Doesn't seem like this provides a long-term solution.......like sealing up the border would(from their side OR our side.......or BOTH)

Notice the part about their Constitution having to be violated......but hey, at least it's for a good cause......(don't worry, that could NEVER happen here.......)

AP IMPACT: With the Mexican army in the war on drugs, a temporary fix to a long-term problemOLGA R. RODRIGUEZ
Associated Press Writer
March 29, 2009
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-lt-mexico-with-the-soldiers,0,6637977.story
REYNOSA, Mexico (AP) — Acting on a tip, 30 masked soldiers in combat gear bust down the door of a boarded-up house to find 55 terrified migrants, hostages of the Gulf drug cartel.

Amid screams and the smell of urine and sweat, they find a blood-spattered room and a nail-encrusted log used to beat the captives and extort money from their families: $3,000 each.

Five suspected kidnappers are hauled off in a military truck, including the alleged leader — the son of a local police officer.

The Associated Press spent five days on the front line of Mexico's drug war, embedded with the army's 8th Division in Tamaulipas state, one of many organized-crime hotspots now policed by 45,000 troops nationwide. Launched by President Felipe Calderon in December 2006, the army is Mexico's last and best hope to gain control over drug cartels and spiraling violence, which have killed more than 9,000 people since then.

But the AP's exclusive front-row seat reveals the army offensive to be at once successful and imperfect, marred by police corruption, lack of training and local distrust. As Calderon has said, it's a temporary fix. There's still not a long-term solution.

Many Mexicans see the army as the only government entity able to face the heavily armed drug cartels, and soldiers rely on citizen complaints, such as the call that led them to the migrant hostages. They enter the house in a rough neighborhood without working with local police to get a search warrant, fearing officers could tip off the smugglers.

Army officials acknowledge they break rules to get results. Their fight is complicated by deep-rooted corruption among local and state police, who work as lookouts and sometimes hit men for the cartels.

"Here you can't call police," says army Capt. Huascar Santiago, "because they're in collusion."

The problem is also complicated by the constitution, which bars the army from doing police work such as the smuggling ring bust. Among other limits, soldiers legally can detain only people caught in the act of a crime as they check suspicious cars, rummage through trash cans and gather intelligence from neighbors.

Army Gen. Edgar Villegas, the division commander, says the military still maintains discipline in these situations.

"If we're going to act in this gray area, in the end what prevails is the honesty and transparency with which we do things," he says. "We're susceptible to committing errors, and when we do, we take responsibility for everything that comes with it."
___

In the Reynosa raid, the soldiers free nine women held in the living room in their underwear and 46 men crammed into two small bedrooms — some for up to a month — with little food and water. The torture room has a mattress on the floor and blood and posters of half-naked women on the walls. A handgun sits on a corner table.

The soldiers handcuff the ring leader and cover his head. He is taken into the bathroom, made to kneel in a bathtub beside a bucket of water. The door is shut. The suspect emerges wet and willing to reveal the addresses of two other smuggling houses, though they yield nothing.

"You're heroes. God will reward you," reads a text message on Santiago's cell phone from the man who gave him the tip.

Drug traffickers once had free rein in Tamaulipas, which borders Texas and the Gulf Coast — the home base for the Gulf cartel. They raced around in convoys of bulletproof sport utility vehicles, setting up roadblocks to protect turf and forcing Mexican customs agents at gun point to wave through cars coming from the U.S. without inspection. Men openly displayed their weapons as they drank in bars or had their ostrich-skinned boots shined in the town plaza.

That was before Calderon took office and sent the army — mostly twentysomethings from rural provinces — to wrest control of areas taken over by cartels.

The 8th Division — 2,400 troops plus 1,500 reinforcements — was deployed in late 2007 after a former border town mayor who denounced cartel meddling in local elections was shot dead outside a restaurant.
___

Maj. Andres Murias leads his column of 30 soldiers in the border town of Miguel Aleman past a house where he previously saw surveillance cameras and decides to make a stop. His soldiers find ski masks and ammunition inside a stolen truck in the yard, and freshly abandoned fried chicken and tortillas in the kitchen.

As his troops continue through the streets, Murias' driver points out a local squad car that keeps turning up nearby.

"We have been followed by the police every single moment," Murias says. "They have people everywhere reporting on our every move, and that makes it hard to surprise them."

But that doesn't keep them from trying. At dusk, Murias' unit shows up at a cattle ranch near the Rio Grande that he hears is a hideout for gunmen. Days earlier he flew over the ranch, taking pictures.

The military convoy breaks a chain to open the gate, shoos cows from its path and circles the property on bumpy dirt road lined by mesquite trees.

But the only find is a fuming Juan Gilberto Garza, the owner, demanding to know what intelligence the army used to illegally enter his land.

"You can come into the ranch whenever you want, but not like that," Garza says, shaking the broken chain at Murias. "I wanted to talk to you, to ask you to please close the gates. But no one would talk to me and left me standing there like an idiot."

Murias tells him a citizen complained of armed men on the property.

"I had to go in and check," he says.
___

Mexico's National Human Rights Commission recently reported that complaints against soldiers — including illegal searches and heavy-handed treatment of detainees — jumped to 1,230 in 2008 from 182 in 2006, before the troops were dispatched.

Calderon defends them. In most areas where large military forces have been deployed, drug-related violence has dropped. That includes Mexico's deadliest city, Ciudad Juarez, where the federal government says drug-related killings are down 70 percent since 11,000 soldiers and federal agents arrived in February.

Murias' unit alone confiscated 52 tons of marijuana in 2008, compared to 2 tons in 2006. Last November, the 8th Division made the largest drug weapons seizure in Mexican history — 540 assault rifles, 165 grenades and 500,000 rounds of ammunition.

But signs are everywhere in Tamaulipas that cartel leaders are ready to return to business as usual as soon as the soldiers leave.

Illegal antennas adorn rooftops and empty lots — 5,000 in Nuevo Laredo alone — allowing a wide network of cartel spies to communicate by walkie-talkie. In some towns, residents tolerate and even protect the traffickers.
___

In the town of Guardados de Abajo, another army unit is camping along the Rio Grande when soldiers hear a truck rumbling in the dark. They investigate to find more than 800 pounds (400 kilograms) of marijuana abandoned on the riverbank.

The next day, Murias discovers that the only way to get to the spot where the drugs were dumped is through a private driveway that passes a house and a goat pen.

He asks the resident if she heard anything suspicious the night before.

"I keep to myself," she says, nervously smoothing the sweater on her toddler. "And I go to bed early."

Well, since sealing that much border is impossible...

Interior enforcement on both sides is what we have available...

I know you don't believe it, of course...

But the fact remains that 2.5k miles is too much...

Now, if we had a southern border about the size of Mexico's... Then security measures become practical...

Either way, the cartel fucks will fly & boat their way over anyway - these are people who build SUBMARINES to smuggle drugs, as it is...

If you think a swiss-cheese wall/fence will stop folks who are turning boats into subs rather than crossing the border...

Well...

It's like a funnel, it "diverts" people to a bottlenecked location instead of allowing them to just cross at will, it is just a tool
(they're a little easier to catch when they are "grouped" or in a boat or plane, instead of just hiking over a stream\fence)

as far as the interior enforcement, are you aware that illegals are not deported when found or arrested?

city after city is calling for the deporting of "criminal aliens".....that's an illegal that has committed a multiple felonies

BUT THEY'RE NOT EVEN DEPORTING ALL, OR EVEN MOST, OF THE ILLEGALS WITH MULTIPLE FELONIES

our traffic laws aren't even being enforced against them, THERE IS NO INTERIOR ENFORCEMENT

illegals are racking up multiple rapes, DUIs, DVs and other crimes without even being deported

and the ones they do send back are being given "voluntary deportation", which means "free ride" in english, they are NOT being legally deported

and, because we don't have effective border control the ones that are sent back return easily, SOMETIMES THE SAME DAY THEY WERE DEPORTED


BUILD THE WALL
DEPORT THEM ALL
MILITARIZE THE BORDER


one of the cartels had a hit in a restaurant parking lot right here IN Houston a few weeks ago

we have bars here with teenagers kidnapped and forced into prostitution servicing the illegals

illegals working as busboys, cooks, day laborers and in construction are KILLING LEOs regularly

our country wouldn't be perfect without illegals, but it sure is a LOT worse off with them being here

So skip the wall, and just deport people...

The fact is that no matter how many times you stick your fingers in your ears and hum, walls & linear defenses do not work, period...

Especially when we're talking about the CARTELS - not the illegal aliens...

Remember: Drug cartels, who have millions to billions of dollars, do not need illegal immigration to conduct business, nor do they need foot-traffic over the border...

Trying to piggyback illegal immigration on the cartel issue is a red herring...

They are two separate problems...

One requires a law-enforcement solution (immigration)

The other may require a military solution, IN Mexico (Cartels)....

Have you ever heard of the former Soviet Union?  Or the borders of the former Warsaw Pact nations with (1) the NATO and neutral nation of Europe and (2) each other?

I can't believe I am going to defend Dave_A's position on this, but...

2.5k miles would require a lot of man power to maintain when the threat of armed attack is a possibility. The Soviet Union and Warsaw pact countries had this ability due to their massive armies and required participation by every young male. However, our country is stretching its army thin and does not have the ability to defend 2.5k miles of fence from the random 30+ drug smugglers that would just cut through it at will and respond to any attempt to stop them with heavy fire. The best way to stop the drugs is heavy handed enforcement where they are made, inside Mexico.

Now a fence might work for illegal immigrants that are not heavily armed and could be rounded up by two to four border patrol agents. But that is a different issue.

So says the person living way up in WASHINGTON STATE!!!!

We have millions of worthless motherfuckers collecting welfare in this country for no good reason.

Want a check? Lay some fucking bricks.

Same goes for unemployment.  Hey look, now you have a job! Lay fucking bricks.