Time for a wall
By Jerry on Foreign Policy
Common Sense and Wonder
Saturday January 28, 2006
<<< Border chief: Mexican army likely involved
(Louie Gilot-El Paso Times)
The national head of the Border Patrol, Chief David V. Aguilar, said that despite denials from Mexican authorities, the men in uniforms in a border standoff Monday near Sierra Blanca might very well be Mexican soldiers.
“They were wearing military-style uniforms, driving military-style vehicles, carrying military-style weapons, but we didn’t apprehend them. We don’t know what they are. Sheriff (Leo) Samaniego feels they were (Mexican soldiers). I would have a tendency to agree with him,” Aguilar said.
The standoff, between state troopers and armed and uniformed men in a Humvee, occurred in the Neely’s Crossing area in Hudspeth County. The men on the Mexican side of the river were protecting a drug load in SUVs fleeing back to Mexico. No shots were fired.
Aguilar, who stopped at a plane hangar on Boeing Drive on Friday as part of a border tour, said he received commitment “at the highest level” of the Mexican government to investigate the incident fully.
Bosco Marti, the director for North America at the Mexican ministry of foreign affairs, was in El Paso on Friday. He said the men were not Mexican soldiers because the vehicles and weapons captured on a video of the clash were not those used by the soldiers based in Juárez.
Using military uniforms “has been done before, to distract attention and make the relations (between the U.S. and Mexico) more tense,” he said.
As for the accusation made by Mexico’s foreign relations secretary Thursday that the men were really U.S. soldiers disguised as Mexican soldiers, Aguilar said, “It doesn’t make any sense.” >>>
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