The soaring level of violence in Mexico resulting from the drug wars there has led the United States to develop plans for a "surge" of civilian and perhaps even military law enforcement should the bloodshed spread across the border, Michael Chertoff, the secretary of Homeland Security, said Wednesday.
Chertoff said the criminal activity in Mexico, which has caused more than 5,300 deaths in the last year, had long troubled American authorities. But it reached a point last summer, he said, where he ordered specific plans to confront in this country the kind of shootouts and other mayhem that in Mexico have killed members of warring drug cartels, law enforcement officials and bystanders, often not far from the border.
"We completed a contingency plan for border violence, so if we did get a significant spillover, we have a surge — if I may use that word — capability to bring in not only our own assets but even to work with" the Defense Department, Chertoff said in a telephone interview.
Officials of the Homeland Security Department said the plan called for aircraft, armored vehicles and special teams to converge on border trouble spots, with the size of the force depending on the scale of the problem. Military forces would be called upon if civilian agencies like the Border Patrol and local law enforcement were overwhelmed, but the officials said military involvement was considered unlikely.
I've worried if this would be the first real foreign crisis President Obama faces. The latest Gaza War may bump it to second, of course, but we still might want to brush up on "Black Jack" Pershing's experience a century ago.
