Congress must probe reports of border incursions
Congress must heed Rep. David Dreier’s call for a full investigation of reports that Mexican military personnel have crossed the border into the United States more than 200 times in the past decade.
Daily Bulletin reporter Sara A. Carter broke this national story Sunday after obtaining a Department of Homeland Security document showing 216 such incursions since 1996 and an Office of National Drug Control Policy map showing 23 incursions in 2001.
Border Patrol agents and some members of Congress have said that Mexican soldiers cross the border to help drug traffickers and human smugglers enter the United States.
‘‘It’s horrifying,” Dreier, R-Glendora, said of the incursion reports. ‘‘This is the kind of stuff that we feared, and it is certainly a threat to our national security.”
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff downplayed the reports Wednesday, even as he acknowledged that the Border Patrol has long known of incursions by uniformed troops, which he confirmed have averaged about 20 a year for a decade. Chertoff suggested that most of the incidents were caused by soldiers unable to pinpoint the border or criminals wearing military uniforms.
Chertoff’s attitude is representative of the callousness with which many federal officials treat Border Patrol officers. They make a lot of noise about securing our borders, but show little support or concern for the men and women who are trying to do that job.
T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, counters with incidents such as the capture in 2000, on the U.S. side of the border, of 16 Mexican soldiers who had fired on agents, and the July shooting of two agents by men dressed as Mexican soldiers.
Carter and fellow reporter Mason Stockstill reported Jan. 10 on a confidential Homeland Security memo obtained by the Daily Bulletin that said Mexican smugglers planned to hire violent MS-13 gang
members to murder U.S. Border Patrol agents. Yet many agents, including union chief Bonner, were unaware of the Officer Safety Alert until contacted by the Daily Bulletin – 19 days after the Dec. 21 date on the federal alert. ‘‘I think Washington doesn’t want the public to know how bad it really is,” Bonner said.
Dreier, at least, is taking the threats and the incursions seriously. Even as a congressional leader, chairman of the House Rules Committee, a close associate of the president and an important player in U.S.-Mexico relations, Dreier said he was unaware of the federal incursion documents until the Daily Bulletin reported on them. He contacted Mexican government officials Wednesday about the issue, in addition to calling for Congress to act.
And act it must, to determine the extent of the Mexican military’s involvement. This issue is a microcosm of the larger issue of illegal immigration, where federal inaction over many years has resulted in a dysfunctional system that is unfair to all – except perhaps the business interests that benefit from low-wage labor. Congress and the White House must act this year to increase legal immigration, stiffen penalties and enforcement against the hiring of undocumented workers, and bring the 11 million illegal immigrants already here out of the shadows.
But first, they must investigate thoroughly the reported military incursions and threats against the Border Patrol, and give agents the numbers, equipment and support they need.
