Thread: Incursions at US-Mexico border

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/kouri/061127

November 27, 2006
Incursions at US-Mexico border create tension
By Jim Kouri

Customs and Border Protection Bureau officials conceded that Border Patrol agents crossed into Mexico while pursuing drug smugglers, but they also said the incursion was only about 27 feet and the agents acted while in hot pursuit of armed drug traffickers.

Law enforcement officials this writer spoke with say they are appalled at outrage expressed by the Mexican government and some lawmakers on Capitol Hill over the incident.

"The agents were following their adrenaline and dealing with a tense situation following a drug trafficking attempt," Border Patrol spokesman Doug Mosier told AP.

"We've always had a very good working relationship with Mexico. We're perplexed."

The incident has caused many to call the Mexican government hypocritical since Mexican police and soldiers have entered the US on several occasions. Mexican officials characterized US border agents chasing suspects "a breach of Mexican sovereignty." They said that the Mexican federal police have started a full investigation into this one incident.

The case involved agents chasing a pickup truck full of marijuana that was driven across the Rio Grande and got stuck in the mud on the Mexican bank. The suspects abandoned the vehicle and ran into Mexico. They are still at-large in their home country since the Mexican police are investigating the Border Patrol instead of hunting for the drug smugglers.

Several Border Patrol agents — Mexico claims there were 15 — started picking up drug bundles that had fallen off the truck and some that were still inside the truck, according to officials. The international boundary is an imaginary line through the center of the Rio Grand.

Police officers from the village of Guadalupe Distrito Bravos, some of whom wore no uniforms, arrived at the scene openly displaying their firearms, officials on both sides of the border said. The American agents drew their guns which led to a tense standoff. According to officials, the US agents cautiously withdrew to their side of the border.

Border Patrol officials initially reported that they were skeptical that their agents had set foot into Mexico. However, after a preliminary investigation, Robert Gilbert, Border Patrol chief for the El Paso sector, said last Monday night that there had been an incursion of perhaps 25 feet. He also stressed that the incursion resulted from drug smugglers attempting to enter the US with a large shipment of marijuana.

"Agents had been acting on instinct when trying to secure the vehicle for their own safety," Gilbert said.

"In the past, these events have had the potential to turn violent and so officers must take steps to minimize any threat. Agents instinctively secure vehicles for officer-safety reasons after perpetrators flee," he said.

Border Patrol officials said they were not considering disciplinary action against the agents for the moment but continued to look into the matter. They said they were surprised by the Mexican public reaction.

"They should be surprised at Mexico's blatant hypocrisy. I wish I had a buck for everytime Mexican cops and soldiers who work for the drug cartels illegally enter the United States armed to the teeth," said an Arizona police officer who requested anonymity.

"And for our own leaders to remain silent when Mexican [cops] enter the US, while they try to appease the [Mexican] government when our guys chase bad guys, is outrageous," he added.

For example, last January, Hudspeth County, Arizona sheriff's deputies accused the Mexican military of taking part in a standoff and a possible incursion over an abandoned drug load. Yet US government officials denied the Mexican incursion in order to quell the tension between the US cops and renegade Mexican soldiers.

During a congressional hearing into the Hudspeth County incident, Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar said that there had been 144 documented incursions by possible Mexican officials into the United States between 2001 and 2005. But he claimed many of them were "unintentional" violations of US sovereignty.

Also common are attacks on Border Patrol agents from south of the border — with rocks, flaming bottles and bullets. In once incident an agent near Fort Hancock was shot in the leg by assailants in Mexico.

According to an AP story, the last time Mexican officials decried an American incursion in the El Paso area was in 2002, when FBI agents allegedly went a few feet into Mexico at Anapra to retrieve two wounded agents who had been dragged through a hole in the border fence by Mexican train robbers.

In this last incident, Border Patrol agents retrieved about 300 pounds of marijuana from the pickup and Mexican police unloaded another 1,441 pounds, according to officials from various agencies. The truck itself, a gray Chevrolet, had been reported to police stolen in El Paso, Texas in May 2006, which means the suspects had been inside the US committing crimes even then.

Meanwhile, the Bush Administration remains silent, as do lawmakers from both political parties.

© Jim Kouri
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THIS IS AN OLD STORY BUT I POST IT BECAUSE IT WAS THE ONLY EXAMPLE I COULD FIND. OUR LOCAL EL PASO POLICE HAVE INADVERTENTLY CROSSED THE BORDER A FEW TIMES WHILE IN PURSUIT OF CRIMINAL SUSPECTS. THE LAST TIME THAT I RECALL, THE EP OFFICER WAS ARRESTED ON THE MEXICAN SIDE, STRIPPED OF HIS CAR, WALLET AND OTHER PERSONAL BELONGINGS AND PUT IN JAIL WHERE HE LANGUISHED FOR A WEEK OR SO. MEXICAN LAW ENFORCEMENT AND MEXICAN SOLDIERS HAVE CROSSED OVER MANY TIMES BUT THEY ARE NOT TREATED IN THE WAY THAT OUR OFFICERS ARE. THEY ARE MERELY ADMONISHED FOR CROSSING OVER AND RETURNED TO MEXICO...END OF STORY. REALLY....I CANNOT EVEN BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND WHY THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT CONTINUES TO CODDLE MEXICO.

HAVEN'T THERE BEEN ARTICLES WRITTEN ABOUT THE MEXICAN MILITARY CROSSING OVER OUR BORDERS?

http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2010/ ... sion-texas
Mexican Military Incursion In Texas

Last Updated: Fri, 03/12/2010 - 11:46am

Highlighting the U.S. government’s perpetual failure to secure the southern border, a Mexican military helicopter was photographed by a Texas sheriff this week flying over a residential neighborhood at least a mile into the American side of the Rio Grande.

These sorts of invasions by Mexico’s corrupt military, long on the drug cartel payroll, have been going on for years but the timing of this incursion is especially alarming since it occurred on the same week that Homeland Security officials revealed Mexican drug cartels are rapidly infiltrating federal law enforcement agencies along the southwest border.

Testifying before a U.S. Senate panel, Homeland Security officials said that more than 400 public corruption cases involving federal, state and local enforcement personnel in the crime-infested Mexican border region have been solved in the last two years alone. Additionally, 576 corruption cases were opened in 2009 involving Border Patrol agents.

This makes the repeated Mexican military incursions all the more abominable, especially since U.S. officials know they’re occurring. Last year Judicial Watch obtained Homeland Security records documenting 226 incursions by Mexican government personnel into the United States between 1996 and 2005. Obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the annual intelligence summaries of “Mexican Government Incidentsâ€

I saw this one today. http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnw/20100607/pl_usnw/DC17063_1

WASHINGTON, June 7 –
U.S. Border Patrol Agents Subjected to 528 Assaults from January – June 2008

Statistics Show U.S. Border Incursions on the Rise in 2008 and 2009

WASHINGTON, June 7 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that on March 22, 2010, it received records from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) concerning Mexican Government incursions and encounters along the U.S. border. The documents which are incomplete and do not contain all of the relevant data nonetheless indicate an increase in the number of incursions in 2008 and 2009. Judicial Watch's analysis of the data shows:

* 76 Mexican Government incursions from January 2008 to December 2009 (data missing from February 2009)
* 50 Mexican Government incursions in 2008 alone, which is double the number of incursions from the previous year
* 528 assaults against CBP agents from January – June 2008
* 11 assaults against National Guard agents with CBP from January – June 2008


CBP statistics obtained previously by Judicial Watch confirmed 25 incursions in Fiscal Year 2007. Judicial Watch has documented 226 Mexican Government incursions between 1996 and 2005.

CBP also records the number of tunnels discovered along the border which are allegedly used for smuggling and human trafficking. In 2008 alone, CBP discovered 25 of these tunnels. Overall, between 1990 and March 2009, CBP discovered 103 tunnels along U.S. borders – one along the U.S. border with Canada and 102 along the U.S. border with Mexico.

The documents obtained by Judicial Watch from the CBP are missing large amounts of data. Through the Freedom of Information Act Judicial Watch requested incursion and encounter reports from January 2008 to present. However, CBP provided full statistical reports for the first six months of 2008 only. The remaining reports only include the numbers of incursions. Moreover, data for February 2009 is missing entirely. Judicial Watch has filed an appeal with CBP to obtain the missing information.

"President Obama and the federal government continue to be derelict in securing the nation's southern border. These new government documents depict a chaotic and dangerous situation for our nation's Border Patrol agents – and for border states such as Arizona," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

Previous Mexican Government incursion documents obtained by Judicial Watch describe incidents involving shots fired on both sides of the border, unmarked helicopters invading U.S. airspace, drug smuggling, and confrontations between U.S. Border Patrol agents and members of the Mexican military.

Visit www.JudicialWatch.org to access all CBP documents uncovered by Judicial Watch.

the federalie are mad that they took their drugs!