The Obama administration said Tuesday it’s sending hundreds of extra federal agents and new crime-fighting equipment to the Mexican border as the U.S. struggles to roll back a tide of drug-related violence sweeping the Southwest.
The renewed push for a stronger law enforcement presence along the border comes as the administration tries to help the Mexican government break up drug cartels believed to be responsible for the killing of roughly 6,500 people last year in Mexico, according to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. “Our role is to assist in this battle because we have our own security interests in its success,” Napolitano said at the White House. The new federal plan, developed by the departments of Justice and Homeland Security, calls for doubling the number of border security task force teams as well as moving a significant number of other federal agents, equipment and resources to the border. It also involves greater intelligence sharing aimed at cracking down on the flow of money and weapons into Mexico that helps fuel the drug trade, senior administration officials said. Watch CNN’s Michael Ware analyze U.S. efforts in Mexico’s drug war ยป The plan commits $700 million to bolster Mexican law enforcement and crime prevention efforts. The funds will provide, among other things, five new helicopters to increase mobility for the Mexican army and air force as well as new surveillance aircraft for the Mexican navy. They also will fund enhanced communications technology for Mexican prosecutors, law enforcement and immigration officials. On the U.S. side of the border, the goal is to use “prosecutor-led, intelligence-based task forces that bring together all Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security and other relevant law enforcement agencies to disrupt and dismantle the drug cartels through investigation, prosecution, extradition of their leaders, and the seizure and forfeiture of their assets,” Deputy Attorney General David Ogden said.
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“As we’ve found with other large criminal groups, if you take their money and lock up their leaders, you can loosen their grip on the vast organizations that are used to carry out their criminal activities.” The $700 million allocation, meant to assist what administration officials described as an “anti-smuggling effort,” will complement ongoing U.S. aid to Mexico under the Merida initiative, a three-year, $1.4 billion package aimed at helping Mexico fight the drug cartels with law enforcement training, military equipment and improved intelligence cooperation. To help strengthen the U.S. side of the border further, the administration also plans to triple the number of Department of Homeland Security intelligence analysts dedicated to stopping Mexican-related violence. It also will increase the number of immigration officials working in Mexico, double the number of “violent criminal alien” teams on the border, strengthen the presence of border canine units and quadruple the number of border liaison officers working with Mexican law enforcement. It also will make an additional $59 million in federal funds available to support state, local and tribal border law enforcement operations. At the same time, more agents from the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives will be deployed to the border region. The agents will be given updated equipment and surveillance technology to help track the movement of cash, drugs and weapons. “We are discussing more things we can do to address the very real problem of currency and weapons moving into Mexico and at the same time trying to prevent potential border spillover,” one senior administration official said. The announcement comes shortly ahead of planned trips by three Cabinet secretaries to Mexico before President Obama visits there next month. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton goes to Mexico City this week, to be followed next week by Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder. Napolitano and Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg both emphasized the cooperation and “courage” of Mexican President Felipe Calderon during the news conference announcing the policy changes. Calderon has been pushing back against U.S. criticism of drug cartel-related violence lately, arguing that the U.S. needs to take more responsibility for the outbreak. In his speeches and other public remarks, Calderon repeatedly has pointed out that much of the demand for drugs and most of the weapons used by narco-traffickers comes from the United States. A prominent Washington-based gun control advocacy group released a report Tuesday backing Calderon’s assertions regarding weapons trafficking.
The report from the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence asserts that Mexican drug gangs have exploited weak American gun laws and corrupt gun dealers “to amass arsenals of high-powered guns that have killed thousands and pose an increasingly grave security threat to Mexico and the U.S.,” according to a statement from the organization. “Mexican criminals, and traffickers who supply them, cannot get the guns they need in Mexico because of Mexico’s strong gun laws,” Brady Center President Paul Helmke said in a news conference. But in border states Texas and Arizona, he argued, weaker gun laws provide easy access to a significant supply of high-powered arms.
