Mexican Drug War on Both Sides of the Border

While a Mexican soldier watches, tons of seized narcotics burn in a huge pile that illustrates the mountainous threat that is playing out, not only on the Mexican side of the border, but the US side as well. While the 'hot topic' is illegal immigration, members of Mexican drug cartels seem quite able to cross the border at will, wreak their brand of havoc in Phoenix, El Paso and San Diego. Kidnappings, beheadings, families gunned down and grenades tossed into a bar frequented by police are just some of the violent crimes brought to the US by the warring Mexican drug lords. Horribly undermanned to deal with a threat so violent and monstrous, city police have quit, been paid off, or joined with the drug dealers, perhaps just to stay alive.

While Texas is working to pass legislation to crack down on cartel money laundering and trafficking in humans, drugs and weapons, Arizona is stepping up attempts to quell gun smuggling and seizure of assets. In the meantime, the US Senate is planning two meetings to determine the availability of US forces to deal with the rise in crime on the US side while the US sends helicopters, surveillance aircraft, inspection equipment and police training to the Mexican government.

Though it is rarely in the national headlines, what is going on with the rise of violent drug crimes is not limited to the border states of Texas, Arizona and California. It may be an effort to keep the innocent out of the crosshairs of these ruthless drug dealers, yet the backlash is that there is no public outcry of the very real war happening on our own soil.

Nevertheless, with illegal immigrants migrating further north to Arkansas to work on the Fayetteville Shale Play's natural gas boom, along with them come the drug dealers. One policeman said that though they may apprehend and charge a Mexican, because he is not a US citizen, he is deported and set free in Mexico, and likely to return at will, unpunished for the crimes committed here.

What is going on in Mexico is happening across the border and in the US. This is a war that is here, it is very real, and there is a clear enemy that is committing as much terror today as those overseas did on 9/11. It doesn't happen all at once, and it isn't on TV, but the tally of lives lost is rising quickly to equal those lost to Islamic terrorism on that fateful day in 2001.