Border Issues: Mexico

Texas Congressman, Henry Cuellar, made a fool out of himself (Perhaps he was originally) when he cross examined two well known Generals and American heroes.  The Generals were hired to examine the potential threats coming from our Southern Border. The Texas Congressman obviously had a different agenda than finding out the facts and it was obvious that attacking the generals was easier than learning the truth.  Fox News last night aired the event and then discussed it with one of the American Generals. 

You have to sit through a 30 second commercial after clicking on the link below.

http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/on-the-record/2011/10/18/embarrassing-attack-two-generals-reporting-security-threat-us-mexico-border

TUCSON, Ariz. – During five incidents over the weekend, Tucson Sector Border Patrol agents seized approximately 2,900 pounds of marijuana worth an estimated $1.4 million.

A detection canine team working at the Border Patrol Interstate 19 checkpoint Saturday, alerted to the trunk of a vehicle during primary inspection. After the driver consented to a search of the trunk, agents found approximately 116 pounds of marijuana worth an estimated $58,000. The pot and vehicle were seized. The driver faces possible federal charges.

Ajo Station agents received information Saturday evening about a suspicious vehicle in the west desert.  An air crew from Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Air and Marine, along with Border Patrol agents, located an abandoned vehicle loaded with 1,312 pounds of marijuana worth an estimated $656,000. The vehicle was seized and the narcotics will be turned over to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Also on Saturday evening, Sonoita Station agents stopped a vehicle on State Route 82 found to be transporting 311 pounds of marijuana. The driver was taken into custody and may face federal charges. The vehicle and narcotics, worth approximately $155,500, were taken to the Ajo Station for processing.

Ajo agents responding to detection technology in the west desert yesterday located and seized 12 abandoned backpacks containing 562 pounds of marijuana valued at an estimated $281,000. The narcotics will be turned over to the DEA.

In another incident yesterday, an Ajo Border Patrol canine team following vehicle tracks in the west desert located an abandoned vehicle containing approximately 600 pounds of marijuana worth about $300,000. The vehicle and marijuana were taken to the Ajo Station for processing.

Transnational criminal organizations use a variety of methods in their attempts to conduct illegal activity. With the adequate deployment of proven technology, infrastructure and manpower, the Tucson Sector Border Patrol is significantly disrupting their efforts. Smuggling organizations often prefer to abandon their dope loads rather than risk being apprehended and prosecuted. 

Immigration crackdowns in Arizona and Alabama are succeeding in persuading illegal immigrants to voluntarily leave the country, the co-author of tough immigration laws in both of those states said Saturday.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, an ardent opponent of illegal immigration who has endorsed Mitt Romney, said jobs are opening up for Americans and school budgets flourishing thanks to tough new policies

“If you want to create a job for a U.S. citizen tomorrow, deport an illegal alien today,” Kobach said to boisterous applause at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Since Arizona passed the Legal Arizona Workers Act in 2007 requiring Arizona employers to use the E-Verify system, “people started self-deporting by the tens of thousands,” Kobach said.

He also argued that Arizona’s primary and secondary education system had seen a “surprise surplus” of almost $50 million.

“Why? Because so many had self-deported,” Kobach said.

He extended that argument to Alabama, where he said that in four months since a new tough illegal immigration policy was put in place, unemployment had dropped 1.9 percentage points in parts of the state where meat packing is a major industry.

Kobach did not offer any evidence demonstrating that either consequence had been the result of immigration policies, as opposed to any number of economic or other factors that could contribute to education budgets and the decision by immigrants to leave the country.

The idea of self-deportation, which Kobach said should properly be referred to as “attrition through enforcement,” has become a buzzword since Mitt Romney used it repeatedly in a January GOP presidential debate. He said that illegal immigrants shouldn’t be forcefully deported en masse, but encouraged to leave voluntarily through policies that denied them opportunities for employment.

Kobach is supporting Mitt Romney’s presidential bid and acting as an informal advisor on immigration issues, according to reports.

Kobach spoke at CPAC directly after Alex Nowrasteh, a policy analyst for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who was booed multiple times for arguing in favor of immigration and discussing its advantages.

Hezbollah, allied with cartels, are funding Muslim terrorists and more.

Are smuggler tunnels beneath this tranquil border park?

While Department of Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano was giving her State of the Department address January 30, Zachary Taylor was building courage to ‘blow the whistle’ about  how dangerous the Obama adminstration’s border policy is. Taylor stepped into the public arena for an interview with Glenn Beck. Much of that interview is available free on the web site of “The Blaze.” Here are some highlights.

Zachary Taylor, a former and longtime border agent, first wants the public to recognize that, based on his first-hand knowledge of the facts, the dominant media narrative is false. He says, “The main problem is that the American press is working in conjunction with the administration to keep the facts about what is happening in Mexico and Central America a secret. They are hiding it in plain sight; deception I would call it.”

He addresses a subject mentioned late last year in the Greeley Gazette; the cartels increasing their political influence by installing their candidates into Mexico’s state and national governments. Taylor put it this way, “Mexico has an insurgency on its hands — that is exactly what the problem is — and America will have the same problem as it makes it easier to get across the border.”

Taylor explained that drug cartel activity and terrorist activity are both international. This means that groups from around the world have become involved. Specifically he points to the known relationship between cartel tunnels used for smuggling and Shia militant group Hezabollah. The evidence, he points out, is seen in a world-wide video broadcast on MEMRI.TV in which Muslim cleric, Abdullah al-Nafisi, explains that there is no need for airplanes and planning, one man with the courage to carry a suitcase of anthrax through the tunnels from Mexico to the United States could kill 330,000 Americans in one hour.

Note: As of today February 09, 2012, the video was still available on the web with English sub-titles.

Taylor said that Hezbollah is allying with the drug and alien smuggling operations at the border to help finance  operations in the Middle East. And he believes that in the event of hostilities with Hezbollah’s benefactor — Iran — those networks could help make America’s WMD nightmare come true. “Get them close enough and effective enough, they [Hezbollah] could smuggle a Weapon of Mass Destruction into the United States,” he assured Glenn Beck.

Interagency turf wars have been well-documented by other federal whistle blowers. The rivalry between other Departments such as Interior’s Bureau of Land Management and the Border Patrol was also brought to light last fall when the Gazette reported that, according to agents in Arizona, Border Patrol agents were not permitted to enter those sections of the border under the jurisdiction of the BLM. Taylor pointed out the event when agents are in pursuit of suspected illegals, they can not continue pursuit into BLM jurisdiction without first obtaining authorization. As some of these preserves — which fall under the Department of the Interior — can stretch for nearly a hundred miles from the border, they are basically a smuggler’s paradise.

It is this type of policy that causes Taylor to believe, “The Obama administration is engaged in efforts to bureaucratically subvert border security for political gain.”

But, Taylor says, it is not just the border with Mexico where the U.S. is facing increasing risks. He reports, “…the Obama Administration is intentionally making it easier to illegally cross the northern border through bureaucratic obstacles. The National Forest Service, (Department of the Interior) does not allow unfettered access to Border Agents, and DHS is ceasing many transportation checkpoints along the border with Canada.”

According to an email update from “The Blaze,” when asked how this state of affairs could continue, or even be allowed to worsen, Taylor summarized his case bluntly. “This administration is trying to facilitate the entry of illegal aliens into the United States.”

Michael Braun, former Chief of Operations at the Drug Enforcement Agency, testified at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Feb. 2, 2012 that Iran’s influence in the Western Hemisphere reaches all the way to the U.S. border with Mexico.

The Iranian-supported Shi’ite terrorist group Hezbollah has spread its influence all the way to the U.S. border with Mexico, a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Iran’s influence in the Western Hemisphere heard on Thursday.

Michael Braun, a former chief of operations at the Drug Enforcement Agency, said Hezbollah had developed relationships with the powerful Mexican drug cartels to “move their agenda forward.” He cited a plot, recently uncovered by the DEA, involving an Iranian operative in Mexico allegedly planning to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, D.C.

“Hezbollah are absolute masters at forming close relationships with existing organized crime groups around the world that helps them facilitate what they need to do to move their agendas forward,” Braun told CNSNews.com following the hearing. “And if anyone thinks for a moment that they don’t have their eye on the southwest border and all of our country, then they couldn’t be more wrong.”

In his prepared remarks Braun, who also served as interim director of the Department of Justice’s Drug Intelligence Fusion Center, said Hezbollah and other terrorist groups understand that the Mexican cartels are already operating successfully inside the United States.

“If anyone thinks for one moment that these terrorist organizations do not understand that the Mexican drug trafficking cartels now dominate drug trafficking in our country – reportedly in more than 250 cities – than they are very stupid or very naive,” he said.

“And these groups most assuredly recognize the strategic value of exploiting that activity, and all that has been built to support it, for moving their vision forward in this part of the world.”

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the committee, said on Feb. 2, 2012, that Iran has changed it tactics to include planning attacks on the United States.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), chairwoman of the committee, cited Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force and its connections to the Zeta drug cartel in the foiled assassination attempt on U.S. soil.

She asked Braun whether he believed Iran had “strategic interests” in Central America and the southwest border.

Braun said Quds Force and Hezbollah work “very, very hard” to develop relationships with criminal groups that already have in place systems for illegal activities, including drug and human trafficking, money laundering and forged document operations.

“And by developing those relations it provides them with the ability to operate far from home in our neighborhood and – as I said earlier – on our doorstep,” he replied.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), committee member and chairman of the Homeland Security Committee’s subcommittee of oversight and investigations, asked about Hezbollah’s relationship to criminal organizations in the Western Hemisphere and what it means for U.S. security.

Braun warned that those relationships allow “these groups to operate freely in our neighborhood” and said the U.S. would regret it if the threats were not taken seriously.

“I don’t want to sound too crude, but I think there’s going to be hell to pay in the not too distant future,” he said.

For the most part the tone of the hearing was bipartisan in nature, with Democrats on the committee agreeing that Iran is trying to exert influence in the Western Hemisphere.

Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.) said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent trip to Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador and Nicaragua, is proof that Iran is “up to no good.”

But Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), ranking member of the committee, defended the Obama administration against claims that it is complacent about the threat Iran poses closer to home.

“Our government is fully attentive to this matter,” he said.

An expert witness testifying before the panel, Norman A. Bailey, called for Venezuela to be named a state sponsor of terrorism for “facilitating Iranian illicit activity,” noting among other things Iran’s role in the Venezuelan banking system.

“Responding to this threat requires the United States and allied governments to complicate Iranian access to the Americas, and penalize those involved in facilitating Tehran’s intrusion, said Bailey, who served in the Reagan administration’s National Security Council and later in the Office of the Director of Na­tional Intelligence, where he served as “mission manager” for Venezuela and Cuba.

“This includes measures such as the designation of certain Venezuelan banks and affiliates by the U.S. Treasury Department and other agencies for their role in facilitating Iranian illicit activity, and even the outright declaration of Venezuela as a state sponsor of terrorism – a move that would open the door for the U.S. to take more direct and punitive action against the Chavez regime for its collusion with both Iran and Hezbollah,” Bailey said.

Ros-Lehtinen recalled what Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said at a Senate hearing on Tuesday, focused on global threats to the U.S.

“[Clapper] stated this week, ‘Iranian officials – probably including supreme leader Ali Khamenei – have changed their calculus and are now willing to conduct an attack in the United States.’”

Ros-Lehtinen said Iran’s alliances in Latin America provide it with “a platform in the region to carry out attacks against the United States, our interests, and allies.”

The Mexican Government has stated that 70.1% of their country is under drug cartel control.  With that information, the US Department of State has issued a travel warning for citizens planning to travel in Mexico.  The warning describes the situations in all parts of Mexico but space doesn’t allow us to print it in its entirety.  Following is the general travel warning.  For specific areas and states please call 1-888-407-4747 or consult the State Department Internet Website.  If you have friends, family or relatives planning to travel into Mexico please alert them to this warning. 

REMEMBER, FIVE OUT OF SIX TIMES NOBODY GETS HURT PLAYING RUSSIAN ROULETTE.

February 08, 2012

The Department of State has issued this Travel Warning to inform U.S. citizens about the security situation in Mexico.  General information on the overall security situation is provided immediately below.  For information on security conditions in specific regions of Mexico, which can vary, travelers should reference the state-by-state assessments further below.

This Travel Warning supersedes the Travel Warning for Mexico dated April 22, 2011 to consolidate and update information about the security situation and to advise the public of additional restrictions on the travel of U.S. government (USG) personnel.

General Conditions:

Millions of U.S. citizens safely visit Mexico each year for study, tourism, and business, including more than 150,000 who cross the border every day.  The Mexican government makes a considerable effort to protect U.S. citizens and other visitors to major tourist destinations, and there is no evidence that Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) have targeted U.S. visitors and residents based on their nationality.  Resort areas and tourist destinations in Mexico generally do not see the levels of drug-related violence and crime reported in the border region and in areas along major trafficking routes.

Nevertheless, U.S. travelers should be aware that the Mexican government has been engaged in an extensive effort to counter TCOs which engage in narcotics trafficking and other unlawful activities throughout Mexico.  The TCOs 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. 

According to the most recent homicide figures published by the Mexican government, 47,515 people were killed in narcotics-related violence in Mexico between December 1, 2006 and September 30, 2011, with 12,903 narcotics-related homicides in the first nine months of 2011 alone.  While most of those killed in narcotics-related violence have been members of TCOs, innocent persons have also been killed.  The number of U.S. citizens reported to the Department of State as murdered in Mexico increased from 35 in 2007 to 120 in 2011. 

Gun battles between rival TCOs or with Mexican authorities have taken place in towns and cities in many parts of Mexico, especially in the border region.  Gun battles have occurred in broad daylight on streets and in other public venues, such as restaurants and clubs.  During some of these incidents, U.S. citizens have been trapped and temporarily prevented from leaving the area.  TCOs use stolen cars and trucks to create roadblocks on major thoroughfares, preventing the military and police from responding to criminal activity.  The location and timing of future armed engagements is unpredictable.  We recommend that you defer travel to the areas indicated in this Travel Warning and to exercise extreme caution when traveling throughout the northern border region.  

The rising number of kidnappings and disappearances throughout Mexico is of particular concern. Both local and expatriate communities have been victimized.  In addition, local police have been implicated in some of these incidents.  We strongly advise you to lower your profile and avoid displaying any evidence of wealth that might draw attention. 

Carjacking and highway robbery are serious problems in many parts of the border region and U.S. citizens have been murdered in such incidents.  Most victims who complied with carjackers at these checkpoints have reported that they were not physically harmed.  Incidents have occurred during the day and at night, and carjackers have used a variety of techniques, including bumping/moving vehicles to force them to stop and running vehicles off the road at high speeds.  There are some indications that criminals have particularly targeted newer and larger vehicles, especially dark-colored SUVs.  However, victims driving a variety of vehicles, from late model SUVs to old sedans have also been targeted.  While violent incidents have occurred at all hours of the day and night on both modern toll (“cuotas”) highways and on secondary roads, they have occurred most frequently at night and on isolated roads.  To reduce risk, we strongly urge you to travel between cities throughout Mexico only during daylight hours, to avoid isolated roads, and to use toll roads whenever possible.  The Mexican government has deployed federal police and military personnel throughout the country as part of its efforts to combat the TCOs.  U.S. citizens traveling on Mexican roads and highways may encounter government checkpoints, which are often staffed by military personnel or law enforcement personnel.  TCOs have erected their own unauthorized checkpoints, and killed or abducted motorists who have failed to stop at them.  You should cooperate at all checkpoints.

Effective July 15, 2010, the U.S. Mission in Mexico imposed restrictions on U.S. government employees’ travel. U.S. government employees and their families are not permitted to drive for personal reasons from the U.S.-Mexico border to or from the interior of Mexico or Central America.  Personal travel by vehicle is permitted between Hermosillo and Nogales but is restricted to daylight hours and the Highway 15 toll road (cuota). 

U.S. government personnel and their families are prohibited from personal travel to all areas described as “defer non-essential travel” and when travel for official purposes is essential it is conducted with extensive security precautions.  USG personnel and their families are allowed to travel for personal reasons to the areas where no advisory is in effect or where the advisory is to exercise caution.