Early in the morning of September 27th, around 2 a.m., a gunfight erupted between moving vehicles on an expressway.
Jorge Zavala, the 32-year driver of a Ford Expedition, was driving down the expressway, accompanied by a 22-year old man. A Chevrolet Tahoe pulled up alongside them, from which a gunman unloaded a volley of gunfire.
Zavala lost control of his Ford Expedition, crashed and died. The cause of death, though, was not the crash but the multiple gunshot wounds.
Police believe that Zavala was associated with Mexico’s Gulf Cartel, which has been undergoing its own internal struggle for power, pitting the Rojos against the Metros.
Just another day in Mexico? Not this time. Zavala’s killing occurred on the Texas side of the border, on the McAllen Expressway. Fatal gunshots on McAllen expressway point to Gulf Cartel, The (McAllen) Monitor, Sept. 27th, 2011)
Not only are drug cartels shooting up Mexico, they’re now north of the border. They are expanding in several states—notably Texas.
And it’s been happening under the watch of Texas Governor Rick Perry, who wants to be our president.
That’s the same Rick Perry who opposes a fence on the border and brags about giving benefits to illegal aliens.
Two reports have just been released that point out the gravity of the Mexican cartel infiltration.
In August the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Drug Intelligence Center released its “National Drug Threat Assessment 2011”. [PDF]This report has plenty of bad news in it.
According to the document’s Executive Summary:
“The illicit trafficking and abuse of drugs present a challenging, dynamic threat to the United States. Overall demand is rising, largely supplied by illicit drugs smuggled to U.S. markets by major transnational criminal organizations (TCOs). .. Major Mexican-based TCOs continue to solidify their dominance over the wholesale illicit drug trade as they control the movement of most of the foreign-produced drug supply across the U.S. Southwest Border.”
(Emphasis in original).
The report points out that the use of marijuana, heroin and methamphetamines appears to be on the upswing among our young people. That of course means more consumers willing to buy the Mexican cartels’ products and thus finance them. And where there’s demand, supply follows.
But who is helping these Mexican cartels market their wares north of the border? The Drug Threat Assessment says that
“The threat posed by gang involvement in drug trafficking is increasing, particularly in the Southwest Region. With gangs already the dominant retail drug suppliers in major and midsized cities, some gang members are solidifying their ties to Mexican TCOs to bolster their involvement in wholesale smuggling, internal distribution, and control of the retail trade.”
The Assessment document expects this Mexican cartel/U.S. gang cooperation to increase. It makes special mention of the Sureños Hispanic street gangs from California who have moved into other border states. Then there is the Barrio Azteca, a Texas-based prison-based gang allied with the Juarez cartel.
Note that the growth of large Mexican barrios, or neighborhoods, in Texas and other states facilitates the growth of gangs that can then make alliances with the cartels. The “sanctuary” policy in many cities makes it very difficult to deport illegal aliens mixed up in the drug trade.
“The Southwest Border” says the report “remains the primary gateway for moving illicit drugs into the United States.”
More specifically
“Smugglers under the direction of Mexican traffickers move most of the cocaine, heroin, foreign-produced marijuana, and foreign-produced methamphetamine available in this country through, between, and around land border crossings in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas.”
If you have a porous border, then drug traffickers, illegal aliens, arms smugglers, terrorists, etc. are able to cross it. If you leave your border unguarded, then don’t complain about these problems.
The Drug Threat Assessment is not optimistic. It predicts that
“The threat posed by the trafficking and abuse of illicit drugs will not abate in the near term and may increase.”
That’s not encouraging.
In September, another report was been issued, specifically concerning the Texas border. It’s entitled “Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment.” (PDF).
This report was commissioned by the Texas Department of Agriculture and headed up by two retired generals: Robert H. Scales, PhD. and the famous Barry McCaffrey. McCaffrey was the commander of the 24th Infantry Division in Operation Desert Storm, later head of the United States Southern Command and after retirement Bill Clinton’s Drug Czar.
The Texas report provides more details of how the Mexican cartels are gaining power in Rick Perry’s Texas:
“During the past two years the state of Texas has become increasingly threatened by the spread of Mexican cartel organized crime. The threat reflects a change in the strategic intent of the cartels to move their operations into the United States. In effect, the cartels seek to create a ‘sanitary zone’ inside the Texas border—one county deep—that will provide sanctuary from Mexican law enforcement and, at the same time, enable the cartels to transform Texas’ border counties into narcotics transshipment points for continued transport and distribution into the continental United States.”
Think about that. The Mexican cartels have a strategic plan to establish a presence in Texas. And it’s working:
“Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw has testified to the fact that over the last 18 months, six of seven cartels have established command and control facilities in Texas cities that rival even the most sophisticated battalion or brigade level combat headquarters.”
Imagine that—right in the heart of Rick Perry’s Texas!
The report pointed out that, paradoxically, even if Mexican security forces are successful against the cartels, that could drive more cartel activity into Texas!
And the report actually cites “porous borders”:
“America’s fight against narco-terrorism, when viewed at the strategic level, takes on the classic trappings of a real war. Crime, gangs and terrorism have converged in such a way that they form a collective threat to the national security of the United States. America is being assaulted not just from across our southern border but from across the hemisphere and beyond. All of Central and South America have become an interconnected source of violence and terrorism. Drug cartels exploit porous borders using all the traditional elements of military force, including command and control, logistics, intelligence, information operations and the application of increasingly deadly firepower.”
The McCaffrey/Scales report describes the relationship of Texas gangs to the Mexican drug cartels:
“These gangs are recruited on the streets of Texas cities and inside Texas prisons by top-tier gangs who work in conjunction with the cartels.”
Prison gangs mentioned are the Mexican Mafia, Texas Syndicate, Tango Blast and Barrio Azteca.
The report draws a picture of the dangers posed to agriculture on the border, with farmers and ranchers threatened by the cartels´ activities. It goes so far as to state that “Living and conducting business in a Texas border county is tantamount to living in a war zone…”
All the corruption, by the way, isn’t limited to the south side of the border:
“The ever-expanding tentacles of drug-related crime are becoming very worrisome in Texas. Two south Texas sheriffs and 70 [Vdare.com note:!!] Customs and Border Patrol officials have been convicted for cartel-related corruption.”
So it’s very clear that Texas has a huge problem. But what’s the solution?
Here is where the McCaffrey/Scales report drops the ball. It does a lot of cheerleading for the Rick Perry administration in its valiant struggle against the cartels:
“Texas has been the most aggressive and creative in confronting the threat of what has come to be a narco-terrorist military-style campaign being waged against them.”
McCaffrey and Scales tell us about Perry’s 4-point plan to secure the border, the Texas Ranger Reconnaissance Teams, Operation Border Star, tactical contact teams, the Autonomous Surveillance Platform, “boots on the ground”, etc., etc. etc.
It sounds real cool, doesn’t it? But it hasn’t stopped the problem—has it?
How about a fence?
A well-constructed fence, properly maintained and patrolled would be highly effective.
A few years ago, as part of the Texas Army National Guard, I was deployed to Iraq. Indeed, Rick Perry himself spoke at our unit’s departure ceremony and return ceremony. In Iraq, we had patrols and guard towers and checkpoints and the like, but these things did not negate the need for a fence. They were all used in conjunction.
But the McCaffrey/Scales report…rejects the need for a fence:
“Proposals to build security fences along the U.S.-Mexico border also inflamed sentiment in Mexico and the U.S. Texas DPS concludes that a fence from Brownsville to El Paso would simply be too expensive to build and keep under surveillance.”
So they won’t fence off the border because the idea “inflamed sentiment in Mexico”? Of course it did. What else is new?
Anybody who bases border plans on public opinion in Mexico is not serious about border control.
It doesn’t matter how much one talks about “boots on the ground”. If the Texas elite don’t want a fence on the border, they are not serious about border control.
As for General McCaffrey, we already know he’s not serious about controlling the border. In 1997, while on a visit to Mexico while serving as drug czar, McCaffrey declared that “We really don’t have a border between the two countries.” [McCaffrey conciliatory in Mexico | U.S. drug czar urges cooperation in fight, By S. Lynne Walker, Copley News Service, April 18, 1997]
If that’s true, General McCaffrey, what’s the point in complaining about cartel infiltration—and what’s the point of this whole report?
How can anybody believe that Rick Perry would protect the United States from invasion when he won’t even do what’s necessary to protect his own state of Texas?
American citizen Allan Wall (email him) recently moved back to the U.S.A. after many years residing in Mexico. In 2005, Allan served a tour of duty in Iraq with the Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are archived here; his Mexidata.info articles are archived here; his News With Views columns are archived here; and his website is here.
