Joint U.S.-Mexican police patrols among proposed fixes for the border

Mexican and U.S. police patrolling the border together?  

That radical idea is one of the recommendations made by a blue-ribbon panel of scholars, diplomats and other experts that spent most of the year searching for “a new vision” in dealing with cross-border issues as diverse as migration, security and water.  

“It’s time to do something different, even if it is provocative and controversial,” said Andres Rozental, a former deputy foreign minister of Mexico and co-chair of the so-called Binational Task Force on the United States-Mexico Border.

The task force was put together by the Los Angeles-based Pacific Council for International Policy and the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations. It presented its findings at a conference in a Mexico City hotel Tuesday night.  

Recommendations included an urgent, comprehensive reform of immigration laws in the U.S.; creation of a binational border-development administration; establishment by Mexico of a federal police force for the border; and the easing of monopolies in Mexico to spur competition and private investment.    

But the point that really got the room buzzing was a recommendation to “cross-deputize” Mexican and U.S. border police for joint operations.  

Rozental and fellow co-chair Robert C. Bonner, former Drug Enforcement Administration chief, were quick to explain that did not mean Mexican police would be enforcing U.S. laws, or vice versa. They would patrol together and share information, Bonner said -- seemingly simple tasks that both sides have traditionally resisted.  

The task force suggested that changes in both nations’ capitals may have opened an opportunity. The Mexican government, it said, has “moved beyond a reflexive preoccupation with sovereignty” that thwarted cooperation on law enforcement, while a new administration in Washington has bluntly acknowledged its shared responsibility for the trafficking of drugs and weapons.  

“Both governments seem ready to replace nationalist finger-pointing with a 21st century approach to border management that benefits both sides,” the group’s report concluded.  

You can read more about the task force and its report here, or in Spanish here.

-- Tracy Wilkinson in Mexico City

U.S. lawmaker denies ransom for kidnapped Mexican family member

A Texas congressman said he had no involvement in an alleged ransom payment to free one of his wife's distant relatives, who was kidnapped in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez. The incident is the latest example of the rampant violence that is afflicting Mexican border towns €-- and possibly the closest that violence has come to directly affecting the U.S. Congress.

The Washington Times newspaper reported Friday that at the request of Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents helped "facilitate"€ a $32,000 ransom to free Erika Posselt, a Mexican national who was abducted June 19 from the auto glass store she owns in Juarez.

Border fence challenge rebuffed by Supreme Court

Environmentalists campaigning to stop the U.S. government's border fence project on the Mexico line were dealt a blow yesterday when the Supreme Court turned away their legal challenge.

The court's action clears the way for U.S. officials to press ahead with the project with little worry that judges will be able to stop it, writes the L.A. Times' David G. Savage.

Three years ago, Congress gave Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff an unusual power to "waive all legal requirements" that could stand in the way of building the fence. These requirements included the nation's environmental protection laws. The same congressional action took away the authority of judges to review Chertoff's decisions.

The high court's refusal is not a ruling, and it doesn't mean the justices won't reconsider the issue. But for now, Chertoff and his department have the go-ahead to proceed with the fence. Nearly half the barrier has been built.

Read the details here...

Environmentalists are not the only activists campaigning to stop the border fence project. American citizens, whose properties and homes are being sliced up by the project, are also up in arms.

Photo: A U.S. Border Patrol truck drives along a new section of road built by members of the 200th Red Horse Air National Guard Civil Engineering Squadron from Camp Perry in Ohio and other National Guard units in front of a five mile section of new border fencing at the border in Nogales, Ariz. Ross D. Franklin / Associated Press

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Yoga event stretches across U.S.-Mexico border fence

Yoga breaches boundaries in an Associated Press report about a stretch-out session organized by the Border Meetup Group:

A few dozen yoga aficionados rolled out their mats Sunday on both sides of the wall between Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego. The international group stretched and meditated together before exchanging hugs through the fence bars.

Read on...

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Want cheap gas? Better move to Mexico

"With gasoline prices hovering near $4 per gallon, Texans along the U.S.-Mexico border have discovered a cheaper alternative: Mexico." Read the story in the Dallas Morning News.

"Mexican service stations all along the border report brisk sales in recent weeks as fuel prices in Texas continue to climb. Even Ciudad Juarez has seen a notable increase in customers from the United States, despite escalating drug violence that includes gun battles in the streets and several decapitations."

"Victor Gonzalez was among those risking their lives for cheaper gasoline Monday. Mr. Gonzalez crossed the border from El Paso in his silver Ford F-150 truck with Chip, his cranky Chihuahua, riding next to him."

" 'I was running on empty –- almost,' said Mr. Gonzalez, a cattleman who normally pays about $90 to fill up his truck's tank on the Texas side of the border."

"In Mexico, gasoline is about a dollar cheaper a gallon because the government subsidizes it."

"Mexico's state-owned petroleum company, known as Pemex, is the sole supplier of gasoline for the country's gas stations and buys nearly half of it from the U.S. because of a lack of Mexican refineries."

-- Reed Johnson in Mexico City

If Merida doesn't work out ... (or: since Iraq is going so well ...)

The leader of the Minuteman U.S. border security group is proposing that the U.S. deploy its Army to Mexico to deal with criminal drug cartels and rising violence along the border. Speaking to radio stations in Southern California and Oregon, Minuteman Project President Jim Gilchrist suggested that the U.S. give Mexico 12 months to put an end to drug cartels before sending U.S. soldiers to do the job.

Referring to his belief that there is widespread corruption among Mexican politicians and law enforcement officials, Gilchrist said he was skeptical about how money from a proposed U.S. aid plan to battle the cartels would be spent.

The key, he said, was for the U.S. give Mexico an ultimatum. "Either terminate the criminal empires that influence your nation, and threaten to cripple the United States, or risk the incursion of U.S. soldiers to do the job for you," Gilchrist said. "I'm not talking about just any soldiers," Gilchrist added. "I'm talking about some heavyweight U.S. Army airborne brigades."

He added that his comments should not be seen as a proposal to wage war against Mexico or its people, but only against the criminal drug dealers there.

Photo: Minute Man statue at Minute Man National Historic Park, Massachusetts. Credit: U.S. National Park Service

-- Nicole Gaouette in Washington

U.S., Mexican lawmakers struggle to save Merida anti-drug crime plan

Drug-related killings have soared in Mexico recently, but U.S. and Mexican legislators are still at odds over how to cooperate to stop the violence and the free flow of arms and narcotics across the border.

"U.S. lawmakers will review the language of an anti-drug plan that Mexican officials contend infringes on their nation's sovereignty by conditioning aid to performance on human rights, a senior U.S. senator said Sunday." Read about it here.

"Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., said that a visiting delegation of U.S. lawmakers will take concerns expressed to them by Mexican legislators this weekend back to the U.S. Congress, which has been considering the aid plan, known as the Merida Initiative."

"The plan, proposed in October by U.S. President George Bush, would give Mexico and other Latin American countries US$1.4 billion over several years to fight drug trafficking."

Tijuana's elite, escaping drug violence, flee to San Diego

"Real estate agents, business owners and victims groups estimate that more than 1,000 Tijuana families -- including those of doctors, lawyers, law enforcement officials, Lucha Libre wrestlers and business owners -- have [moved from Tijuana to San Diego County] in recent years as the drug-fueled violence has worsened," writes the Times' Richard Marosi in this story.

"People have arrived in south San Diego County with only the clothes on their back. Kidnapping victims released after lengthy captivities have shown up long-haired and disheveled, sometimes with fresh wounds."

"Real estate agents tell of clients with fingers missing, sliced off by kidnappers who sent them to relatives as proof the victims were alive."

Read on....

Photo: Erik Hernandez washes the car of a Tijuana businessman in Eastlake. Hernandez, who commutes daily from a poor area of Tijuana, says he works all day for Mexicans who demand anonymity and pay well. Credit: Don Bartletti, Los Angeles Times

Wildlife coalition to file suit over environmental laws on the border

Disputes over the Department of Homeland Security's border fence project continue. The Dallas Morning News reports that a coalition of wildlife protection groups will file a federal lawsuit next week in El Paso, challenging the department's authority to waive state and federal laws to build a border security fence.

"The lawsuit by the Frontera Audubon Society, the Friends of the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge and the Friends of the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge claims that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff violated the Constitution's separation of powers when he waived 36 federal environmental laws to speed up construction of the fence."

Read on...

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City