No End In Sight

On Saturday it was reported that the obama administration is halting construction of the virtual border fence between Mexico and the U.S.

The Obama administration is preparing to scrap plans to extend the high-tech "virtual" border fence along vast stretches of the 1,969-mile U.S.-Mexico border, ending a troubled and politically contentious security measure inaugurated in 2006 by then-President George W. Bush....

The project has been afflicted with management problems repeatedly spotlighted by the Government Accountability Office.

The watchdog congressional agency recently concluded that Boeing, the prime contractor for the Secure Border Initiative network, had not provided accurate updates on progress to the administration and the DHS had provided inadequate oversight of Boeing, leading to "costly rework" efforts.

I don't doubt that the project has been mismanaged by both the vendor and the feds. What is troubling, however, is that there are no plans to do anything else to secure the border. This is not an immigration issue - it's a security issue, especially for those of us who live and work along the border. For example, last week I could see the smoke and hear the explosions of yet another shootout across the Rio Grande.

Mexican soldiers battled gunmen in two cities across the border from Texas on Wednesday, prompting panicked parents to pull children from school and factories to warn workers to stay inside. Assailants in a third city threw a grenade at an army barracks.

The U.S. Consulate in Nuevo Laredo warned American citizens to stay indoors. The statement said there were reports of drug gangs blocking at least one intersection near the consulate in the city across from Laredo, Texas.

Shootouts also erupted in Reynosa, across from McAllen, causing a huge traffic jam in the highway connecting the city with Monterrey and Matamoros.

Mexico's northeastern border with Texas has become one of the most violent fronts in an increasingly bloody drug war.

Unfortunately, there's more.

On Saturday thirteen people were killed and 20 wounded in a massacre at a 15-year-old's birthday party across from El Paso.

Gunmen stormed two neighboring homes and massacred 13 young people at a birthday party in the latest large-scale attack in this violent border city

Attackers in two vehicles pulled up to the houses in a lower-middle-class Ciudad Juarez neighborhood late Friday and opened fire on about four dozen partygoers gathered for a 15-year-old boy's birthday party.

The dead identified so far were 13 to 32 years old, including six women and girls, Chihuahua state Attorney General Carlos Salas told reporters at a news conference at the crime scene. The majority of the victims were high school students, a survivor said.

Salas said a total of 20 people were wounded, including a 9-year-old boy.

... in January, gunmen massacred 15 people at a party in a house not far from the site of Friday's killings. Most of the victims were teenagers, students and athletes.

Then on Sunday a gunbattle in northern Mexico killed 3 bystanders.

Three bystanders died in the crossfire of a shootout between gunmen, police and soldiers in northern Mexico on Sunday.

The victims were a 14-year-old boy and two women aged 18 and 47.

A birthday party for a 15-year-old. Thirteen dead. A 9-year-old child wounded, a number of teenagers dead. Three innocent people killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, including a 14-year-old and two women.

Ho-hum. Just another weekend in Mexico. 

And following up on the recent murder of an American citizen on Falcon Lake:

Officials on the US side of Falcon Lake, where David Hartley, a US tourist, was shot on Sept. 30 while Jet Skiing, are giving some credence to a theory that Mr. Hartley and his wife were mistaken as drug cartel spies by "pirates" linked to another cartel, setting in motion a tense, and ongoing, international incident.

US and Mexican authorities so far have no official explanation for the shooting of Hartley, but a report by a global intelligence firm posited this week that Mr. Hartley and his wife, Tiffany Hartley, stumbled into an ambush engineered by lower-level cartel members – perhaps teenagers – who made an unauthorized decision to confront and fire upon the couple.

According to the anonymously sourced Stratfor report, the beheading this week of a Mexican investigator looking into the attack, Rolando Armando Flores Villegas, was roundly seen as a stern message to both Mexican and US authorities "that no body will be produced and to leave the situation alone." 

A narcoterrorist tells authorities of two countries to back off - and they do. The day after Flores' head was delivered the Mexican government announced it was suspending the search for Hartley's body. U.S. LEOs have likewise, but less publicly, throttled back their investigation. Who's in charge here? I think we all know the answer to that one.

Over the last four years  more than 28,000 people have been killed in drug gang violence in Mexico. For comparison purposes, around 77,000 Iraqis were killed in a four-year period from 2004-2008.

We have a nation to our south that cannot control terrorists within its border. Violence, drugs, and human smuggling are spreading northward. And outside of those who work and live along the border, no one cares. Hell, no one else is even aware of the situation.

It's getting worse, and there is no end in sight.

That frightens me...