[South Texas:]Locals question border plan

Gov. Rick Perry’s latest plan to stomp out illegal activity along the border has all the hallmarks of an old Western movie:

The state’s elite team of cowboy-hat wearing law enforcers — the Texas Rangers.

And, in a modern twist, a few Texas National Guard troops thrown in for good measure.

The only problem, local leaders say, is that it ignores ongoing efforts to clamp down on border crime and fundamentally mischaracterizes life as it is now for the region’s residents.

“What does (Perry) think we’ve been doing down here for the past couple of years?” Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño said. “We’re all out there every day.”

During a news conference in Houston earlier this month, the governor announced he would send “Ranger Recon” teams to the state’s southern frontier to supplement enforcement efforts in high-crime, hightraffic areas.

Few details have been released so far on how many of the state’s 144 rangers will be assigned to the squads or where they will be deployed. The governor’s office said they are intended to work in conjunction with authorities in rural areas where farmers and ranchers have complained of increased smuggling activity. The proposal is fully funded out of the $110 million the state Legislature approved earlier this year for border security efforts.

The announcement comes eight months after Perry first asked President Barack Obama and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano for an infusion of 1,000 National Guard troops for the state’s 1,200-mile border with Mexico — a request that has since bogged down in squabbling over who will pay for their deployment.

“The drug cartels continue to battle the government, and each other, for dominance along that border,” Perry said Sept. 10. “And we begin to see incidents of spillover violence in our communities. We must protect our citizens, and we will protect our citizens no matter the cost. These teams are an essential part of that effort.”

Local law enforcement officers said they would be willing to work with whoever the governor decides to send, but they questioned the need to add another level of law enforcement and decried the Perry’s characterization of the border as a lawless no-man’s land.

As Mexico’s drug violence has escalated in recent years, dozens of state and federal initiatives have flooded the region with troopers and agents working in often overlapping operations with unclear goals and limited results.

The constant handwringing over “spillover violence” on the state and national level leaves outsiders with a view that life on Texas’ southern border is plagued by the daily threat of cartel attacks, when in fact crime rates have largely fallen in recent years in the state’s 16 border counties, said Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster, chairman of the Texas Border Coalition.

Comprised of border mayors, county executives and local economic development officials, the coalition advocates on behalf of communities along the Texas-Mexico border on issues that affect the quality of life in the region.

“While each of our communities has their own unique issues, being overwhelmed by criminal elements from Mexico is not one of them,” Foster said.

U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who is currently challenging the governor for his job in the 2010 Republican primary, characterized his latest border security plan as “yet another empty election-year promise from Rick Perry on border security.”

In 2005, Operation Linebacker funneled $10 million to border sheriffs’ offices to pay for overtime, equipment and border-centered initiatives. At the time, Perry was running for reelection to his second term.

Then, Operation Border Star — launched with $110 million authorized by state lawmakers — funded joint efforts by the Texas Department of Public Safety and local authorities in 2007.

But a series of audits and studies — conducted by groups ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union to the State Auditor’s Office — found that funds for both programs were actually used on routine law enforcement activities, in areas far from the border and for projects that left the rest of the state underpatrolled by state troopers.

Perry, meanwhile, maintains he will continue to seek solutions on his own until the Obama administration steps up to protect those living in the southernmost parts of Texas.

“Washington is shortchanging them, not giving them the support they need,” the governor said. “As a result, we’re having to dedicate our resources to deal with the challenges we have along the Texas-Mexico border and ensuing issues that porous border has created all across the state of Texas.”

Bigger than that.

Profits from the Mexican drug trade are estimated at about $35 billion a year. And since the cartels spend half to two-thirds of their income on bribery, that would be around $20 billion going into the pockets of police officers, army generals, judges, prosecutors and politicians. Last fall, Mexico’s attorney general announced that his former top drug enforcer, chief prosecutor Noe Ramirez Mandujano, was getting $450,000 a month under the table from the Sinaloa cartel. The cartel can of course afford to be generous — Sinaloa chief Joaquin GuzmA!n recently made the Forbes List of Billionaires.

The depth of GuzmA!n’s penetration into the United States was revealed a few weeks ago, when the DEA proudly announced hundreds of arrests all over the country in a major operation against the “dangerously powerful” Sinaloa cartel. One jarring detail was the admission that Mexican cartels are now operating in 230 cities inside the United States.

This disaster has been slowly unfolding since the early 1980s, when Vice President George H.W. Bush shut down the Caribbean cocaine pipeline between Colombia and Miami. The Colombians switched to the land route and began hiring Mexicans to deliver the goods across the U.S. border. But when the Mexicans got a glimpse of the truckloads of cash headed south, they decided that they didn’t need the Colombians at all. Today the Mexican cartels are full-service commercial organizations with their own suppliers, refineries and a distribution network that covers all of North America.

As we awaken to the threat spilling over our southern border, the reactions are predictable. In addition to walling off the border, Congress wants to send helicopters, military hardware and unmanned reconnaissance drones into the fray — and it wants the Pentagon to train Mexican troops in counterinsurgency tactics.

Our anti-drug warriors have apparently learned nothing from the past two decades. A few years ago we trained several units of the Mexican army in counterinsurgency warfare. They studied their lessons, then promptly deserted to form the Zetas, a thoroughly professional narco hit squad for the Gulf cartel, which offered considerably better pay. Over the past eight years, the Mexican army has had more than 100,000 deserters.

The president of Mexico rightly points out that U.S. policy is at the root of this nightmare. Not only did we invent the war on drugs, but we are the primary consumers.

The obvious solution is cutting the demand for drugs in the United States. Clearly, it would be the death of the cartels if we could simply dry up the market. Unfortunately, every effort to do this has met with resounding failure. But now that the Roaring ‘00s have hit the Crash of ‘09, the money has vanished once again, and we can no longer ignore the collateral damage of Prohibition II.

Here is a glimpse of what lies ahead if we fail to end our second attempt to control the personal habits of private citizens. Listen to Enrique Gomez Hurtado, a former high court judge from Colombia who still has shrapnel in his leg from a bomb sent to kill him by the infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar. In 1993, his country was a free-fire zone not unlike Mexico today, and Gomez issued this chilling — and prescient — warning to an international drug policy conference in Baltimore:

“The income of the drug barons is greater than the American defense budget. With this financial power they can suborn the institutions of the State, and if the State resists . . . they can purchase the firepower to outgun it. We are threatened with a return to the Dark Ages.”

What was learned by the Cartels in Miami was that anyone, and I mean anyone can be bought. People need not be bought by money...all you have to do is find out their desires and fears and you know their price. Enough money can “arrange” possibilities and in some cases one does not ever even realize he has been bought.

I salute all the brave Columbian Judges and cops who survived the U.S. drug war in their country. Many of whom retired to Malibu, Palm Beach and Hilton Head.

The income of the drug barons is greater than the American defense budget.

I have serious doubts about this. The US defense budget is around $500b. Income is revenues minus expenses. It is estimated that worldwide drug revenues are $400b a year. How can drug baron income be $500b on a revenue base of $400b? Colombia has a military budget of $2.5b. If Colombian drug lords had $4b a year in income, they would be running Colombia today, not the democratically-elected government. I'm not fully convinced of the wisdom of drug prohibition, but clamping down on supply in-country isn't impossible - it's done in most of the Far East by imposing the death penalty on individuals caught with dealer amounts of narcotics (typically 10 doses or more). Probably 1/3 of the people I know stateside have tried pot. My Far Eastern acquaintances are always very surprised when I say that all of our presidential candidates from Clinton onwards have tried or consumed illegal drugs. Over there, drugs are mainly a fringe phenomenon with some showbiz personality participation. This means their governments' policies are working in terms of curbing in-country supply.

This means their governments' policies are working in terms of curbing in-country supply.

Perhaps..but the Asian Cartels are the most violent and extreme of them all worse even then the Mexican Cartels...Look at the changing policies toward the U.S. drug war in Peru. Other countries are trying to move away from the militant approach to the problem. Mexico has even relaxed its domestic drug laws

No...with the drug war now on our overland border the drugs and violence will continue to come with it and Law Enforcement will be facing a well paid, well trained horde of hit squads and bribers. They will get the drug war they want. But I'll tell you this...The U.S. public will never stand for it...and at this point reputable polls show that over 50% of Americans believe that the main cause of the drug war(cannabis)shouldn't even be illegal.

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