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One year ago this week, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in a shootout in a remote smuggling area near here. Since then, federal authorities have ramped up the number of agents patrolling the entire southwestern border, particularly the region where he was shot. "We've put more people into those canyons," said Alan Bersin, the Customs and Border Protection commissioner. "The level of violence has come down. ... We are taking back this corridor. The progress is quite obvious. We're determined that Brian Terry did not die in vain."
Bersin said the total number of illegal immigrants arrested along the border was down 53 percent in fiscal 2011 compared with fiscal 2008. Apprehensions in Arizona fell 41 percent in fiscal 2011 from fiscal 2010. "These numbers illustrate the investments made by CBP to improve border security (and) increase border efficiencies," Bersin said.
Given the progress, federal authorities said Monday that they are considering a reduction in the number of National Guard troops stationed on the border. In 2010, President Barack Obama announced that he was temporarily sending 1,200 troops to help secure the border. "The Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security are working together closely to explore options to further strengthen the already unprecedented levels of personnel, technology and infrastructure deployed at the southwest border," said Lt. Col. Robert L. Ditchey, a Pentagon spokesman. Neither Bersin nor Jeffrey Self, chief of the Border Patrol, would spell out the administration's plans. Both men said that the military plays an important part in border security and that there are ongoing evaluations to determine how much soldier support is needed.
Bersin emphasized that there are "historic levels of resources" on the line in Arizona. Border Patrol staffing has doubled since 2004, enhanced with new fences and other technology. Chief among those tools is unmanned aerial technology, including drones, which the Border Patrol is aggressively adding to its lineup. "This focus on aerial surveillance represents a historic and unprecedented enhancement in our ability to detect and deter illegal activity at the border," a federal official said.
Number of arrests declines
Read more: Feds may reduce number of Guard troops at U.S. border
The number of U.S. citizens reported murdered in Mexico rose from 35 in 2007 to 120 in 2011, officials said. State Department officials also said that Juárez, which has one of the highest homicide rates in the country, is of special concern. "The Mexican government reports that more than 3,100 people were killed in Juárez in 2010 and 1,933 were killed in 2011. Three persons associated with the Consulate General were murdered in March 2010," the State Department said in a statement. "There (also) have been incidents of narcotics-related violence in the vicinity of the Copper Canyon in Chihuahua."
The warning issued on Wednesday that includes entire or parts of 18 states elicited a swift response from Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinoza, who said Mexico has made extraordinary efforts to ensure the safety of its citizens and foreign visitors. She said that 1 million people from various countries visited Mexico in December, a busy travel season for people visiting relatives or hitting the beaches in resort areas. Travel warnings are issued when long-term conditions that make a country dangerous or unstable are prevalent.
State Department officials attributed the violence to the Mexican government's crackdown against drug cartels and their well-armed gangs fighting over lucrative smuggling corridors. The warning describes conditions reminiscent of days from the Wild West. "The Mexican government has been engaged in an extensive effort to counter TCO's (transnational criminal organizations) which engage in narcotics trafficking and other unlawful activities throughout Mexico," U.S. officials said. "The TCO's themselves are engaged in a violent struggle to control drug trafficking routes and other criminal activity. As a result, crime and violence are serious problems throughout the country and can occur anywhere. U.S. citizens have fallen victim to TCO activity, including homicide, gun battles, kidnapping, carjacking and highway robbery."
Thousands of Juárez residents have left the city to escape the violence, and many of them have moved to El Paso and the vicinity. Mexican Defense Secretary Guillermo Galvan said that organized crime began in Mexico with gangs led by corrupt police. "The result of this is what we face today," Galvan said during a speech Thursday in Mexico City. Part of the Mexican government's strategy to rein in the cartels has included purging police departments of corrupt officers. In some cases, police have been caught working for competing drug organizations. In Juárez, the Carrillo Fuentes drug cartel has waged a brutal battle against the Joaquin "Chapo" Guzmán organization, which has led to thousands of deaths.
More US issues warning on travel to Mexico - El Paso Times
The Mexican army says it has seized 15 tonnes of methamphetamine in the western state of Jalisco. Soldiers found the synthetic drug, thought to be the largest amount ever seized in Mexico, at a ranch after a tip-off by a local. The production of methamphetamine is on the rise in Mexico, with the powerful Sinaloa cartel smuggling huge amounts into the United States. Methamphetamine creates a powerful psychological dependency. Soldiers discovered the cache at a ranch in Tlajomulco de Zuniga, south of the state capital, Guadalajara.
'Historic seizure'
Gen Gilberto Hernandez Andreu said the ranch had been used as a lab to manufacture the drug, which can be swallowed, sniffed, smoked or injected. "It's an historic seizure: more than 15 tonnes of methamphetamine, five kilos of crystal, and around seven tonnes of precursor chemicals," General Hernandez Andreu said. Soldiers also seized equipment used to produce the drug, but no arrests were made. The Mexican Defence Ministry said the security forces had discovered seven drug laboratories in Jalisco so far this year.
Over the past few months, the authorities have also seized a record amount of precursor chemicals used to produce the drug. On 18 January, they found 12 shipping containers full of the precursor chemical methylamine in the Pacific coast port of Lazaro Cardenas. A 2011 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said amphetamine-type stimulants had become the second most widely used illegal substances. According to the report, the main producers of synthetic drugs remain the Netherlands and Burma, but manufacture has spread to Latin America.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-16974000
The two bridges are located at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) port of entry in Eagle Pass, Texas connecting Eagle Pass, Texas, to Piedras Negras in Coahuila, Mexico. In an e-mail to CNSNews.com, Douglas Mosier, a spokesman for CBP in El Paso, confirmed that the bridges were closed in response to violent activity occurring in Piedras Negras, Mexico and as per coordination between the Government of Mexico, the Eagle Pass Police Department and the Maverick County Sheriff's Department.
CBP has protocols in place to handle these types of situations and enacted those protocols in response to this incident, added Mosier. Our primary concern is for the safety of the traveling public and the safety of our officers. He said that the shut down took place overnight between approximately 9 p.m. on March 6 and 8 a.m. the following day. Traffic to Mexico was stopped at about 9 p.m. Northbound traffic from Mexico coming across the larger bridge Camino Real International was rerouted overnight to the Eagle Pass International Bridge.
By 7:40 a.m. on March 7, both international bridges had fully resumed northbound and southbound operations. Mosier said he could not provide any more details on the battles, which government agency ordered the shut down, and whether or not CBP often closes down border crossings as a result of drug war violence in Mexico. However, according to Mexican news reports, the U.S. State Department requested that the bridges be closed in response to a series of gun battles between the Mexican military and bandits in Piedras Negras armed with high-powered weapons and rocket grenade launchers. The State Department did not immediately return calls for comment.
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Its a figure that worries and puzzles both humanitarian aid groups and organizations that want to see a crackdown on illegal immigration. For some, it calls into question the Border Patrols own arrest figures, while for others it suggests agents are doing their job too well, and the heavier security is pushing illegal immigrants into ever-more remote areas which means each illegal crosser faces a greater chance of dying.
If most Americans were to watch on TV that there was some country where every year at least 200 to 500 remains are being found in these horrible deaths, dying in these horrible ways, wed think thats barbaric, said Kat Rodriguez, program director at the Coalicion de Derechos Humanos, which keeps statistics on such deaths. But the reality is, thats happening in the U.S. These people are dying, and theres a connection between these deaths and our policies, she said.
Indeed, the death rate which Ms. Rodriguez defines as the number of bodies found per 100,000 illegal immigrants caught by the Border Patrol has skyrocketed. In 2004, the Border Patrol apprehended 589,831 illegal immigrants in the two sectors that comprise Arizonas border with Mexico. That same year, Derechos Humanos reported 234 deaths, for a rate of about 40 deaths per 100,000 apprehensions. Last year, apprehensions in those two sectors dropped to 129,118 illegal immigrants. But 183 bodies were recovered, for a death rate of more than 140 per 100,000 apprehensions.
Calculating life and death
