Enforcement efforts outgunned by cartels at the Mexican border

October 17, 2006

Enforcement efforts at the U.S.-Mexico border by the U.S. Border Patrol and other law enforcement agencies are outgunned by increasingly ruthless and well-armed Mexican drug cartels, a congressional report concludes.

The House Homeland Security oversight subcommittee report said "The cartels use automatic assault weapons, bazookas, grenade launchers and improvised explosive devices, while U.S. Border Patrol agents are issued 40-caliber Beretta semiautomatic pistols.

In addition, drug cartels are able to break the encryptions on Border Patrol and sheriffs' deputies' radios, with "Lookouts for the cartels, using military grade equipment, positioned at strategic points on the U.S. side of the border to monitor movements of U.S. law enforcement," the report said.

Traffickers  are expanding their routes to smuggle immigrants into the United States and are forming dangerous alliances with U.S.-based criminal gangs such as MS-13 and the Latin Kings, according to the congressional panel.

U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, chair of the subcommittee and a former federal prosecutor, expressed concern that trafficking networks could use the delivery routes to smuggle terrorists or weapons of mass destruction into the U.S. Hezbollah members already have entered the U.S. from Mexico, the report confirmed.

"As if narco-terrorist violence were not enough, extensions of Middle East terrorism have crept into the United States," the report stated. "Islamic radical groups that support Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamiya Al Gamat are all active in Latin America."

McCaul said he commissioned the report to bring focus to the national security threat and rising violence at the border, which has witnessed a spree of murders and kidnappings linked to warring drug cartels, particularly in Nuevo Laredo.

The federal government has added Border Patrol agents, detention beds and high-tech surveillance systems to deter illegal crossings, he said, with less attention to the border's other problems.

"We put billions of dollars in trying to stop the flow coming in, in a more reactive way, and what I'm suggesting is we also need to take a look at the other piece of this problem and identify what is the root cause and attack the root cause head on," he said.

"In my view, the head of the snake is the cartels." McCaul urged better intelligence gathering in Mexico and Latin America. And he called for greater cooperation with the Mexican government to crack down on the cartels.

Still, he acknowledged that expanding the partnership is difficult  in light of persistent corruption in Mexican law enforcement ranks and the deadly attacks the cartels have launched on Mexican authorities.

The report said as many as 10 million illegal immigrants may have entered the U.S. last year. Estimates by the Pew Hispanic Center and other experts have pegged the illegal immigrant population in the U.S. at 11 million to 12 million.

And while federal law enforcement seized 1.1 million pounds of cocaine and 6.8 million pounds of marijuana, McCaul's staff estimated the total cocaine flow may have topped 11 million pounds.

"While the United States has taken positive steps to secure its borders, much more is needed to combat an increasingly powerful, sophisticated, organized and violent criminal network which seeks to move illegal contraband ... into our country for profit," the report concludes