This report, released today during the pre-election silly season, won't get as much attention as it should. It's more corroboration that the U.S. is rapidly losing sovereignty over its southern border. The willingness of President Bush and the rest of our political class both to accept this and to let the Mexican government off the hook remains stunning and inexplicable.
The U.S. Border Patrol and other law enforcement agencies at the U.S.-Mexico border are outgunned by increasingly ruthless and well-armed Mexican drug cartels, a new congressional report concludes."The cartels use automatic assault weapons, bazookas, grenade launchers and improvised explosive devices," the House Homeland Security oversight subcommittee report said. "In contrast, U.S. Border Patrol agents are issued 40-caliber Beretta semiautomatic pistols."
The report, scheduled to be released today by U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, said drug cartels are able to break the encryptions on Border Patrol and sheriffs' deputies' radios.
"Lookouts for the cartels, using military grade equipment, are positioned at strategic points on the U.S. side of the border to monitor movements of U.S. law enforcement," it continued.
Even as the traffickers expand their drugrunning routes to smuggle immigrants into the United States, they are forming dangerous alliances with U.S.-based criminal gangs such as MS-13 and the Latin Kings, according to the congressional panel....
Hezbollah members already have entered the U.S. from Mexico, the report confirmed.
"As if narco-terrorist violence were not enough, extensions of Middle East terrorism have crept into the United States," the report stated. "Islamic radical groups that support Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamiya Al Gamat are all active in Latin America."
• Full report - A Line in the Sand (pdf)