Border Drug Wars, Bombs & Terrorism

Our southwestern border is surely in the same zip code as Hell!

A November 16, 2008 Los Angeles Times article pointed out that, “Few regions of the U.S. are immune to drug-trafficking organizations that have caused horrendous death and destruction." So far in 2008 drug related violence in Mexico has left nearly 4,000 of its people dead. And the violence has spread deep into the United States. There is a trail of slayings, kidnappings and other serious crimes that lead to at least 195 cities as far as Atlanta, Boston, Seattle and Honolulu.

The current top four Mexican drug-trafficking organizations battling for turf and dominance have brought a war once considered a foreign problem to the doorstep of local U.S. communities. There’s ample documentation to show the violence associated with the Mexican drug wars is wreaking havoc on the northern border towns of Mexico, and this violence has shattered our border.

This September intelligence sources advised the Washington Times that Mexico's drug cartel members and police officials in Mexico, trying to spare their families from the violence that has overwhelmed many Mexican border towns, could begin relocating them to the United States. This could prove problematic for us and result in more homicides and home invasions along the southwestern border, increased availability of high-powered weapons to Mexican drug smugglers already in the U.S., and the likelihood that the family members would continue the drug operations once they are here.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reported an unprecedented surge in violence along the 1,951-mile US-Mexico border with 892 border agents assaulted in fiscal year 2008 - a stark increase when compared to the 638 assaults during the first 10 months of fiscal year 2006.

Interdiction operations by our law enforcement agents and Mexican authorities are ongoing, and though I monitor a lot of it there’s “sameness” to the operations. A dozen or so cartel members arrested, large quantities of drugs recovered, weapons and the like has become usual fare, and the “busts” are generally carried next to the papers’ obit pages. But there is a recent upward trend that’s caught my attention. The use of remotely detonated bombs or improvised explosive devices (IED) is becoming more pervasive, and could well become the major kill weapon employed by the cartels in the future. IEDs are the largest killers of U.S. troops in Iraq, and according to Pentagon figures, through January 20, 2008 IEDs have killed 1,327 troops and wounded 11,861 others.

During a January 2006 raid on a drug gang in Laredo, Texas, federal agents seized two completed IEDs, materials for making 33 more, 300 primers, 1,280 rounds of ammunition, five grenades, nine pipes with end caps, 26 grenade triggers (14 with fuses and primers attached), 31 grenade spoons, 40 grenade pins, 19 black powder casings, a silencer and cash.

On February 27, 2008 in Mexico City an attack meant to kill the police chief failed when the bomb exploded prematurely, killing the bomb carrier. The attack according to the police was planned from outside the capital and it raised fears that Mexico's drug cartels could be starting a bomb campaign against the government in reaction to an army-led operation to crush them.

In an October 2007 sting operation, police “purchased” seven IEDs from a bomb maker and recovered two more in his house in Freemont, California. Some were designed to detonate remotely by cell phone transmission.

At this juncture the IEDs being used by the drug assassins aren't identical to those manufactured by the Iranians. But it doesn’t take much of a stretch to believe going forward as the drug cartels want even more sophisticated deadly devices that they will obtain the expertise of the terrorist bomb makers. It's past arguing that the MS-13 gang members and “coyotes” (human traffickers) have been smuggling illegal aliens from the Middle East into the U.S. for years, and many of those illegals are from Iran. Most certainly members of the elite Revolutionary Guards (RG) have infiltrated our country by crossing the southern border. It is important to remember the man in charge of the RG is appointed by and reports to the supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the true power broker of Iran. Any chaos that the Iranians can cause the U.S. fits into their jihadist plans, and this might include providing IED technology to those involved in the border wars. Today the RG are training the Iraqi insurgents in the use of IEDs and in the manufacture and use of the even more deadly explosively formed projective (EFP) capable of destroying an Abrams tank.

A border patrol veteran in an April 2008 confidential report said that, “They’ve (drug cartels) got weapons, high-tech radios; computers, cell phones, GPS, spotters and they react faster than we can. They have no hesitancy to attack the agents on the line with anything from assault rifles and improvised Molotov cocktails to rocks, concrete slabs and bottles.” Soon, I’m afraid; he can add remotely detonated IEDs to the arsenals of the drug cartels.