Buzzby

Reported Border Forays Raise Hackles
Mexican soldiers allegedly involved
Hugh Dellios and Michael Martinez | Chicago Tribune | 01/27/2006

MEXICO CITY -- A confrontation between sheriff's deputies and uniformed drug traffickers along the Texas border has intensified concerns about forays into the U.S. by Mexican soldiers while heightening bilateral tensions over border violence.

U.S. officials are demanding that Mexico fully investigate an incident Monday in which several men wearing military-style uniforms and carrying military-style weapons helped suspected marijuana traffickers escape into Mexico.

Mexican officials deny that real Mexican soldiers were involved. But the incident has refocused attention on reports that Mexican military and police personnel have crossed onto U.S. territory at least 216 times in the past 10 years, along with concerns about how drug dealers may be obtaining Mexican army uniforms.

"It was no doubt that it was Mexican military, because I've seen them and I've dealt with them all my life down here," said Arvin West, sheriff of Hudspeth County, Texas, whose officers filmed Monday's incident using cameras he bought to back up his allegations.

West said his deputies have caught Mexican soldiers crossing the border "to buy Snickers." But he said Monday's clash was among the more serious incidents, in which soldiers helping drug smugglers "are sitting there waiting with their machine guns to make sure [the drugs] get back OK."

The U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Tony Garza, sent a diplomatic protest to the Mexican government Wednesday, demanding an explanation and questioning Mexico's commitment to combating violence along the border.

Local authorities in Texas and U.S. Border Patrol officials have been even more strident in their criticism, saying the incursions by Mexican soldiers are common and worrisome. They also have condemned federal officials for not taking the matter seriously enough.

In turn, Mexican officials have questioned the motives and timing behind the U.S. complaints. Some believe the incursion reports are being overblown by proponents of a bill in the U.S. Congress to build more border fences to keep out Mexican laborers. The U.S. Senate is scheduled to debate the measure next month.

Michael Chertoff, U.S. homeland security secretary, also characterized the reports as "overblown" and "scare tactics" last week. He said a number of incursions were "innocent" mistakes by Mexican soldiers who did not know they crossed the border, which is barely marked in more remote places.

While Mexico's Defense Ministry is investigating Monday's incident, a spokesman for President Vicente Fox asserted that the suspected soldiers were actually traffickers wearing fake uniforms. Foreign Ministry officials said the traffickers' equipment did not match that of local army units.

Mexico's complaint

Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez sent his own diplomatic complaint to Washington on Thursday, rejecting the U.S. ambassador's questioning of Mexico's anti-drug efforts. At a news conference, he suggested that the uniformed smugglers could have been Americans.

Yet for some Mexican analysts, the fact that drug traffickers can operate along the border in Mexican army uniforms, even if fake, raises questions.

"This is very serious, whether they were military or not, because someone should have detected them," said Jorge Chabat, an expert in border security and U.S.-Mexico relations.

Chabat and others noted that the military has been Mexico's primary instrument in combating drug trafficking.

The army is seen as less corrupt and less corruptible than Mexico's civilian law-enforcement agencies. But the army's role in The Drug War inevitably has made it more vulnerable to being corrupted, and there have been several cases of soldiers being arrested for colluding with drug runners.

Monday's border incident began when Texas authorities tried to stop three SUVs on an interstate highway near El Paso. The vehicles fled toward the border, where people in Mexican army-style uniforms with army-style weapons in an army-style Humvee appeared to be waiting for them on the other side of the Rio Grande.

Guns drawn

The state officers and sheriff's deputies had their guns drawn, as did the smugglers, but no shots were fired. More than 1,400 pounds of marijuana was found in one vehicle, which blew a tire and was abandoned on the Texas side, while the armed, uniformed men flanked a second vehicle stuck in the river while it was unloaded.

West, the county sheriff, said such incursions occur several times a month.

"I'm sick and tired of the federal government calling us liars," West said. "Just about every time we catch a big load [of marijuana], every time we chase them back, [Mexican soldiers] are there.

"They're sitting there with Humvees and state-of-the-art military equipment. We're sitting there with [patrol cars]. We're sitting there with limited high-powered rifles and sidearms versus machine guns."

Proponents of tighter border measures in the U.S. have complained for several years about Mexican army and police incursions. The number of incursions peaked at 40 in 2002, according to a U.S. Homeland Security report distributed by Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), who is lobbying for more controls on illegal immigration. Since then the number has dropped sharply; nine incidents were reported last year.

Five more incursions took place in the first quarter of this fiscal year, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday. Citing confidential Homeland Security records, the newspaper said the incidents have included five Tijuana police officers pursuing and shooting at two suspects over the border in 2004 and two men in Mexican army uniforms and carrying rifles in a creek bed north of the border near San Diego in October.

__________________