raids

U.S. allows Mexican police to stage cross-border raids

BY GINGER THOMPSON and MARK MAZZETTI • New York Times

August 26, 2011

WASHINGTON • President Barack Obama's administration has expanded its role in Mexico's fight against organized crime by allowing the Mexican police to stage cross-border drug raids from inside the United States, according to senior administration and military officials.

Mexican commandos have discreetly traveled to the U.S., assembled at designated areas and dispatched helicopter missions back across the border aimed at suspected drug traffickers. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration provides logistical support on the U.S. side of the border, officials said, arranging staging areas and sharing intelligence that helps guide Mexico's decisions about targets and tactics.

Officials said these so-called boomerang operations were intended to evade the surveillance — and corrupting influences — of the criminal organizations that closely monitor the movements of security forces inside Mexico. And they said the efforts were meant to provide settings with tight security for U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officers to collaborate in their pursuit of criminals who operate on both sides of the border.

Former U.S. law enforcement officials who were once posted in Mexico described the boomerang operations as a new take on an old strategy that was briefly used in the late 1990s when the DEA helped Mexico crack down on the Tijuana Cartel by letting the specially vetted Mexican police to stage operations out of Camp Pendleton in San Diego.

Although the current operations remain rare, they are part of a broadening U.S. campaign aimed at blunting the power of Mexican cartels that have built criminal networks spanning the world and have started a wave of violence in Mexico that has left more than 35,000 people dead.

Still, the cooperation remains a source of political tension, especially in Mexico, where the political classes have been leery of the U.S. dating from the Mexican-American War of 1846.

But Deputy Secretary of State William Burns during a visit to Mexico this month strongly defended the partnership the two governments had developed.

"I'll simply repeat that there are clear limits to our role," Burns said. "Our role is not to conduct operations. It is not to engage in law enforcement activities. That is the role of the Mexican authorities. And that's the way it should be."

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Mus be the new NAU Policy!

We don't need no stinking law to be passed!

We just need a stinking policy!