[thoughtomator]

Did the Mexican army perform an armed raid into US territory to gain control of this truck? Sure reads like that.

[King Dopplepopolous]

It sounds like they DID cross the border, because i think that border officials would have the presence of mind not to cross in to mexico.

[wyattearp]

Did the Mexican army perform an armed raid into US territory to gain control of this truck?

The Rio Grande is the border. The river in between the banks is kinda like the 'neutral zone'. The northern bank is US territory, the southern bank is Mexican territory, but right smack dab in the middle is more of an 'either-or'. It sounds like the Mexican Army wanted the pot more than the BP did, and got a bit more creative in their method of retrieving it.

[Captain Rhino]

Depends on the status of the border within the river.

Within the United States, the rule is not to split a distinguishable terrain feature. For example, here in Virginia, county boundaries start and stop on river banks not at midstream. Similarly, for purposes of managing the Chesapeake watershed, Maryland controls the waters of the bay even where they are clearly off of the Virginia shore.

If the border between the United States and Mexico at that point runs down the middle of the river, then you probably had a situation where the rear half of the truck was in the United States and the front half in Mexico. I can see a situation where US Border Patrol agents are at the back of the truck unloading bales of marijuana as fast as they can while the smugglers and their Mexican army security force are hooking up the bulldozer at the front end of the truck. Extremely tense is probably an understatement as to how dangerous the situation was.

I hope US Border Patrol got photographs and videos of this. And I hope there are identifiable facial features in the images. The Mexican government needs to be brought to task over this.

We also need to modify the "Posse Comitatus" to allow the full scale use of the armed forces to curb these abuses of the border. (I'm thinking encounters with some BCTs from 4th ID would make the Mexican Army a little more mannerly.)