Thread: Spillover Violence From Mexico: Trickle Or Flood?

'Spillover' Violence From Mexico: Trickle Or Flood?

The Obama administration asserts that as a result of its two-year Southwest Border Initiative, the southern boundary has never been more secure. But Texas state officials and some border ranchers disagree; they've been saying that the violence in Mexico is spilling over and the president is not protecting the homeland. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano weighed in earlier this year.

"It is inaccurate to state, as too many have, that the United States side of the border is overrun with violence or out of control," she said.

Vickers is a veterinarian, cattleman and agitator. For at least six years, he's been telling anyone who'll listen that the border remains porous. His ranch straddles a busy smuggling corridor in Brooks County, 70 miles north of the Rio Grande. He says he frequently finds the bodies of immigrants who were abandoned by their smugglers, and perished in these hot, dry, thorny pastures.

Some double speak:

The challenge is how to define spillover violence. The federal government says spillover must be drug-related violence that targets innocent civilians or law enforcement on U.S. soil.

But others think that's too narrow. They think spillover should include any trafficker-on-trafficker violence in the U.S. that originates with Mexican organized crime.
El Paso has had incidents. Twice, bullets from shootouts in Juarez flew across the Rio Grande and struck public buildings in El Paso. And in 2009, a trafficker who lives in Horizon City, Texas, a suburb of El Paso, lost his shipment to Border Patrol agents. Afterwards, cartel hitmen kidnapped him from his home, took him to Juarez, and executed him. El Paso Mayor John Cook acknowledges that this was spillover violence, but he says this type of crime is rare.
"This drug war now has lasted for three years, and you have one case of spillover violence that we can clearly identify in a city of 800,000 people," Cook says.

And then later:

The Texas Department of Public Safety — which says spillover violence is plaguing South Texas — reports that in the first five months of 2011, there were 22 murders, 24 assaults, 15 shootings and five kidnappings. And a third of them occurred in Sheriff Trevino's county of Hidalgo.

"The question you should be asking me is this: Is the border under control? No, it's not. Because if it was under control, it would be completely sealed, there would be absolutely no smuggling whatsoever either north or southbound," Trevino says.

I think the reality is that drug cartel violence coming up from Mexico has become so common place for so long that it is just accepted as the norm.

What I wish people would see is that there is a connection between immigration and the cartels. You cut off immigration, deport the Mexicans back to Mexico, and you just ended the drug war. On the other hand, if you continue to help people come over the border, make illegals into legal immigrants, keep the borders porous, and give the border patrol bean bag guns up against Uzis, well now you have a very expensive and bloody drug war.

Originally Posted by njlawrence

I think this was done on purpose to pass stricter gun laws. The ATF made gun shops sell guns to suspicious people under the guise of 'sting operation', but by the time that story reaches Washington, it's "Gun shops sell AK47s to drug dealers. Let's make it more difficult to buy weapons legally."

I like your signature by the way.

Yes! and this back fired BIG TIME, Mexico is demanding the American officials be arrested and brought to trial in Mexico for this debackle.
U.S. Officials Behind 'Fast and Furious' Gun Sales Should Be Tried in Mexico, Lawmaker Says

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/07...#ixzz1RZXlgLhm