Gun For The Border

From IBD:

Sovereignty: As a House panel gets ready to hold hearings into Mexican military incursions into the U.S., men appearing to be Mexican soldiers have violated U.S. territory for the second time in two weeks.

After meeting Friday with law enforcement officials in El Paso, Texas, Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the investigations subcommittee of the Homeland Security Committee, set a hearing for Tuesday in Washington into what appear to be repeated Mexican military incursions into this country.

The timing could not be better. Officials in Hudspeth County, Texas, have reported a second armed incursion from the Mexican side of the border into the U.S. — an incident that was recorded on camera by El Paso Fox affiliate KFOX-TV as it was visiting the scene of a Jan. 23 armed confrontation between U.S. law enforcement and armed Mexicans on our side of the border.

In the latest incident, which happened on the night of Jan. 31, the KFOX news crew and a Hudspeth's County sheriff's deputy being interviewed spotted men who were armed and in uniform approaching the U.S. border. When they saw the camera crew, they retreated. Shortly after that, the deputy spotted other armed men, also in uniform, crossing into the U.S. at another point, attempting to outflank the deputy and news crew.

After this incident, the Border Patrol reported that it had been contacted by Mexican authorities who admitted the intruders were Mexican soldiers. Border Patrol Assistant Chief Robert Boatright told KFOX: "Mexican officials got in touch with our Mexican liaison unit to advise us that they had requested the assistance of the Mexican military and that they were down in Hudspeth County."

This admission was made only after, and perhaps only because, the soldiers this time were caught on film. And because official Mexican government policy is that no armed Mexican soldiers can come within three miles of the border, the Mexican Consulate gave a different story: that they were Mexican state police investigating the Jan. 23 incident. But on U.S. soil, without U.S knowledge? Hello?

In the Jan. 23 incident, Hudspeth sheriff's deputies pursued three SUVs back to Mexico after spotting them north of the Rio Grande. One of them got stuck in the river bed and was found to be carrying 1,400 pounds of marijuana .

The pursuit ended on the U.S. side of the border with the deputies, joined by Texas state troopers, encountering 10 heavily armed men wearing what Hudspeth County Sheriff Arvin West described as battle-dress uniforms. The suspected soldiers had a Humvee with military paint and a .50-caliber machine gun.

Rep. McCaul said it's "one of three things: Mexican military, drug dealers dressed as Mexican military or the cartel buying them off." In any event, the U.S. border and American sovereignty is being repeatedly violated by men in military uniforms who are armed and dangerous.

Not just drug smugglers and their armed escorts may be coming across. In October 2001, an Iraqi-born smuggler named George Tajirian pleaded guilty to conspiring with a Mexican immigration official to bring more than 1,000 people from the Middle East into the U.S. illegally.

Among them, according to federal prosecutors, were "persons with known ties to subversive or terrorist organizations as well as individuals with known criminal records."

"It is disgraceful," said Chris Simcox, a founder of the Minutemen, the citizens who assist in watching the U.S. border, "that American citizens, including law enforcement, live under the threat of a foreign army that enters our country at will.

"It took the murder of 3,000 Americans on American soil for the government to take international terrorism seriously. With the Mexican army, drug smugglers, human traffickers and terrorists able to cross our border with impunity, it seems the mass murder of Americans living on our border will cause the government to take decisive action to secure our borders."

We hope not.