The United States has strange priorities along the border with Mexico

The United States has strange priorities along the border with Mexico

Jonathan Gurwitz
San Antonio Express-News
Oct. 19, 2010

Imagine for a moment that the New York State Police are warning American boaters to steer clear of the Canadian side of Lake Ontario because they might fall victim to pirates.

Imagine that violent gangs armed with military weaponry created a no man's land along a portion of the border shared by the United States and Canada that challenged the sovereignty of both nations.

Would this for a moment be tolerable? Would the president of the United States or the leaders of Congress simply treat it as a regrettable yet acceptable border problem? Of course not. Yet residents of South Texas are expected to endure precisely this situation on the U.S.-Mexican border.

In May, the Texas Department of Public Safety warned boaters on Falcon Lake, which straddles the border, to stay on the U.S. side after a number of armed robberies. The perpetrators, the statement said, were believed to be "members of a drug trafficking organization or members of an enforcer group ... who are heavily armed and using AK-47s or AR-15 rifles."

On Sept. 30, these gangs apparently claimed their first American victim on Falcon Lake. According to Tiffany Hartley, several boats of gunmen ambushed her and her husband, David, as they rode their Jet Skis. David Hartley was shot in the head and is presumed dead.

More than two weeks later and with threats of violence hampering search efforts, his body had not been recovered. The lead Mexican investigator in the case was murdered last week, his severed head placed in a suitcase left outside a military base.

This isn't Iraq at the height of the al Qaeda insurgency, Afghanistan under the Taliban or the ungovernable tribal areas of Pakistan. It is Mexico, a stone's throw from the United States.

During the first half of 2010, the Houston Chronicle reported, 48 U.S. citizens were killed in Mexico, including an employee of the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez and her husband. That number pales in comparison with the more than 28,000 Mexican citizens who have lost their lives since President Felipe Calderon began to fight back against the cartels in 2006.

Taken together, however, the escalating violence should serve as an ominous indicator of just how lethally serious the border security problem is. But how seriously is the U.S. government taking that problem?

Two answers come from the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

In a draft report released this month, the GAO found that environmental laws are hampering the Border Patrol's ability to operate on government land along the U.S.-Mexico border. Patrol agents-in-charge for 17 of the 26 Border Patrol stations on the Southwest border said they had experienced "delays and restrictions in patrolling and monitoring federal lands because of various land management laws."

As an example, off-road vehicles used to patrol and pursue suspects on federal lands may leave tire tracks that disrupt the natural flow of water. "The volume of undocumented aliens crossing federal lands can overwhelm the law enforcement and resource protection efforts," the report observes. But illegal immigrants and drug smugglers are able to flout the environmental laws that restrict the Border Patrol.

Another GAO report released in July found that two years into the three-year Merida Initiative to assist Mexico's law enforcement and judicial agencies, the U.S. government had disbursed less than 10 percent of the $1.3 billion appropriated for the program.

Last month, the Obama administration asked Congress to impound $26 million that was to be released because the Mexican government hasn't made enough progress in addressing human rights concerns in its battle with the drug cartels.

The cartels are as violent and brutal as any terrorist organization. The Calderon government is fighting against them to uphold law and order.

The U.S. government, to the extent that it is engaged in this conflict, is as concerned about the Huachuca water umbel -- an endangered plant -- and the transparency of Mexico's military justice system as it is about maintaining stability in a nation of 110 million people that shares a 2,000-mile border with the United States.

How many more U.S. and Mexican citizens must die before the United States gets its priorities straight?