Brazen Mexican incursion stretches American credulity �?and patience (McAllen,TX - Good read!)
The McAllen Monitor ^ | 02/02/2006 | The Monitor View

With its restrictions on everything from foreign ownership of real estate to the carrying of sidearms by American drug agents assigned there, the government of Mexico has made its touchiness about its sovereignty clear time and again. But when it comes to the sovereignty of the United States of America, Mexican contempt seems to know few limits.

The latest example came at 3:15 p.m. Monday (Jan. 23), as yet another standoff between armed Mexicans and American law-enforcement officers took place in Texas at the very spot where a similar standoff transpired Nov. 17. But instead of a fleeing dump truck full of dope pulled into Mexico by a bulldozer, Monday’s incident involved three vehicles heading southward at Neely’s Crossing �?protected by the sudden appearance of at least one Humvee equipped with a heavy machine gun and manned by men in military-style uniforms.

Chief Deputy Mike Doyal of the Hudspeth County Sheriff’s Office told the Ontario, Calif., Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, that the Mexicans deployed more than 200 yards inside the U.S. border to keep his deputies, Texas state troopers and U.S. Border Patrol agents at a distance. Their firepower again had the desired effect. Though one vehicle �?a Cadillac Escalade reportedly stolen in El Paso �?was captured with 1,477 pounds of dope inside, the rest made it back across, unmolested by the U.S. lawmen.

"It’s been so bred into everyone not to start an international incident that it’s been going on for years," Doyal complained. "When you’re up against mounted machine guns, what can you do? Who wants to pull the trigger first? Certainly not us."

While one can sympathize with Doyal �?U.S. Border Patrol agents�?and police officers�?light carbines and pistols would come off a poor second to vehicle-mounted heavy machine guns �?in one respect, he seems to be missing the point. A deployment of military weapons by foreigners on American soil to threaten American peace officers is an international incident �?at least, in the eyes of ordinary Americans.

And the latest incidence of it seems finally to have put the cat among Mexico’s pigeons. The Mexican consul general in El Paso announced Tuesday that his country’s army has now been ordered to keep its troops 3.2 miles from the U.S. border, while a Mexican Embassy spokesman declared in Washington that a full investigation is under way, including an inspection of Mexican military bases near the border to determine whether any uniforms or equipment are missing.

Both diplomats, however, loudly denied the Mexican army was involved in Monday’s incursion, blaming drug-cartel operatives instead. A U.S. law enforcement official declared there was no evidence that the uniformed gunmen were Mexican soldiers �?though that official was unwilling to speak on the record.

But in light of the Mexican military’s 216 border incursions in the last nine years, detailed in a Homeland Security Department document obtained by a southern California newspaper, the highly trained Mexican army turncoats �?"Los Zetas" �?who now serve as drug-cartel enforcers, and the high-ranking Mexican army officers that have been found to be in the pay of Mexican drug lords in the past, the possibility of involvement by corrupt Mexican military personnel in this incident cannot be discounted �?particularly given the appearance of uniformed men at the scene of Monday’s incident to dismantle a gun-mounted Humvee that had gotten stuck in the Rio Grande on the way back and been set afire by its occupants.

What did they have to hide? Those responsible for the security of our borders had best find out.