Mexican Insurgents Are A Bigger Threat To U.S. Than Islamic Terrorists
Dec 14, 2010 2 Comments ›› Pat Dollard
People look for scrap metal in the remains of a burnt vehicle used as a roadblock by members of the La Familia insurgent group on the highway between Morelia and Apatzingan December 11, 2010
Be SAFE
Excerpted From N.M. Politics:
By Heath Haussamen
When I pause to think about it, it seems surreal that I live in the United States, and I also live 45 miles from one of the biggest war zones in the world.
And yet, it’s true.
That reality – the drug war that has plunged Mexico into chaos – is as big a threat in the United States as terrorism, one border security expert is arguing.
From a recent column by Sylvia Longmire for CNN:
“Mexican drug cartels are arguably as dangerous and deadly as terrorists, and they were operating far inside our borders well before 9/11.
“…According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Drug Intelligence Center, members of Mexican cartels are operating in more than 270 U.S. cities and thousands of smaller communities. … This is the real and current major threat to our national security – tens of thousands of violent Mexican cartel members who are living and operating under our noses in our cities, communities and public lands.”
Longmire is a former special agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations who also worked for years as an intelligence analyst and border security expert for the California Emergency Management Agency.
The evidence is all around us
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You don’t have to take Longmire’s word for it, however. The evidence is all around us. I wrote earlier this year about cartel activity in New Mexico. A 2007 report to Congress on Mexico’s drug cartels cited the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in stating that the Juárez Cartel has a presence in Southern New Mexico. The report also cited the 2007 National Drug Threat Assessment as saying there is a cartel presence in Las Cruces.
A 2009 federal report tells the story of a teen who smuggled drugs into New Mexico on behalf of the Sinaloa Cartel. The cartel had him killed in a “remote area of New Mexico” because he owed the cartel money.
In January 2009, according to the report, another drug trafficker was shot and killed “in a remote area of Silver City” for failing to pay a drug debt. A week later, the wife of another drug trafficker who owed money was found dead in the same location.
The report states that cartels “also engage in other crimes, including alien smuggling, auto theft, kidnapping, murder, and weapons smuggling to further their criminal enterprises and generate illicit proceeds.”
“Many of these violent traffickers obtain firearms by burglarizing businesses, private homes, and vehicles in the New Mexico (High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area) region,” the report states.
Have you considered the possibility that the burglary you recently read about in the newspaper might have been a cartel-related crime?
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