Violence in Mexico Spills Across US Border
By Eileen Sullivan
CNSNews.com
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.
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