Mexico has moved troops to the Texas-Mexico border and this time they didn't come across in a Humvee and end up in an armed standoff with U.S. law enforcement.
It appears they are doing searches at 11 bridges between Brownsville and Laredo on the Mexican side. Only for drugs and weapons though, not illegal aliens and alien smugglers.
They did screw it up though since they didn't think to notify people on our side of the border.
The Monitor
Mexican President Vicente Fox informed President Bush Mexico’s soldiers would be at the bridges during a phone conversation Monday, said Alberto Gonzalez Karam, director of Mexico’s Caminos y Puentes Federales.
Mexico’s soldiers will be posted at the 11 bridges indefinitely, Gonzalez said.
The move is part of a Mexican plan to weed out drug and weapons trafficking into the United States, Gonzalez said. It does not appear similar inspections are in place at the bridges that extend beyond Laredo to California. Drug turf wars have rocked many of the border cities around Laredo and the Rio Grande Valley.
The next step in the inspection program is to establish an express sensor lane for those willing to pay and forego the long lines into the United States from Mexico, Gonzalez said. The pilot program for that step would be at the Laredo checkpoints. No date has been set for that phase, he said.
"These measures were done in order to protect and put at ease visitors to Mexico," Gonzalez said in Spanish. "These are security measures that both countries have agreed upon."
If this express lane is going to just let people zoom through it's a bad idea. Who are the people willing to pay for the speed? The drug cartels of course!
Mexico’s inspection program was news to at least one Valley congressman.
"You could call this a surprise, we knew nothing about it," said Jess Fassler, spokesman for U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, when he was asked late Tuesday about the Mexican military’s sudden presence on the border. Doggett’s district includes Starr and western Hidalgo counties.
U.S. bridge officials themselves were not informed of the program until they arrived for work at 6 a.m. Tuesday and they noticed slower than normal traffic coming in, said Jesse Medina, director of the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge.
As officials tried to figure out what was going on, incoming travelers told them about the activity in Mexico, said Medina, who spent all day in Reynosa talking to his counterparts about the decision.
Is this simply a token inspection to try and placate Americans worries over the recent high profile incursions on US soil or are they actually making a real attempt to start doing something?
Tipped by: Lonewacko
