Guarding the US border (catch all)

[Kevin23]

Warehouses and office parks, specifically those near the Mexican border, have come more and more to the attention of Federal law enforcement officials. Due to their suspected use by Mexican drug cartels to smuggle narcotics and other illicit goods into the United States.

This particular story focuses on searches and investigations into warehouses in Southern California along the crossings into Mexico, in which tunnels were dug underneath these buildings in order to provide a place to unload drugs.

Here is the link,

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40495815/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts

[SWJ Blog]

Societal Warfare South of the Border? (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2011/05/societal-warfare-south-of-the/)

Entry Excerpt:

Extreme Barbarism, a Death Cult, and Holy Warriors in Mexico:
Societal Warfare South of the Border?
by Dr. Robert J. Bunker and John P. Sullivan

Download the Full Article: Societal Warfare South of the Border? (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/journal/docs-temp/769-bunkersullivan.pdf)

This short essay is about impression—gut feelings combined with a certain amount of analytical skill—about recent trends taking place in Mexico concerning the ongoing criminal insurgencies being waged by the various warring cartels, gangs, and mercenary organizations that have metastasized though out that nation (and in many other regions as well). The authors spent over eight hours sequestered together about a month ago on a five-hundred mile ‘there and back again road trip’ to attend a training conference as instructors for the Kern County Chiefs of Police. Our talks centered on Mexican Drug Cartels, 3rd Generation Gangs, 3rd Phase Cartels, Criminal Insurgency Theory, and a host of related topics most folks just don’t normally discuss in polite company. In the car, and at the conference, we were bombarded by Sullivan’s never ending twitter and social networking news feeds—in Spanish and English—linked to the criminal violence in Mexico. If Dante had been our contemporary, we fear, he could just have easily taken a stroll through some of the cities and towns of Mexico using those news feeds and substituting the imagery for the circles of hell he described in his early 14th century work the Divine Comedy.

The hours of conversation about the conflicts in Mexico, bolstered by the news feeds and even the Q&A from the training time provided to the Kern Chiefs, provided us both with much to reflect upon. Additionally, both authors are currently co-writing three essays for a follow-on project to the earlier Narcos Over the Border (Routledge) book, the work that zenpundit.com found as “…one of the more disturbing academic works recently published in the national security field, not excluding even those monographs dealing with Islamist terrorism and Pakistan,” concerning Mexico’s immense problems. If this were not enough, as part of our ongoing collaboration, the authors have been trying to determine what to make of Hazen’s June 2010 International Review of the Red Cross paper “Understanding gangs as armed groups.” Her conclusions just don’t correlate with the empirical evidence stemming from the cartel and gang related incidents regularly occurring in Mexico. That work suggests to us that American street gang researchers, whose work Hazen utilized as the basis of her analysis, are totally insulated from the reality of the conflicts in Mexico—just as are many members of the American public and their elected officials. For good or for bad, we are not so well insulated, having tracked what has been taking place in that country for some years now. The ongoing review (for the purposes of identifying cartel tattoos, cult icons, and instances of ritual killing) of the images of the tortured and broken bodies—some no longer recognizable as once ever being human beings— continually haunts us both.

Our impression is that what is now taking place in Mexico has for some time gone way beyond secular and criminal (economic) activities as defined by traditional organized crime studies. In fact, the intensity of change may indeed be increasing. Not only have de facto political elements come to the fore—i.e., when a cartel takes over an entire city or town, they have no choice but to take over political functions formerly administered by the local government— but social (narcocultura) and religious/spiritual (narcocultos) characteristics are now making themselves more pronounced. What we are likely witnessing is Mexican society starting to not only unravel but to go to war with itself. The bonds and relationships that hold that society together are fraying, unraveling, and, in some instances, the polarity is reversing itself with trust being replaced by mistrust and suspicion. Traditional Mexican values and competing criminal value systems are engaged in a brutal contest over the ‘hearts, minds, and souls’ of its citizens in a street-by-street, block-by-block, and city-by-city war over the future social and political organization of Mexico. Environmental modification is taking place in some urban centers and rural outposts as deviant norms replace traditional ones and the younger generation fully accepts a criminal value system as their baseline of behavior because they have known no other. The continuing incidents of ever increasing barbarism—some would call this a manifestation of evil even if secularly motivated—and the growing popularity of a death cult are but two examples of this clash of values. Additionally, the early rise of what appears to be cartel holy warriors may now also be taking place. While extreme barbarism, death cults, and possibly now holy warriors found in the Mexican cartel wars are still somewhat the exception rather than the rule, each of these trends is extremely alarming, and will be touched upon in turn.

Download the Full Article: Societal Warfare South of the Border? (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/journal/docs-temp/769-bunkersullivan.pdf)

Dr. Robert J. Bunker and John P. Sullivan are frequent contributors to Small Wars Journal.



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[SWJ Blog]

The Criminals South of the Border (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/the-criminals-south-of-the-border)

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[SWJ Blog]

Communications Failures Contributed to Border Incident (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/communications-failures-contributed-to-border-incident)

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[phil b]

Border Patrol unveils national strategy (http://news.yahoo.com/border-patrol-gets-first-strategy-8-years-100323478.html)


The U.S. Border Patrol on Tuesday unveiled its first national strategy in eight years, a period in which the number of agents more than doubled and apprehensions of people entering illegally from Mexico dropped to a 40-year low.

The new approach — outlined in a 32-page document that took more than two years to develop — uses buzzwords like "risk-based" and "intelligence-driven" to describe a more nuanced, targeted response to constantly evolving threats.

The Border Patrol previously relied on a strategy that blanketed heavily trafficked corridors for illegal immigrants with agents, pushing migrants to more remote areas where they would presumably be easier to capture and discouraged from trying again.
...
The strategy makes only brief mention of technology in the wake of a failed $1 billion program that was supposed to put a network of cameras, ground sensors and radars along the entire border. Fisher said the agency is moving more toward mobile surveillance like unmanned aerial vehicles and helicopters.
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The strategy makes it a top priority to ferret out corrupt agents, which has emerged as a growing threat as the agency has expanded.

It is the Border Patrol's third national strategy since 1994, when the agency poured resources into the San Diego and El Paso, Texas, areas. That effort pushed migrants to remote mountains and deserts and made Arizona the nation's busiest crossing for illegal crossings.

Still looking for an online copy of the strategy.

[davidbfpo]

Phil B your citation included:
The strategy makes only brief mention of technology in the wake of a failed $1 billion program that was supposed to put a network of cameras, ground sensors and radars along the entire border.

There is a "hue & cry" in the UK currently over various failings of UK border policy and implementation, notably long queues at London Heathrow before the anticipated Olympic rush. In the background is the failure of a large IT project 'E-Borders', which aimed to collect all passenger data for flights in and out of he UK, to pre-alert staff at the border. Plus a reduction in staff who do the checks.

The US program had a different approach, IMO the common link is a reliance on an IT-based network to provide targeting information.

[ganulv]

I spent part of last week in Québec and chose to do the border crossing at a very low-key CBSA checkpoint (http://flic.kr/p/bDXpJ1) in order to have a look at the unusual situation shown in the photo below. It put the task of border control into better perspective for me.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8009/7005124494_974c304dc6.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtbradley/7005124494/)
Looking west down Rue Canusa. The international border is at the center line of the street -- westbound traffic travels in Canada, eastbound traffic travels in the United States. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtbradley/7005124494/)

[SWJ Blog]

Border School Training Conference Held in California (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/border-school-training-conference-held-in-california)

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[SWJ Blog]

Border Security Threats to the Homeland (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/border-security-threats-to-the-homeland)

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[SWJ Blog]

Enhancing North American Security Along the Southwest Border (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/enhancing-north-american-security-along-the-southwest-border)

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[SWJ Blog]

Border Violence Spillover: A Growing, but Undefined Problem (http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/border-violence-spillover-a-growing-but-undefined-problem)

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[bourbon]

Out on the Border: Numbers and politicians tell us we are winning the war along our Southwest border - A closer look and inside view tells a very different story (http://dangerousmagazine.com/project/out-on-the-border/), by Will Grant. Dangerous Magazine, 5 May 2013.

There is a sense of urgency and frustration as humans and contraband flow into the US from Mexico and law enforcement tries to stop the influx. Last year, the US spent nearly $18 billion on immigration security, more than all other law enforcement agencies combined. In 2013, Customs and Border Protection alone has been allotted nearly $12 billion to enforce border security, up from $5.9 billion in 2003. Like any issue that has additional money and resources thrown at it, the problem should be lessening. Border security should be increasing. It is not.

Though US law enforcement presence along the Southwest border is at an all-time high, the number of arrests is as low as it’s been since the 1970s. Arrests increased from 2011 to 2012 from about 328,000 to about 357,000, but the overwhelming trend during the last decade has been a decrease in apprehensions. The peak year for arrests of illegal aliens was 2000 when 1.7 million people were apprehended. Some credit the depressed US economy with attracting fewer illegal aliens. Others say stricter enforcement of immigration laws is actually working. Either way, more officials and fewer arrests would indicate a downward trend.

But if we steer away from official statistics and instead sample non-political indicators, the story seems very different.
Solid piece of journalism, proving a boots on the ground perspective. The author embeds with Maricopa County (Arizona) HIDTA Task Force operators - who are outfitted in multicam, milspec ATVs, M4s, and velcro.

[davidbfpo]

Bourbon,

Good catch! Two passages struck me; the first one with my emphasis:
The Center for Investigative Reporting was skeptical of the political optimism. Thanks to the statistics provided by the all-seeing Vehicle and Dismount Exploitation Radar, or VADER, mounted on the same Predator drone used by the CIA to launch drone strikes, we can use cold-blooded statistics. From October to December last year, law enforcement arrested 410 of the 7,333 individuals detected by VADER during operations in Arizona. That’s half of one percent of the illegal border crossers caught on camera, and works out to a rough average of five illegal entry attempts an hour…just in a small area along the Arizona–Mexico border.


When Napolitano gets up there and says the border is as secure as it’s ever been, who does she think she’s talking to?” Bailey says. “It’s complete mayhem out there.”

[SWJ Blog]

Institutionalizing a Risk-Based Approach in the U.S. Border Patrol (http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/institutionalizing-a-risk-based-approach-in-the-us-border-patrol)

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[SWJ Blog]

Sheriff and State Advisor Border Summits (http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/sheriff-and-state-advisor-border-summits)

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[SWJ Blog]

Mexican Cartel Tactical Note #26: Border Patrol Agent (& Gulf Cartel Cell Leader) Charged in U.S. Torture-Beheading (http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/mexican-cartel-tactical-note-26-border-patrol-agent-gulf-cartel-cell-leader-charged-in-us-t)

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[SWJ Blog]

The Challenge of the U.S.-Mexico Border (http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/the-challenge-of-the-us-mexico-border)

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[SWJ Blog]

Mexican Cartel Strategic Note No. 18: Narcodrones on the Border and Beyond (http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/mexican-cartel-strategic-note-no-18-narcodrones-on-the-border-and-beyond)

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[SWJ Blog]

Geographic Constraints of Narco-Tunnels Along the Southwest Border (http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/geographic-constraints-of-narco-tunnels-along-the-southwest-border)

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