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http://www.gopusa.com/news/2008/may/0514_mexican_violence.shtml
Violence in Mexico spills across US border
By EILEEN SULLIVAN
Associated Press
May 14, 2008
WA****NGTON (AP) -- Three Mexican police chiefs have requested political
asylum
in the U.S. as violence escalates in the Mexican drug wars and spills
across
the U.S. border, a top Homeland Security official told The Associated
Press.
In the past few months, the police officials have shown up at the U.S.
border,
fearing for their lives, according to Jayson Ahern, the deputy
commissioner of
Customs and Border Protection.
''They're basically abandoned by their police officers or police
departments
in many cases,'' Ahern told AP.
Ahern said the Mexican officials -- whom he didn't name -- are being
interviewed and their cases are under review for possible asylum.
In the most recent high-level assassination, a top-ranking official on a
local
Mexican police force was shot more than 50 times and killed. Drug-related
violence killed more than 2,500 people last year alone in Mexico.
''It's almost like a military fight,'' Ahern said Tuesday. ''I don't think
that generally the American public has any sense of the level of violence
that
occurs on the border.''
As the cartels fight for territory, this carnage spills over to the U.S.,
Ahern said -- from bullet-ridden people stumbling into U.S. territory, to
rounds of ammunition coming across U.S. entry ****ts.
U.S. humvees retrofitted with steel mesh over the glass windows patrol
parts
of the border to protect agents against guns shots and large rocks
regularly
thrown at them. At times agents are pinned down by sniper fire as people
try
to illegally cross into the U.S.
Mexico's drug cartels have long divided the border, with each controlling
key
cities. But over the past decade Mexico has arrested or killed many of the
gangs' top leaders, creating a power vacuum and throwing lucrative drug
routes
up for the taking.
President Felipe Calderon, who took office in December 2006, responded by
deploying more than 24,000 soldiers and federal police to areas where the
government had lost control. Cartels have reacted with unprecedented
violence,
beheading police and killing soldiers.
In general, violence along the U.S. border has gone up over the years.
Seven
frontline border agents were killed in 2007, and two so far in 2008.
Assaults
against officers have also shot up from 335 in fiscal 2001 to 987 in
fiscal
2007.
There have been 362 assaults against officers during the first four months
of
2008, according to Border Patrol statistics. The pattern has been that
when
more security resources are deployed along the U.S. border, violence
against
officers spike in response.
Most assaults are along the San Diego and Calexico, Calif., border, as
well as
the Arizona border near Yuma and south of Tucson.
Now, about 14,000 U.S. border agents work on the southern border, up from
more
than 9,000 in 2001.
The Bush administration has requested $500 million to fight drug crime in
Mexico. Congress is currently considering the proposal.
2008 Associated Press.
2000-2008, GOPUSA.com
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