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BROWNSVILLE — A new law enforcement bulletin warns that members of drug cartels have been overheard plotting to kill federal agents and Texas Rangers who guard the border, officials in Washington reported Thursday. The bulletin, which was issued in March, said cartel members planned to use AK-47 assault rifles to shoot agents and Rangers from across the border. It did not name the cartels. The information was released at a hearing before a panel of the House Committee on Homeland Security. The Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations and Management addressed “The U.S. Homeland Security Role in the Mexican War Against the...

Link only - Mexican unmanned drone crashes in backyard of El Paso home

WASHINGTON — South Texas lawmakers headed to Mexico Monday to meet President Felipe Calderón and discuss additional U.S. aid, including expanded intelligence sharing, to curb the rising threat of violence from narcotics cartels. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, and Rep. Rubén Hinojosa, D-Mercedes, were part of a U.S. congressional delegation to meet with Calderón and Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina about drug-fueled violence along the border. “It’s an alarm I’ve been ringing since 2005,” Cuellar said before leaving for Mexico City. “Violence has now spread out to other places.” Drug cartels are waging a turf war across Mexico. Last week, the...

A little-noticed Joint Forces Command study, The Joint Operating Environment: Challenges and Implications for the Future Joint Forces, has some interesting conclusions on Latin America and particularly Mexico. A tip of the hat to David Holiday of OSI for bringing it to my attention. While there have been several recent studies looking at future challenges, including the more heralded "Global Trends 2025" By the National Intelligence Council, this one actually tackles the issues of transnational crime and stateless areas. The NIC report in particular, was notably silent on the implications of failing states and criminal/terrorist pipelines. The JOE, as the...

Hey, how’s that $1.6 billion American-taxpayer-funded Merida Initiative to control crime and chaos in Mexico working out? Not so well. Not so well. A bad situation keeps getting worse: U.S. anti-kidnap expert kidnapped in Mexico Mexican gunmen have kidnapped a U.S. security consultant who negotiated the release of dozens of kidnap victims in Latin America. Gunmen abducted Felix Batista outside a restaurant last Wednesday in the relatively safe northern industrial city of Saltillo in Coahuila state, Mexican authorities and his employer, security consultancy ASI Global, said on Monday. Batista, a Miami-based Cuban American credited with negotiating the release of victims...

Appearing before Mexico's drug-fighting Federal Police, John McCain promised Thursday that as president, he would quickly implement a U.S. aid package to give the officers more helicopters, technology and training. Mr. McCain, visiting the federal force's new command center as he concluded a three-day trip to Colombia and Mexico, paid his condolences to the hundreds of officers who have died in the drug fight since President Felipe Calderón took office 19 months ago. Those deaths, Mr. McCain said, "will not be in vain." "I want to thank President Calderón and the people of Mexico for their efforts in making our...

WASHINGTON — Besieged Texas sheriffs have vowed to press the White House and Congress to deliver emergency assistance to law enforcement officers battling drug cartels along the Mexican border to match the $400 million on its way to Mexico. The sheriffs said they were frustrated that President Bush and Congress agreed to provide assistance to Mexico as part of the Merida Initiative, without offering additional federal help to their departments. The officers said they'd seek direct federal assistance, as well as changes in Department of Homeland Security restrictions to permit local law enforcement departments to use homeland security funds to...

Bad news: It’s not for America, but for Mexico and Central America. The Merida Initiative, which I have blogged about extensively (see here), passed earlier today by a 311-106 margin. Via CQ Politics: ------------------------------------------------------------------ The bill would authorize $595 million for fiscal 2008, $645 million for fiscal 2009 and $350 million for fiscal 2010. The Senate supplemental would provide $450 million for fiscal 2008; the House version would include $461.5 million. The administration had requested $550 million. Members cited Mexico’s increasingly violent drug war, which has taken some 6,000 lives in the last two years, including recent assassinations of two...

WASHINGTON — President Bush's attempt to win $560 million in aid this year to assist Mexico's anti-narcotics efforts has run into a rebellion from some Texas Republicans worried about corruption, inefficiency and now defections among Mexican police officials. Wednesday's disclosure that three Mexican police chiefs are seeking asylum in the United States prompted the Texans to push Thursday for congressional hearings on the bloody border war among Mexico's drug cartels and a reassessment of U.S. anti-drug assistance to the country. "Our first priority must be to secure our own border and equip our own personnel before we even discuss sending...

A reader asked me to check into information that President Bush was pushing a massive foreign-aid package to Mexico to help them secure their southern border against the flow of illegal aliens from Central America. “We can’t even get our own border straight, and we are going to provide Mexico with funding so they can solve their problem,” the reader fumed. “I doubt the Central Americans are staying very long in Mexico anyway. We know where they are going!” Too outrageously outrageous to be true? Well, I checked it out and it’s even worse than the reader described. Far...

Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff on Monday blamed tightened security on the U.S.-Mexico border for increased violence there, and he said the border probably will not be fully secured until 2011, three years after President Bush leaves office. "(Increased violence) is what typically happens when you start to enforce and make it harder to fight over the shrinking pie, so to speak, and who gets the best opportunity to exploit the additional space that's left," Chertoff said at a news conference at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection headquarters in Washington, D.C. on Monday. "That's a good sign," he...

Security chief stresses that funds would fight drugs in speech at Rice Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Thursday accused congressional critics of imperiling a "historic opportunity" by tinkering with a proposal to provide $500 million in aid to help Mexico combat heavily armed narco-traffickers menacing the U.S.-Mexico border. Chertoff indirectly addressed criticism raised by lawmakers — including Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas; Rep. Ted Poe, R-Humble; and Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin — during a wide-ranging, 48-minute address at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate have balked...

MEXICO CITY - The chief of Mexico's war on drug gangs said Washington should concentrate on halting the flow of arms to Mexican drug cartels rather than haggle over how much aid to give Mexico's anti-smuggling operation. Reacting to a vote by U.S. lawmakers to trim an aid package for the drug war, Mexico's deputy attorney general, Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, said an alternative would be to keep the cash in the United States and use it to curb illegal arms trafficking across the border. "Some of us were talking, remarking that, well, this (sum of money) is all very...