Vol. 73/No. 3      January 26, 2009

In a January 7 telephone interview Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the New York Times, “We completed a contingency plan for border violence, so if we did get a significant spillover, we have a surge—if I may use that word—capability to bring in not only our own assets but even to work with the Defense Department.”

According to the Times, unnamed officials of the Homeland Security Department said that “the plan called for aircraft, armored vehicles, and special teams to converge on border trouble spots, with the size of the force depending on the scale of the problem.” U.S. military forces would be called into action if Border Patrol cops and local and state police are unable to handle the operation. Chertoff said he told Arizona governor Janet Napolitano that “helping Mexico get control of its borders and its organized crime problems” is at the very top of the list of “national security” concerns. Napolitano is nominated by President-elect Barack Obama to be the next homeland security secretary,

Over the past few years warfare in Mexico between capitalist-run drug cartels and government troops has undermined the functioning of the government and torn apart the country’s social fabric. Mexico has the second-largest population and economy in Latin America. Several major cartels have been battling for control of the $40 billion annual drug trade, which represents almost 20 percent of all exports to the United States.

Drug-related killings have grown from 1,500 in 2005 to 2,700 in 2007 to more than 5,300 in 2008.

Drug capitalists have used their influence to put government officials—from local cops to high-ranking state and federal officials—on their payrolls. Over the past year the cartels killed 500 cops. In some towns, Mexican authorities have had to arrest the chief of police and the entire police force on corruption charges, reported the big-business U.S. intelligence agency Stratfor.

The Mexican government has mobilized some 45,000 federal cops and army troops to fight the drug lords in 17 Mexican states. This includes some 16,000 troops along the northern border, which for the most part have been ineffective. These troops, writes Stratfor, “face a similar situation that U.S. Marines confronted in Iraq’s Anbar province, where a frustrating game of ‘whack a mole’ became the prevailing coalition tactic. Even with U.S. cooperation, there are simply too few Mexican troops along the U.S.-Mexico border to comprehensively combat cartel activities inside Mexico.”

In March 2007 President George Bush pledged $1.4 billion in military aid to the Mexican government for anti-drug-trafficking operations. This includes equipment like scanners, helicopters, surveillance aircraft, drug detection dogs, and police training. Congress allocated $465 million of these funds last June. This month the U.S. government released another $99 million, with about $900 million more to be given to the Mexican government over the next two years.

In his interview with the Times, Chertoff said that bolstering the size of the Border Patrol cops and building a fence along nearly 700 miles of the Mexican border plays a dual role—reducing immigration of undocumented workers and for use against Mexico’s drug violence.

The federal border police is now more than 18,000—double the number of less than a decade ago. Fencing is up on 580 miles of Mexico’s 1,920-mile border with the United States.  
 
 
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