Among the biggest problems confronting President-elect Barack Obama when he takes office in January will be the steadily escalating violence committed by drug cartels in Mexico. The mounting bloodshed south of the Rio Grande could soon spark a new wave of illegal immigrants pouring across our still-largely unprotected southern border, joining the estimated 12 million already here. An estimated 90 percent of the cocaine entering the U.S. comes across our border with Mexico, according to a Congressional Research Service report.
More than 4,000 people have been killed execution-style in Mexico so far this year, including politicians and journalists. At least 90 police officers have been butchered by drug lords in the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa alone. Beheaded bodies are routinely dumped in public squares by hired drug-lord henchmen, regular reminders that Mexican authorities are impotent to stop them. Ten days after President Felipe Calderon took office in 2006 vowing to fight the narcotraficantes, the body of his wife’s cousin was found in a car trunk in Mexico City. Rogue cops serving the drug cartels are also suspected in the kidnapping/murder of 14-year-old Fernando Marti, son of the owner of Mexico’s largest sporting goods chain.
Earlier this week, two of Mexico’s top anti-drug officials – Interior Sec. Juan Camilo Mouriño, a friend of Calderon who was in charge of the crackdown on the cartels, and Jose Luis Santiago, who negotiated high-level extraditions to the U.S. – died in a suspicious late night plane crash in Mexico City. Even the police are afraid of Joaquin “El Chapo” Loera, who built the massive underground tunnels to smuggle cocaine into Arizona, and Los Zetas, a private army of well-armed former members of the Mexican military who protect the notorious Gulf cartel. Such paramilitary groups pose a “significant problem to law enforcement on this side of the border,” according to the FBI.
Last summer, Obama backed the Mc-Cain Kennedy bill that would have granted virtual amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants currently living in the U.S. But what will he do if millions of new Mexican refugees start streaming across the border to escape the carnage, wonders George Grayson of the Center for Immigration Studies, who has made more than 180 trips to Mexico. This is especially worrisome since social service budgets across the U.S. are being reduced, thanks to the Wall Street financial crisis. If the Mexican drug violence spills into the U.S., diplomacy won’t be sufficient to quell it.
