U.S. Admits Mexican Cartels Control Parts Of Border

Last Updated: Thu, 09/29/2011 - 12:46pm

Janet Napolitano spent much of the spring sounding like a broken record ensuring that the U.S.-Mexico border is safe when the reality is that stretches are controlled by drug-trafficking organizations.

A new federal report exposing the ugly truth about the southern border has left President Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary with egg on her face. Published by the Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center, the document contradicts much of what Napolitano has preached in the last few months during highly publicized jaunts to the crime-infested region.

Remember this? The Mexican border “is as secure as it has ever been.” Or what about this; violence along the Mexican border is merely a mistaken “perception” because the Obama Administration has successfully fostered a “secure and prosperous” region. Napolitano also said that “misinformation about safety” is negatively impacting border communities and that the U.S.-Mexico border is not “overrun or out of control.”

The truth is that Mexican drug cartels do in fact “control access to the U.S.-Mexico border” and the “smuggling routes across it,” according to the Justice Department’s drug assessment, which has been kept quiet by the administration. No press conferences or photo ops to promote this report, which concludes that the “unprecedented levels of violence in Mexico” will continue for years to come.

The crisis has also flowed north because cartels—including Sinaloa, Los Zetas and Juarez—have joined forces with U.S. street gangs that operate in more than 1,000 cities throughout the country, according to the report. Together they run profitable enterprises that sell cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines brought into the U.S. through the southern border. This sort of “collaboration between U.S. gangs and Mexican-based” criminal organizations will continue to increase, facilitating wholesale drug trafficking into and within the United States, the report says.

This is hardly shocking news. The National Drug Intelligence Center has for years determined that Mexican drug trafficking organizations represent the greatest crime threat to the United States. In fact, the agency’s 2009 report says that the violence, intimidation, theft and financial crimes carried out by the illicit operations “pose a significant threat” to the nation as a whole.