Border Patrol union says agents shot at during confrontation at Otay Mesa (San Diego, CA)
U.S. Officials close case saying agents lack proof about gunshots
By Joe Cantlupe
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE
November 3, 2000
WASHINGTON – As in most incidents in which Border Patrol agents and Mexican soldiers cross paths at the border, confusion has blurred the circumstances surrounding a confrontation near Otay Mesa that one top U.S. official termed nearly "catastrophic."
The union representing the Border Patrol agents in San Diego said two agents were shot at on Oct. 24 by a group of 10 armed Mexican soldiers, some of whom had surrounded them after crossing into the United States.
Despite the union's demands for an investigation, Border Patrol and Mexican officials have closed the books on the case. Officials say there was no evidence that shots were fired.
"This is a classic "he said, he said" situation," said Virginia Kice, a spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service western region. "We may never know exactly what happened. What's important is that we work closely with Mexico to safeguard against any incidents in the future."
In a year highlighted by several tense confrontations between U.S. and Mexican law enforcement agencies, the latest incident occurred near one of the most desolate areas near the border.
The incident unfolded the morning of Oct. 24 when two members of the Border Patrol's mobile air unit crossed paths with a group of 10 uniformed Mexicans who walked north of the border near Copper Canyon, haphazardly marked with some barbed wire fences, officials said.
At one point, the U.S. agents heard gunshots, possibly in Mexican territory, and radioed for help. Eventually, the group of Mexicans talked with the U.S. officials and then the men with rifles went back to Mexico after the Border Patrol agents identified themselves, Border Patrol officials said.
The Mexican soldiers were part of an anti-drug mission and did not cross into U.S. territory, according to Mexican authorities.
But internal memos written by Border patrol agents involved in the incident portray a tense encounter that straddled both sides of the border.
One agent wrote that eight shots were fired by the Mexicans in the "direction" of the U.S. agents. The U.S. agents also wrote that the Mexicans repeatedly had taken aggressive positions, aiming their weapons at them, and ignoring the agents' orders, the memos said.
"These persons had crossed the international boundary fence and had positioned themselves on high ground with one of their rifles pointed directly at us," wrote one U.S. agent, noting several of the Mexicans apparently had taken a "sniper deployment" position.
"The (INS) is making an attempt to minimize the incident and the danger for some unknown reason," said Keith Weeks, vice president of the union. The agents "did feel their lives were in danger," Weeks said.
No agent was injured.
William T. Veal, chief of the Border Patrol's San Diego sector denied that officials downplayed the incident.
"I'm concerned about the incident," Veal said. "It certainly had the potential to be catastrophic. I'm proud of the high degree of restraint exercised by the Border Patrol agents."
Veal said he questioned Border Patrol supervisors who interviewed the agents. He did not question them personally.
"The officers heard what they thought were shots but they did not see these people actually discharge their weapons," Veal said. "We don't have direct evidence that shots were fired at our officers."
The Mexican Army has strayed into U.S. territory more than 60 times between 1995 and 1999, according to Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon.
In March, the most controversial incursion occurred near El Paso when a group of Mexican soldiers on an anti-drug mission in Humvees stormed through a border fence and chased and fired on several Border Patrol agents.
That case also was rife with inconsistent statements, reports show.
In San Diego, Veal said Mexican and American officials have established a protocol in an effort to avoid any mistaken incursions across the border. Under the program, officials share maps and establish radio contract with certain agencies, Veal said.
Apparently, the Mexican unit involved in the Otay Mesa incident was not part of the agreement, he said.
Copyright 2000 Copley
News Service
Border agent survives being shot in back
Attack reportedly came from area in Mexico
By Gregory Alan Gross
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
August 17, 2000
CALEXICO, CA -- A Border Patrol agent was shot in the back early yesterday morning while working along the U.S.-Mexico border near the New River, but he escaped serious injury when his bulletproof vest stopped the bullet.
The shot is believed to have come from the Mexican side of the border, from a neighborhood notorious for attacks on agents, said Manuel Figueroa, a Border Patrol spokesman in El Centro.
The FBI is investigating the incident, Figueroa said.
At the Border Patrol's request, municipal police in neighboring Mexicali, just across the border from Calexico, swept Colonia Baja California, the area where the shot was thought to have been fired. But no trace of a gunman was found.
"We've had agents walking around, going to houses to look for cartridges and climbing on roofs, and asking neighbors if they saw anything," said Jesús Enrique Badilla Jiménez, U.S.-Mexico liaison officer with the Mexicali police.
The unidentified agent, 27, was checking generators that power the Border Patrol's portable lights along the border fence when he was hit, Figueroa said.
"He felt something hit him in the back. His back was facing toward the (border) fence. He thought he'd been hit with something like a ball bearing or a marble."
After leaving the area, the agent checked his vest and found a small hole in the upper left side. "He also found a fragment in there of what looks like a small-caliber round," Figueroa said.
The agent, who has less than three years with the Border Patrol, suffered a bruise on his left shoulder, but was otherwise unhurt, the spokesman said. He did not see who fired the shot, Figueroa said.
Neither the Border Patrol nor Mexicali police were surprised that the attack came from Colonia Baja California. "Agents have been having rocks thrown at them forever from out of there," Figueroa said.
Colonia Baja California stretches along the border about a mile west of the New River, after the river crosses the border and begins to make its way north.
It's the point at which illegal immigrants enter the highly contaminated river to float northward into U.S. territory. It's also a rough-and-tumble neighborhood where people build their own homes and improvisation is a way of life.
When the Border Patrol began replacing the chain-link fencing along a two-mile stretch of the border in March 1997, area residents brought out their own cutting torches and power tools to cut down the old fence and haul it off to reuse for themselves, within a matter of days.
"We're trying to have a sense of humor about this," one Border Patrol supervisor said at the time.
But there's nothing funny about the traffickers of both narcotics and immigrants who operate in Colonia Baja California, in large numbers and at virtually all hours.
"It's a low-income place," Mexicali police officer Badilla said. "It's a place where you have polleros (migrant smugglers) and people selling drugs . . . and they want to discourage the Border Patrol from working in their area."
Attacks on Border Patrol agents from Colonia Baja California have escalated in recent months, authorities on both sides of the border said.
"In addition to the rockings that we've always had, we've started having agents hit by ball bearings fired from slingshots," Figueroa said. "Armed encounters, confrontations with agents -- it's a pretty bad area.
"About half the shots we've had fired at us in the last year came out of there."
Mexicali's Badilla recalled yet another type of attack on a Border Patrol agent from the neighborhood.
"There was an incident three or four months ago in which someone threw a bottle with gasoline at an agent, but he was OK, and I think Mexicali police caught the guy," Badilla said.
As a result of this and other recent attacks, the Border Patrol is strongly urging its agents to wear their bulletproof vests while on duty, Figueroa said. Although the patrol provides vests for all its agents, it does not require agents to wear them.
"Luckily, this guy was wearing his," he said of the agent who was shot. "He always wears his. But they can choose to wear it or not wear it. It's a personal call."
Copyright 2000 The San
Diego Union-Tribune
Time Magazine
Time bomb on the Mexico border
August 2000
DOUGLAS, AZ - A few years back, when Mexicans would stagger out of the desert onto Helen Hoffman's cattle ranch, her family would set up a card table for the parched visitors and give them gallons of water, grub and maybe a few days' work. But not anymore. Every morning now, when her husband Robert checks the cattle on their 500-acre spread near the border at Douglas, Ariz., he sees "heads poppin' up all over in the mesquite bushes," says Helen. Several times, bands of illegal immigrants tried to steal their pick-up and break into the Hoffmans' house under the tall cottonwoods.
A few nights ago, Robert, 84, had settled in front of the TV when he had the prickly sensation that somebody was watching him. He looked up and saw four pairs of eyes staring through the window. It took a while for Robert, who is still recovering from a triple coronary bypass, to fetch the shotgun now kept by the door, and by that time, the prowlers had vanished. Since then, Helen seldom ventures into the yard, even in daylight, without her 9-mm pistol. "I'm no racist. Why, I have a Mexican daughter-in-law," says Helen, 78, a stocky woman with the tenacity of a snapping turtle. "But we have a major invasion happening in this country, and nobody seems to give a damn."
This anger against the growing flood of 1 million illegal immigrants a year is rising fast among independent-spirited, gun-toting residents in the borderlands of Arizona, Texas and New Mexico. Over the past three years, the number of illegals streaming across the border has remained constant. They come from Mexico, where a third of the people live on $2 a day or less, and from other countries where poverty, national disasters and political upheaval unleash an exodus of refugees. Since the early 1990s, the border patrol has partly sealed the California frontier with its operations "Hold the Line" and "Gatekeeper." But they did not deter the illegal immigrants and their "coyote" smugglers for long. Instead, the crackdown has driven them into the Southwestern deserts, where much of the land adjacent to the unfenced U.S.-Mexican border is privately owned by ranchers and rural residents. It is these people, like the Hoffmans, who are on the front line of the Clinton Administration's losing battle to secure America's southern frontier.
For many Americans who believe citizens have the right to defend their property and privacy with firearms, these ranchers are true patriots, doing a job the government is too weak-kneed to carry out. Ranchers such as Roger Barnett from Douglas, who boasts of capturing illegals on his property--his record is 170 in a day--have become the heroes of anti-immigration activists around the country. Such groups as the American Patrol and the California Coalition for Immigration Reform often liken the ranchers in their literature to the Minutemen of the American Revolution.
But that propaganda can also carry a nasty edge. Flyers circulated in Douglas by an "R.U.A. Freeman" offer volunteers a chance to join in "ole western individualism" and help ranchers nab aliens. Envoys from the Ku Klux Klan put in an appearance last month at a town meeting in Sierra Vista, Ariz., hoping to offer solidarity but were chased off by locals who don't want their cause, which they see as a pragmatic one, tainted by zealots and adventurers who seem to want to hunt down poor Mexican families for sport. "I get three or four calls a week from volunteers--damned if a lot of 'em aren't women--from all over the country," says Barnett, 57, a rugged, athletic man in blue jeans. "But I tell 'em they'd do better by writing to their Congressmen."
Not surprisingly, the ranchers' militancy is provoking a Mexican backlash. Two weeks ago, Carlos Ibarra Perez, a retired oil worker in Reynosa, across the line from Texas, announced a $10,000 reward for the first person who kills a U.S. border-patrol agent. In the ensuing uproar, Ibarra withdrew his bounty, but it shows the depth of hostility growing between the U.S. and its neighbor.
This "red alert" issue, as the Mexicans see it, was raised in Washington talks last Friday between Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon and President Clinton. Both men agreed to tighten their side of the common border. Says Mexico's Foreign Secretary Rosario Green: "This is racist behavior that violates all international rules."
The conflict is becoming deadly. So far this year, three immigrants have been killed and seven others have been wounded in showdowns on the U.S. side of the border. Violence has come as the days get warmer. On May 14, Mexican Eusebio de Haro, 22, was shot in the groin and left bleeding to death after he and a companion approached a rancher near Bracketville, Texas, pleading for a drink of water. Near the Arizona border town of Sasabe, Miguel Angel Palafox, 20, had eluded the border patrol on May 21 and was heading north through hills covered with saguaro cactus--his dream was to reach Phoenix--when he was spotted by two horsemen dressed in black. One of them pulled out a rifle and shot Palafox in the neck. The youth wrapped his shirt around the wound and crawled back to Mexico in 115 degree F heat. "I thought I was going to die in the desert. There wasn't a single tree for shade," says Palafox. Once across the Mexican border, Palafox dragged himself another mile before reaching a farmhouse, where he got help. The two riders have yet to be found.
Along the 80-mile stretch of border in Arizona's Cochise County, there have been 25 incidents since April 1999 in which armed private citizens rounded up dozens of suspected illegals. Most of these actions involved rancher Barnett and his brother Donald, 54, who patrol a 22,000-acre spread about four miles from the Mexican border. It's mesquite country, with sparse grass and sandy creeks that are perfect trails for the coyotes and their clients, who pay $800 apiece to reach Phoenix, $1,500 to Chicago. Along the way, says Roger Barnett, they cut fences and let out cattle, deliberately break water pumps and litter the pasture with garbage that chokes the cattle. Sometimes the coyotes and drug smugglers crossing through are armed. "Out here," says Cochise County sheriff Larry Dever, "any rancher would be a fool who isn't prepared to defend himself." But the sheriff insists that so far, no "vigilante action" against the illegals has taken place in Cochise.
With his binoculars, an M-16 automatic rifle and his sheepdog Mikey, Barnett sometimes tracks a group of illegals for miles, following their footprints in the sand and bits of clothing snagged on the mesquite thorns. In the summer it's harder for his dog to track them; the incandescent heat sears away their scent. "They move across the desert like a centipede, 40 or 50 people at a time," says Barnett. Once he catches them, Barnett radios the border patrol to cart them off his land. "You always get one or two that are defiant," says Barnett, who chuckles, remembering an incident a few weeks back. "One fellow tried to get up and walk away, saying we're not Immigration. So I slammed him back down and took his photo. 'Why'd you do that?' the illegal says, all surprised. 'Because we want you to go home with a before picture and an after picture--that is, after we beat the s___ outta you.' You can bet he started behavin' then."
Such antics have made Barnett a lot of enemies on both sides of the border. He is demonized as a vigilante bogeyman by the Mexican press, threatened with criminal charges by Hispanic human-rights groups in Tucson, Ariz. And the U.S. Attorney's office in Tucson is keeping a file open on Barnett for possible prosecution, according to police sources. Barnett has to watch his step in other ways too. Across the border in Agua Prieta, a dusty boomtown of cheap hotels, cantinas and shops specializing in plastic water jugs and can openers for the illegals' desert odyssey, Barnett is considered bad for business. More than 1.2 million illegals--Mexicans, Central Americans, Chinese and a smattering of Europeans--poured through here last year. Yet during May and June, the number of aliens wanting to cross has fallen considerably, and some coyotes think this may be Barnett's fault; his notoriety has spread throughout Mexico. As a result, many illegals are heading west, to Nogales, Ariz. In the Azueta plaza where the coyotes meet their pollos (chickens), the smugglers say a bounty has been put on Barnett's head. Barnett was warned of these threats by the Cochise sheriff but says, "I'll just watch my back and keep doin' what I think is right."
In Tucson, border patrol officials predict that the number of apprehensions this year will beat last year's record high of 470,000. Still, for every illegal who is caught, at least two others slip through to jobs in the U.S. that nobody else wants, as meatpackers, fruit pickers, gardeners and motel chambermaids. Even feisty ranchers like Barnett admit that one way of keeping trespassers off his land is to legalize entry to more immigrants. "If we decide we need them for jobs, it should be through a legal port of entry--not across my land," he says.
The other option, one favored by 89% of Arizona residents, according to a recent poll, is to enlist the military's help in patrolling the border. But Douglas Mayor Ray Borane thinks this would raise tensions between the U.S. and Mexico and lead to more deaths. "Do we really need troops down here to fight ladies coming through with infants in their arms?" he asks. The U.S. military is barred by a post-Civil War law from taking on civilian law-enforcement duties except in a national emergency. Unless Washington lawmakers decide either to get tougher with illegal immigration or to fill the labor force by opening the frontier gates a little wider, the U.S. ranchers will keep up their rough sport with their unwanted trespassers.
TIM MCGIRK - DOUGLAS, AZ
Copyright © 2000 Time Inc.
This article has good overall
content. I have the following problems with it however: The invasion numbers
quoted are grossly incorrect and are actually far higher and increasing.
The accusation of the illegal alien being robbed in the U.S. by 'two horsemen
dressed in black' is most likely false because the vast majority of illegal
aliens are robbed in Mexico by Mexicans. And I find it difficult to believe
that rancher Roger Barnett (a former deputy sheriff) used either the language
quoted or the threat quoted, 'Because we want you to go home with a before
picture and an after picture--that is, after we beat the s___ outta you.'
And the ranchers I know are NOT against LEGAL immigration, but ARE against
nightly trespassing, smuggling, theft, littering, vandalism, and harassment
of their lands, buildings, livestock, vehicles, and families. - Website
author.
NAFTA's bittersweet boom
More jobs at lower pay; or why the triple border fence must be built*
By Diane Lindquist
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
July 31, 2000
LA JOYA, Jalisco, Mexico -- For more than a half-century, Jalisco's rural youth had little choice but to head north and sneak across the border into the United States for work. Jalisco's rural youth have, and always have had, a choice to stay home in Mexico and not break U.S. immigration or smuggling laws.
But then came the North American Free Trade Agreement and the promise of jobs at home.
"With NAFTA we will export goods, not people," Carlos Salinas de Gortari said when he was Mexico's president. In 1994 Carlos Salinas de Gortari fled Mexico with millions of dollars (some say billions) for exile to the U.S., and later to Ireland. Salinas' brother Raul is now serving 27 years in jail for masterminding a 1994 political assassination and is also facing charges of embezzling millions of dollars.
In Jalisco, the state that has sent more undocumented workers to the United States than any other, only half of NAFTA's promise has come true.
Exports have increased 500 percent, and the state now ranks second in generating jobs. But young people still leave to work in the United States.
They leave partly because of money. Wages in the United States remain about eight times higher than in Mexico. This article later says 12 times higher - See below.
They also are driven by tradition. Migration has become so ingrained in the region's rural culture that, for young men, the trek north represents a rite of passage.
The exodus of Jalisco's youth, coupled with the state's job boom, has created what some people thought they never would see here: a labor shortage.
"If they have good eyesight, hands and legs, we'll hire them," said Hung Chee Loh, manager of NatSteel, which makes a variety of high-tech products in Guadalajara.
Searching for workers
An hour's drive east in Zapotlanejo, the clothing center of western Mexico, job candidates are in such short supply that Héctor Alvarez, owner of Industrias Espuela de Oro, put auxiliary sewing plants in two villages. He also farms out home work to fill U.S., Asian and European demand for his western-style shirts and slacks.
Even farm workers are at a premium. So few local men are available to harvest crops that women and children are moving into the fields, along with migrants from Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas.
"NAFTA showed it's very easy to oversell the speed at which development can happen," said Philip Martin, chairman of Migration Dialogue, an organization of international migration experts.
President-elect Vicente Fox has vowed to stop the labor outflow by creating better-paying jobs at home. That is a daunting task.
If anything, NAFTA has proven that changing the decades-old pattern of cross-border movement will be more difficult than it once seemed.
"In coming years, the scenario will be radically different. Anything could happen," said Augustín Escobar, a migration researcher at Guadalajara's CIESAS institute.
Model of prosperity
NAFTA's successes and failures are especially vivid in Jalisco, a west-central Mexican state of 6 million best known for its tequila, mariachi music and the flashy horsemanship of its charros.
The state's economy was in shambles even before the 1994 peso devaluation and the recession that followed. But in 1995, a newly elected state government -- led by the party of president-elect Fox -- used NAFTA's favorable trade and investment provisions to spur growth.
"We selected the right areas of business and the right way to do it, and our timing was right," said Sergio García de Alba, the state's economic development secretary.
As a result, Jalisco has been transformed into the model of a prosperous, modern, new Mexico.
In the last five years, more than 324,000 jobs were added, and companies keep generating more. The state now creates one of every 10 new positions in Mexico.
U.S. and Asian technology manufacturers, using NAFTA to import machinery and materials duty-free, have turned Guadalajara, a city of 1.6 million people, into Mexico's Silicon Valley.
Huge, flat factories are decked with permanent banners advertising for workers to assemble Motorola cellular phones, Dell computers, Hewlett-Packard printers and other technology gear shipped daily to consumers across North America.
Guadalajara's labor market is so tight that Jabil Circuits of St. Petersburg, Fla., recently decided against expanding there. It will open its next plant in Chihuahua.
Garment manufacturers in Zapotlanejo,
a city of 70,000, compete furiously for cutters and sewers for their factories
and for sales clerks at the scores of apparel shops that line the city's
main streets.
|
|
'A better life'
Salvador Placéncia, 18, is among the many young people turning their backs on this explosion of employment opportunities.
"There's lots of jobs around now, but they don't pay much," Placéncia said as he milked cows near the rural village of La Joya.
Placéncia sewed Wal-Mart garments in Zapotlanejo before quitting to help his father operate the family dairy. The youngest of Candelária Placéncia's 11 children, Salvador Placéncia now is waiting for two of five brothers working in the United States to come home for a visit and take him back with them.
The pair, employed at a dairy near Santa Barbara, have delayed the trip because they have heard that the United States soon might grant amnesty to undocumented workers and they do not want to miss a chance -- however remote -- to become legal U.S. residents.
Until the brothers visit home, Placéncia continues milking 11 cows twice a day.
"I need him here, but I understand it's a better life up there," said his 70-year-old father. "Here, what you earn in one week doesn't even buy a pair of shoes."
With a long tradition of migration to the United States, La Joya is typical of rural villages in western Mexico.
Despite the economic boom in nearby cities, the region remains so poor that when someone this year stole the three televisions that provide long-distance teaching at the secondary school, classes continued meeting without instruction until a private foundation donated replacements.
In June, 12 students graduated from Telesecundaria Benito Juárez García. Without money to go on to preparatoria -- the equivalent of U.S. high school -- they planned to seek full-time work.
Where would the 15-and 16-year-olds look for jobs?
Nearly all the young men and several of the young women said they would go to the United States, rather than work in the factories or the region's many dairy farms.
They had relatives in California, Texas, Florida, Nebraska and the Carolinas, they said, and would join them to toil in fields, factories and meat packing plants.
"More than half will go," said teaching assistant Moisés Jiménez. "If the price of milk drops, they'll all go."
Promises to keep
As president, Fox's greatest challenge could be to fulfill his pledge to reduce U.S. migration by raising Mexican salaries.
A free-market enthusiast, Fox is a former manager of Coca-Cola operations in Mexico and Central America, and head of family ranching, leather and shoe-making businesses. As governor of Guanajuato, he led an economic transformation much like Jalisco has experienced since NAFTA.
These experiences make Fox well-aware of NAFTA's half-filled promises. He speaks of taking the pact a step further by turning North America into a full-fledged common market with more opportunities to let Mexicans work legally in the United States.
He says the arrangement should bring Mexican living standards up to those of Mexico's NAFTA partners, Canada and the United States.
"So long as a worker in Mexico earns $5 per day and a worker in the United States earns $60, immigration problems will continue," Fox said soon after being elected president. This is 12 times as much, not 8 times as much as stated earlier in this article.
However, low wages are the lure attracting foreign companies to Jalisco and other locations in Mexico.
Guadalajara tech manufacturers pay their assembly workers about $1.60 an hour -- including federally mandated benefits. The minimum wage in April 2001 is $0.41 cents per hour except in northern Mexico states that border the U.S. where it is $0.47 cents per hour.
Zapotlanejo garment workers are paid less, from $1 to $1.25 an hour.
Minus benefits, take-home pay in Mexico averages $5 per day. That is about the same amount earned per hour under the U.S. federal minimum wage of $5.15. California's minimum wage is $5.75 per hour.
In other words a Mexican can illegally sneak into the U.S. and earn the equivalent per year in buying power in Mexico of about 8 to 15 times the Mexican minimum wage - Or what it might take him 15 years working in Mexico to earn!
Keeping wages low
Guadalajara's high-tech managers are so determined to keep salaries from inching up, said NatSteel's Loh, that they meet monthly to make certain everyone is maintaining the going rate.
However, it is uncertain whether wages can remain low if the pool of workers keeps shrinking.
U.S. migration taps a large part of the supply. But the number of job-seekers also is declining due to a major demographic shift. During the last two decades, the number of children per family has dropped to 2.5 from 6.1.
The birth rate is plummeting fastest in areas of highest migration, researcher Escobar said. Therefore the birth rate has not really dropped in Mexico, it has moved to the U.S. along with the illegal aliens moving here to have their children in the U.S.
"For 15 years, ... we needed emigration to help our people find work," he said. "But at some point in the next five to six years at the latest, we should have a major change in job absorption and labor migration."
The result could trigger the most significant change in Mexico-U.S. migration since shortly after World War I, when the U.S. government let farmers recruit Mexican workers. Migration continued under the bracero program between 1942 and 1964 and was sustained over the following years by Mexico's rapid population growth, government policies that produced rural poverty and a tolerance on both sides of the border for unauthorized migration.
Still, no one predicts that one of the greatest global migrations of modern times will end soon.
Some argue the demographic and economic changes will have minimal effect. They say cross-border flows will increase for two to five decades more.
Others predict the situation today in Jalisco is the precursor of changes that will slow migration by as early as 2005.
"The demographics have changed, there's job creation in Mexico, and the number of low-wage jobs in the United States is static or shrinking," said Migration Dialogue's Martin. "That should make it easier for NAFTA to work its wonders."
*Bold type italics are comments I added to article. This is a good article explaining why illegal immigration must be stopped with a new international border fence to properly define and defend the U.S. border.
Copyright 2000 The
San
Diego Union-Tribune
Illegal border crossers feared lost
Search on for as many as 60 who may be in desert
By Gregory Alan Gross
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
July 28, 2000
El Centro, CA - Authorities on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border launched an air and ground search yesterday for perhaps as many as 60 would-be illegal border crossers from Mexico who might be lost in desert terrain east of San Diego amid temperatures as high as 122 degrees (50 C.).
One woman was found dead east of Tecate, Mexico, by Mexican border agents. Four others, badly dehydrated, were rescued by other agents and the Mexican army.
Some of the immigrants may have made it into U.S. territory, Mexican officials said yesterday. U.S. Border Patrol agents in El Centro confirmed that they had been alerted and were looking for them.
"We've got agents out searching, and we have an aircraft up," said Harold Beasley, acting chief of the Border Patrol's El Centro sector. "We're going to stay with this until we get some kind of resolution. We want these people found."
Beta Group, the Mexican border-crime task force, initially reported a group of 30 migrants lost north of La Rumerosa, a rugged mountain pass that drops to the desert floor in the Mexicali Valley, on the Mexican side of the border from Imperial County.
The group may have made it into an area south of Davis Valley on the American side, Beta officials said.
Later in the day, however, Beta agents in Tecate reported that perhaps double that number might be missing.
Beta agents found two migrants near La Rumerosa yesterday afternoon; a Mexican army patrol found two others.
Beta Group agents also found the body of Guadalupe Martínez Montano, 36, from the Mexican state of Michoacan. There was no immediate word yesterday on the cause of death.
One group of 25 migrants tried to cross the border Monday via the dry lake known as Laguna Salada, on the desert floor near Mexicali, Beta agents in Tecate said. Another group of 20 tried to cross Wednesday near La Rumerosa, and 20 others passed through the same general area Wednesday night.
Beta said the areas the groups tried to cross through have no water and little shade, with deep rocky ravines where footing is treacherous and searches difficult. Typical summer temperatures there range from 113 to 122 degrees, the group said.
Copyright 2000 The
San
Diego Union-Tribune
Authorities find second body from Mexican immigrants abandoned in desert
ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 30, 2000
MEXICO CITY -- Authorities found the body of a 55-year-old man, the second victim from a group of at least 30 Mexicans who were abandoned by a smuggler while trying to cross into the United States through Baja California's desert.
The body of Juan Manuel Vargas Dimas, from the Pacific coast state of Michoacan, was found Saturday under a tree after he died of dehydration, the Mexican border crime task force said.
His body was identified by his 17-year-old son, one of four people from the group found alive. Authorities on both sides of the border were searching for other possible victims.
On Thursday, officials located the body of Guadalupe Martinez, 36, also of Michoacan.
The immigrants were abandoned in the desert by a smuggler who promised to sneak them into the United States for U.S. dollars $1,600 each.
Copyright 2000 The
San
Diego Union-Tribune
Sony says it may cut maquiladoras (NAFTA factories) due to crime
REUTERS
May 8, 2000
MEXICO CITY -- Sony Corp. could reduce the scale of its operations in Mexico due to a "critical" level of crime, the company's Mexico representative said Monday.
"The situation with respect to public security has become so critical that it is beginning to be reason enough for the company to decide to reduce its investment or move plants to a more secure country," Shin Takagi said during an event held by the Mexican Council of Export Maquiladoras.
Maquiladora plants, which import raw materials or components duty-free and subsequently export abroad, provide hundreds of thousands of jobs in Mexico, mainly along the border with the United States.
Sony, the Japanese manufacturer of televisions and other consumer electronics, has four plants in the border cities of Tijuana, Mexicali and Nuevo Laredo. Tijuana is considered the world capital of television set production.
In a study released last week, Mexico's Center for Investigation and Economic Research (CIDE) said kidnappings, bank robberies and white collar crimes such as money laundering are the main activities of organized crime in Mexico.
With an average of eight murders a day, Mexico City is among the most dangerous cities in the world, the study concluded.
Takagi said security in Mexico is of "maximum interest" to foreign investors.
"This problem increases our operating costs," he said, adding that the cost of security systems for company executives in Mexico doubled from 1998 to 1999.
From 1996 to 1999 Japanese companies invested $6.3 billion in the northern state of Baja California, he said.
The number of maquiladoras has grown exponentially since the North American Free Trade Agreement signed by Mexico, the United States and Canada took effect in 1994.
Copyright (c) 2000 - Reuters
Smugglers dig 50-60 tunnels under El Paso, Texas
REUTERS
Oct 21, 1999
EL PASO, Texas - Smugglers dug a network of 50 to 60 tunnels under this southwest Texas border city to ferret drugs and undocumented immigrants into the United States and weapons into Mexico, law enforcement officials said Thursday.
Authorities have long known that smugglers at times used legitimate city sewage and drainage tunnels to try and evade border controls.
But information from recent arrests by the U.S. Border Patrol and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) led to the discovery that the city tunnel network has been extended by criminal excavation of new tunnels and entrances, an FBI spokesman said.
"We're concerned about the terrorists aspect of it," said Al Cruz, spokesman for the FBI regional office in El Paso.
Cruz said information from the arrests also suggested for the first time that arms were being smuggled into Mexico, which has strict gun control laws.
"They're trading weapons for drugs," said an inspector with the INS, who declined to be named.
INS and Border Patrol agents said the tunnels range from 18 inches across to eight-feet high and meander under the city, including one tunnel that exits next door to City Hall and another that opens up under the Fort Bliss army post.
The 50 to 60 tunnels have multiple entrances and exits and new ones are constantly being dug, hampering police efforts to keep people out of the underground network.
Cruz said sealing up some of the tunnels was not an option because they include the city's drainage and sewer systems. Doug Mosier, spokesman for the Border Patrol in El Paso, said several agents were working on the problem. "We're studying the situation and we are working on some plans," he said, "but we wouldn't be able to get into any specifics publicly right now."
Copyright (c) 2000 - Reuters
4 hurt in shootout between Mexico police and Mexico customs
REUTERS
April 7, 2000
MONTERREY, Mexico -- At least four agents were wounded in a shootout between Mexican federal agents and (Mexican federal) customs officials near the U.S. border over a shipment of smuggled goods, local newspapers reported Friday.
The shootout reportedly took place Thursday morning in General Bravo, about 50 miles from McAllen, Texas, after agents from the federal Attorney General's Office (PGR) escorting three trucks were stopped by federal customs agents, the newspapers said.
The trucks were apparently loaded with *smuggled chickens and electrical appliances, and the PGR agents allegedly asked the customs officials to waive them through an internal customs checkpoint, Diario de Monterrey reported.
The shootout erupted when the customs officials insisted on searching the trucks, the newspapers said.
A PGR spokesman in Mexico City declined to comment Friday on the incident.
Copyright (c) 2000 - Reuters
*illegal aliens are called "pollos'
(chickens) in Mexico.
Border agents trade gunfire with burglars
29-Mar-2000 Wednesday
TECATE, CA -- U.S. Border Patrol agents traded fire across the U.S.-Mexico border with a group of would-be burglars who opened fire at the agents after trying to break into a home in Mexican territory, the patrol reported yesterday.
No one was hit and no injuries were reported.
According to information from Beta Group, the Mexican border-crimes task force, an undetermined number of burglars tried to break into the home in Tecate, Mexico, near the border about 3 a.m. yesterday, but failed.
The burglars then shot the homeowner's dog and, looking up over the border fence, saw two Border Patrol agents nearby, said Border Patrol spokesman Roy Villareal.
"For some reason, they shot at the agents. The agents returned fire. I don't know how many shots were fired," Villareal said.
Copyright 2000 The San
Diego Union-Tribune
Mexican Army enters U.S., shoots at U.S. Border Patrol
Border incursion and shooting - 10:30 pm, March 14, 2000
Fox video interview transcript - THE O'REILLY FACTOR, March 27, 2000
O'REILLY: In the "Impact" segment tonight, we continue our investigation into a bizarre incident near El Paso, Texas. On March 14th, two Mexican army vehicles illegally crossed into the United States. When confronted by Border Patrol agents, one of the vehicles fled back to Mexico firing at least two shots at the Americans. Agents captured the other vehicle and took nine Mexican soldiers into custody, but agent-in-charge Luis Barker ordered them released before the FBI had a chance to interview them. So what's going on here? Joining us now from El Paso is Luis Barker and, from Washington, Congressman Silvestre Reyes who represents the district.
(Note: Congressman Silvestre Reyes represents the 16th district of Texas, not Sunland Park, New Mexico, where the border shooting incident occurred. An account in the San Diego Union-Tribune March 30th reported three Mexican Army Humvees (not two) entered the U.S. and chased U.S. Border officers. "A group of Mexican soldiers riding in three Humvees and armed with high-powered assault rifles and submachine guns crashed through a barbed-wire fence that marks the border near Santa Teresa. They turned on a Border Patrol agent who approached them and then pursued the agent. They repeatedly failed to heed the Border Patrol agent's entreaties in Spanish to stop, even after he identified himself as a U.S. Border Patrol agent, according to U.S. government sources." - Joe Cantlupe, COPLEY NEWS SERVICE, San Diego Union-Tribune, March 30, 2000).
O'REILLY: Chief, I want to talk to you first. First of all, thanks for coming on. We appreciate that. You didn't have to do it. But the FBI is wondering why you didn't call them in on this case.
LUIS BARKER, EL PASO SECTOR CHIEF PATROL AGENT, U.S. BORDER PATROL: I am not aware that the FBI is wondering whether...
O'REILLY: Well, we called them today, and they issued us a statement. Do you want me to read it to you?
BARKER: Yes. Go ahead.
O'REILLY: All right. "In the event of assaults on federal officers, the FBI is at the very least brought in to assist the investigation, and we were not called at all in this case." So why didn't you call them?
BARKER: This is more than a simple issue of assault. This is an international incident, and there is no protocol that I am aware of that deals with that issue.
O'REILLY: That's not -- that's not what the FBI's saying. They're saying that they're always called in on things like that. It's not under a law, but they are usually, in their words, always called in on things like that. Did you get a call from anybody in Washington telling you what to do on this case, Chief?
BARKER: No. The decision was mine. Again, I have to take into consideration all the issues here. The -- the dynamics on the border is one that is known by many people. Any decision that I make here, I have to look at the long-term security of these agents and the community at large.
O'REILLY: OK. Well, why didn't you call in the FBI? What would have been wrong with that?
BARKER: Because the facts that we had that night led me to believe and the reports that we got from the agents and the colonel that I spoke to proved that this was an unfortunate mistake, not -- keeping in mind that we have a border that's not well defined, the facts that I got led me to believe that this was a mistake, even though shots were fired...
O'REILLY: Well, how...
BARKER: ... and I acted accordingly.
O'REILLY: Well, how can that be a mistake when you have army -- army troops shooting at border guards? Come on.
BARKER: There were shots fired. There is no denying that. We did not get those people -- those military personnel that fired the shots. We got an accompanying vehicle. Once they realized that they were in the United States after the insistence of the agents who acted in with -- with the...
O'REILLY: All right, but do you understand how controversial this is? The head of the Border Patrol union is calling for you to resign, Chief.
BARKER: Well, again, I have -- I am put here to make decisions on issues that affect these agents and affect this community at large.
O'REILLY: All right.
BARKER: Now if they disagree with what I did, they have every right to -- to do what they are doing.
O'REILLY: All right. And they are. They're screaming for your head, and I don't know if that's fair or not. I wasn't there.
But, Congressman, I still don't understand why this -- why the FBI couldn't have been called in and a more thorough investigation -- now you're a former border guard, Congressman. What do you -- what do you think about this?
REP. SILVESTRE REYES (D-TX), FORMER BORDER PATROL CHIEF PATROL AGENT: Well, more than that, Bill, I was in charge of the sector there. I had Luis Barker's position several years ago, and I can tell you that these kinds of incidents are not isolated. They -- they, unfortunately, happen because the border is not very well defined, particularly in the area that we're talking about here.
But let -- let me correct you about one thing. The head of the national Border Patrol union is not asking for Chief Barker's resignation. In fact, it's an individual that is out of San Diego sector because, as -- as far as I know, even Mr. Stack who you interviewed last week is not asking for the -- for the chief's resignation. (Note: See "Local 1613 Calls for the Resignation of ... Chief Patrol Agent Luis Barker" in article below in which Mr. Stack's El Paso, Texas, U.S. Border Patrol Union Local 1929 jointly with Local 1613 and the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge calls for Chief Barker's resignation on March 17, 2000).
O'REILLY: Well, The Associated Press reported on 3-18 -- March 18th that the Border Patrol union asked for the resignation of Chief Patrol Agent Barker. This is The Associated Press.
REYES: Well...
O'REILLY: Now, look, you've got...
REYES: But, Bill...
O'REILLY: If that's not accurate, it's not accurate, but you know by seeing our interview...
REYES: It's not accurate.
O'REILLY: ... with Stack, he's teed off. (Note: The El Paso, Texas, Border Patrol Agent's Union Local 1929 mysteriously reversed their earlier joint call for Chief Barker's resignation, but continue to demand a full investigation of this incident. "We will pursue all avenues to bring out the truth," said Martin L. Wilson, president of the Border Patrol union's Local 1929, which includes the Santa Teresa district. "We will not let this incident go away without looking for answers and changes for the betterment of the members of our local." Martin said the agents involved had "promised to give us a first-hand account of the incident," and he emphasized that "this local has not called for the ouster of the (Border Patrol) chief (Gus de la Vina), regardless of what has been put out by outside groups." - source: "Border accident or bounty hunting?," World Net Daily, March 28, 2000, by Jon E. Dougherty).
REYES: Well...
O'REILLY: He thinks that Agent Barker -- Chief Barker should have kept the soldiers in custody until the FBI got down there to find out, No. 1, what these people were doing here. And I understand mistakes can be made, but I don't understand how Mexican troops can fire at U.S. troops, and the whole thing is -- say, "Oh, well, it was a mistake. We'll see you later." I don't get that, Congressman.
REYES: Well -- well -- well, Bill -- Bill, that is not exactly what is happening and what has happened. This is not the first time that we've had shots fired across our border, nor is it going to be the last, but I can tell you that every single incident like this is fully and completely investigated. In fact...
O'REILLY: But the FBI weren't called in, and they -- they told us this afternoon that, in all of these cases, they -- when shots are fired at federal agents, they come in.
REYES: Well, that -- that's assuming that the assault happened in the United States and...
O'REILLY: It did. It happened in the United States.
REYES: Let me -- let me just finish. And that the perpetrators were -- were in custody. In this particular case, this is, as the chief has said, an international incident. It is being handled as such, both the consul general from Mexico in El Paso and the consul general for the United States in Juarez are -- are both involved, as are both ambassadors. We are going to get a full and complete detailed investigation of...
O'REILLY: All right. And I -- and I trust you, Congressman, that you'll see to it that that happens. For your own political future, it will be wise that you do this, but you can understand -- and I'm sure you can, too, Chief -- that Americans are very concerned about this, why you would let these guys go so quickly when U.S. border guards are fired upon in light of the fact that the cartels in Mexico put a $200,000 bounty on Border Patrol agents' heads. I mean, you -- you know that exists. You know it's a tinderbox down there. So why -- I mean, to let them go so fast -- I'm going to give you the word -- the last word, Chief. I'm going to give you the last word on this, but to -- to let them go so fast, I don't know if that was so wise. Go ahead.
BARKER: Well, again, we have to consider the dynamics on this border. We have a relationship with Mexico. I'll give you an -- I'll give you an account of an issue that occurred last year. We had an agent that was seized, and because of the relationship that we had, we managed to to get this agent -- this agent released in a reasonably short period of time, considering that on other occasions under these same kind of circumstances, people are held. We have to maintain a relationship. This is in the -- in the diplomatic arena, and that's where it's supposed to...
O'REILLY: All right. I got it. All right. Chief, Congressman, keep -- please keep us posted on this. We'll continue to follow the story, and we appreciate you guys coming on. You're stand-up guys. Thanks.
REYES: You bet.
BARKER: Thank you.
O'REILLY: Plenty more ahead as THE FACTOR moves along this evening.
(Removed author's name) has written a scalding new book about... (next show topic)...
Right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
-- END --
Note: This video interview originally was available for viewing on the Fox News website at: http://www.foxnews.com/channel/oreilly/guests.sml... but has since been removed. Video has also been removed from the Fox video website search engine on the same page, and the video cannot be found anywhere on the Fox News website as of 6:42 pm PST March 30, 2000. THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
My comments: 1) What was in the Mexican Army Humvee that fled? Why did the 2nd Humvee flee if the Mexican Army thought they were in Mexico? 2) Is it common practice for the Chief of the USBP sector to travel alone to Mexico on his own volition and meet with the Mexican Army after a major border incursion and shooting? See, "Barker met with the soldiers' Mexican commander at the Paso Del Norte station before ordering their release." - in the article below. 3) Why no FBI notification? Or DEA notification? Or anyone notification? 4) Why no extradition demand to Mexico for the fugitives? Write your congressman and demand an investigation of this incident. (Posted 6:55 pm PST, March 30, 2000) - Website author.
Content and programming Copyright
2000 Fox News Network, Inc.
Transcript: 032702cb.256
Border Patrol team investigates Mexican-soldier confrontation
U.S. Border Patrol captures Mexican Army patrol and holds them as illegal aliens, then returns them, their automatic pistols, machine guns, assault rifles, and their Humvee to Mexico. "Just doin' my job."- El Paso Border Patrol Chief says.
By Diana Washington Valdez
Friday, March 24, 2000
El Paso Times, El Paso, Texas
El Paso, Texas - A U.S. Border Patrol Shooting Review Team is investigating allegations that Mexican Army soldiers who entered the country illegally last week near Sunland Park, *(New Mexico), fired weapons at *(U.S.) Border Patrol agents.
"We are convinced shots were fired at the agents," said Jerry Armstrong, Deputy Chief of the Border Patrol-El Paso sector. "We don't know how long the investigation will take, but we are taking this incident seriously."
*(None) of the Border Patrol agents *(were) injured. They were patrolling the area on horseback, *(and in an U.S. Border Patrol vehicle marked with large "U.S. Border Patrol" markings on front, rear, sides, and top with a law enforcement light-bar, which was also turned-on at the beginning of this incident.
At 10:30 pm March 14th, the weather was clear, and the U.S. Naval Observatory Astronomical Applications Department provided the following information for El Paso County, Texas [longitude W106.4, latitude N31.8] in Mountain Standard Time: "The Moon was in its first quarter waxing gibbous with 67% of the Moon's visible disk illuminated - Moonrise was at 11:45 a.m. on March 13th - Moonset was at 2:07 a.m. on March 14th." Therefore, there was bright Moonlight resulting in good to excellent unaided night vision).
U.S. State Department officials said Mexican Army soldiers have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally 47 times in since 1995. This was the first time they reportedly fired at U.S. federal agents. *(According to U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-CA, the Mexican Army has crossed into U.S. territory 63 times between 1995 and 1999. Some U.S. Border Patrol agents say it's many more times, and they also suspect the Mexican Army is running drugs and protecting drug shipments and alien smugglers).
*(Many U.S. Border Patrol Agents now believe members of the Mexican Army are trying to collect a $1,862,000 Mexican pesos bounty ($200,000 U.S. dollars) for killing any U.S. law enforcement officer, that is now offered by a Mexican drug cartel).
Armstrong wouldn't say whether investigators found bullet casings where the shots were fired, "because it's part of the ongoing investigation." *(At least one shell casing was found at the incident site and is now being analyzed, according to sources).
He said the shots reportedly were fired within U.S. territory, roughly half a mile from the border near Sunland Park.
"The standoffs... were extremely tense. Two shots were fired and weapons were pointed on both sides," said Paul Berg, Border Patrol Chief at Del Rio, Texas, who along with Armstrong and others provided details about the incident. This is their account:
Remote crossing
Two *(Mexican Army) Humvees *(Medium-size 4-wheel drive military vehicle) with *(approximately 16) Mexican soldiers aboard, knocked down, *(then drove over) the barbed- wire-*(topped- International Border)- fence at the border and entered the United States illegally after spotting a *(well-marked U.S.) Border Patrol vehicle nearby, Berg said.
The remote desert area where the *(Mexican) soldiers entered at 10:30 p.m. March 14 is dotted with brush-covered mounds. Dirt roads and trails and utility lines criss-cross the mesa. Rabbits and coyotes have the run of the land, which is heavily patrolled because it's a popular crossing point for undocumented illegal aliens and drug smugglers.
On the Mexican side, a road runs parallel to the fence, and on the U.S. side, a parallel dirt road is used by Border Patrol agents. From the barbed-wire-*(topped) border fence, Mount Cristo Rey is visible to the east. *(A well-known border landmark).
The standoff
That night, Berg said, "the two *(Mexican Army) Humvees split up. One followed the *(marked U.S. Border Patrol vehicle, which had its U.S. Border Patrol law enforcement light-bar lights turned on), while the second chased *(U.S. Border Patrol) agents... on horseback."
The *(U.S.) Border Patrol agent in the *(U.S. Border Patrol) vehicle drove off on a dirt trail in a northwesterly direction, which is U.S. Bureau of Land Management property. The *(Mexican Army) Humvee followed *(and chased) him for nearly a mile, all the way to the *(U.S.) Border Patrol horse barn adjacent to the Camino Real landfill.
The second *(Mexican Army) Humvee gave chase to *(U.S.) Border Patrol agents on horseback.
Armstrong said "a standoff occurred" during three separate encounters between the *(Mexican) soldiers and *(U.S.) Border Patrol agents.
"The Mexican soldiers thought they were in Mexico," Armstrong said. "There was a standoff. Weapons were drawn."
"They yelled to our agents, 'You're in Mexico, drop your weapons.' Our agents yelled back, 'You're in the United States, drop your weapons," he said.
Call for backup
*(U.S.) Border Patrol agents at the *(U.S. Border Patrol horse) barn area called Sunland Park (New Mexico), city police for backup.
"We sent three uniformed police officers in three police vehicles," said Sunland Park, *(New Mexico), Police Chief Ricardo Perez. "Our vehicle lights *(light bars on top) were flashing. We were very obvious."
Near the barn area, *(U.S.) police and *(U.S.) agents convinced the Mexican captain that he and his men were in U.S. territory. The captain then ordered his men to surrender and turn over their weapons. The *(Mexican Army) officer *(who was older than age 17) told Border Patrol officials he thought they were chasing a drug smuggler.
Meanwhile, "the second *(Mexican Army Humvee) drove near one of the *(U.S.) Border Patrol agents on horseback," Berg said. "The *(U.S.) agent identified himself... and ordered the *(Mexican Army Humvee) to stop. This *(Mexican Army Humvee) then began to pursue the mounted *(U.S.) agent screaming for him to stop, and *(the first) shot was fired."
"The *(U.S.) Border Patrol agent eluded the *(Mexican Army Humvee) and safely concealed himself in nearby draw," Berg said. "Another mounted *(U.S.) Border Patrol agent saw what was happening. He was sighted by the *(Mexican) soldiers who immediately began to pursue him... screaming at him to stop."
Another chase
Berg said the mounted *(U.S.) agent identified himself but was forced to retreat. The *(Mexican Army) Humvee chased him until it got stuck in a sand dune, halfway between the barn and the *(Mexican border) fence line. Two other *(U.S.) Border Patrol agents arrived and confronted the *(Mexican) soldiers.
The *(U.S.) agents and *(Mexican) soldiers yelled back and forth about which country they were in. Two of the Mexican soldiers started to head back toward Mexico, and one of the *(U.S.) Border Patrol agents on horseback challenged them to stop.
The *(U.S.) agent "lit them up with his flashlight and one of the *(Mexican) soldiers fired *(another) shot," Berg said.
The *(U.S.) agent allowed them to continue toward the stuck *(Mexican Army) Humvee. The soldiers got the *(Mexican Army) Humvee free, and the *(U.S.) Border Patrol agents backed off while the *(Mexican Army) Humvee fled to Mexico.
Armstrong said *(U.S.) Border Patrol agents were armed with .40 caliber pistols but did not return fire. Perez said "the Mexican soldiers had "NATO-type automatic weapons." *(Sources say they were HK-33 .308 NATO caliber full-automatic assault rifles - manufactured by Heckler & Koch in Germany).
Agents praised
Paul Wells, watch commander at the Santa Teresa Border Patrol Station, said, "Our agents showed remarkable restraint in these situations... they used their brains instead of their guns."
The Border Patrol sent a letter of commendation to the Sunland Park police for their assistance.
"They said our officers helped diffuse an armed confrontation, which could have easily escalated into a serious shootout," Perez said.
*(Mexican) officials said the Mexican soldiers recently came to the border from the interior of Mexico. They formed part of a special federal anti-narcotics operation in the Juárez border region.
Armstrong said most of the soldiers captured at the barn area, "were very young. One of them was 17 years old." *(The Mexican Commanding Officer was NOT 17 years old. Many U.S. citizens were only 18 or younger when they entered the U.S. military during the Vietnam and Gulf wars. Audie Murphy was only 17 years old when he enlisted, and only 19 when he received the Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery near Holtzwihr, France, 26 January 1945, in WW2. He changed his birth certificate by one year, actually being born June 20, 1925, so he could enlist at age 17).
They were taken to the Santa Teresa Border Patrol Station, where they were processed as undocumented illegal aliens before they, their *(Mexican Army) Humvee and drug-detection dog were returned to Mexico. *(Seven HK-33 .308 NATO caliber, full-automatic assault rifles, one full-automatic .45 caliber submachine gun, two .45 caliber semi-automatic pistols, and other military gear were returned to Mexico, as well).
Mexico investigating
While Mexican officials have not conceded that their *(Mexican Army) soldiers fired any shots at *(U.S.) Border Patrol agents, a spokesman said the Mexican government was investigating. They called the incursion *(invasion) "a regrettable error."
"We have several *(Mexican) federal authorities looking into this," said Marco A. Fraire, spokesman for the Mexican consulate general in El Paso. Sunland Park resident Cris Stewart said, "There should be a well-marked boundary so this doesn't happen again. We could have gotten into a war with Mexico over something like this." *(Maybe we should install another 15' steel mesh and concrete post triple-border-fence like San Diego, CA, now has?... and then prepare for the complaints from the illegal alien activist groups and the Mexican government).
In a prepared statement, U.S. consulate general Edward Marquez said U.S. and Mexican officials discussed the incident at the March 17 meeting of the Border Liaison Mechanism in Juárez.
"The Mexican military commander in the area explained that Mexican personnel involved in the incident were new to the region and unfamiliar with the lightly marked border," Marquez said. "Their discussion underscores... the need to avoid such incursions in the future."
Chief takes the heat
El Paso sector Border Patrol Chief Luis Barker caught fire from some Border Patrol agents for releasing the nine Mexican soldiers hours after their capture.
An association of Border Patrol agents in California *(The largest group of U.S. Border Patrol agents in the U.S. with over 2,000 members) called for his resignation.
Jim Stack, president of Local 1929, the union that represents El Paso sector Border Patrol agents, said that while the union has not called for Barker's resignation, "We have asked for a thorough investigation by higher authorities." *(Note: This is a reversal of an Official Local 1613 / Local 1929 Joint Press Release of Friday, 17 March, 2000, which called for U.S. Border Patrol Chief Luis Barker's resignation).
"Some of the agents feel we let the Mexicans off too easily," he *(Jim Stack) said.
In Barker's defense, Berg said, "The shooters escaped into Mexico. Had they not escaped, (Barker) would have vigorously pursued prosecution." *(Note: All the Mexican soldiers were accomplices to assault, battery, attempted murder, violation of assault weapons and other weapons laws, border invasion, destruction of federal property, and many other felonies, misdemeanors, and infractions under U.S. law. Don't we have an extradition treaty with Mexico? I believe we do).
Barker met with the soldiers' Mexican commander at the Paso Del Norte station *(in Mexico) before ordering their release. *(The Mexican Army Commander was reportedly older than age 17).
Armstrong and Berg, who's also Chief of U.S. Border Patrol Chief Patrol Agent's Association, which represents Border Patrol managers, said holding the nine Mexican soldiers to extract revenge would have made matters worse.
"We need to work with the Mexican officials," Armstrong said.
"INS Commissioner Doris Meissner stands behind the decision by Chief Barker 100 percent," said Tim Counts, spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service Central Regional District in Dallas.
The military's role on the border has been controversial. The Juárez bar association that represents most of the city's lawyers have criticized the Mexican government for using soldiers to patrol civilians. On the U.S. side, Joint Task Force Six, the military anti-drug support agency at Biggs Army Airfield, suspended ground patrols after an *(Hispanic) Marine *(motorpool mechanic from Camp Pendleton, CA,) fatally shot a teen in Redford, Texas, in 1997, *(whose family was awarded $800,000 or more by the U.S. government in a settlement sealed by a Texas Federal Court).
Copyright (c) 2000 - The El Paso Times
*Parentheses enclosed statements
added for clarification of the article. My opinion: This incident has
been white washed by INS management in Washington, D.C. and El Paso, Texas
(aka Mrs. Doris Meissner & CPA Barker). What about the International
Border fence that the Mexican Army knocked down and then drove over? And
the words "U.S. Border Patrol" on the U.S. Border Patrol vehicle with the
flashing red-lights on its top? And what about Mount Cristo Rey (elevation
1425 meters - 4675 feet), a well known border landmark, which is now visible
to the east and BEHIND the Mexicans? And why did the second Mexican Humvee
flee south to Mexico, if they thought they were already in Mexico? Sorry
but, "We thought we were in Mexico," does not hold up under scrutiny, no
matter what the two Mexican officers say. You in the 'upper 50' still don't
get it... some in the Mexican Army are smuggling drugs and protecting
drug and alien smugglers.
Harsh charge hits Mexican soldiers
March 21, 2000
EL PASO, Texas -- U.S. Border Patrol agents charged yesterday that Mexican soldiers who crossed the border into New Mexico and fired two shots last week may have been trying to collect a drug trafficker's [$200,000] bounty* by killing U.S. law officers.
The agents' union called for an investigation into the incident despite the U.S. government's position that it was just an accident.
"That was no accident," said Joseph Dassaro, vice president of the union, the National Border Patrol Council. "The Mexican military was well into U.S. territory, for way over a mile, and chased and fired at agents. Agents from San Diego to South Texas are scared to death it's going to happen again."
Copyright (c) 2000 - Reuters
*A bounty of $1,862,000 Mexican
pesos ($200,000 U.S. dollars) was recently offered by a Mexican Mafia drug
& smuggling cartel for killing any U.S. law officer according to the
U.S. Department of Justice. A memo warning of this reward was circulated
to personnel. Note: Mr. Dassaro is not V.P. of the National Border Patrol
Council (a USBP management organization). He is V.P. of USBP Union Local
1613 in San Diego, CA, the largest USBP organization in the U.S.A. with
over 2,100 members.
|
México City, March 18, 2000 |
The News Staff
