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US to announce Mexican border deployment
Washington (AFP) March 22, 2009 The US is expected this week to announce plans to dispatch more federal agents to its border with Mexico in a bid to combat drug cartel operations there, US officials said. Washington appears poised to bolster its customs and border protection forces along the 3000-plus kilometer (2000 mile) frontier, in what would be President Barack Obama's first major domestic security initiative. The announcement is expected to come "in the next few days" a Department of Homeland Security official told AFP ahead of the announcement. The impending plan comes as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton prepares to visit to Mexico on Wednesday. Her trip is to be followed next week by a visit from US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder. Those high-profile visits will set the stage for a summit in Mexico between Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon on April 16 and 17. Mounting drug violence has claimed thousands of lives in northern Mexico and has emerged as a fully-fledged national security threat for the United States. Obama said earlier this month that the government was considering deploying the National Guard to the border to prevent spillover from the bloody drug wars. The governor of the border state of Texas, Rick Perry, last month asked the president to deploy 1,000 soldiers as a precaution. In Mexico more than 1,000 people have been killed so far this year in suspected drug attacks, amid the Mexican government's crackdown on warring cartels. Last year saw more than 5,300 killed in drug related violence. The violence flared after Mexico's President Felipe Calderon declared war on drug cartels nearly two years ago, prompting armed resistance from the country's drug barons and setting off a turf warfare between rival gangs. Share This Article With Planet Earth
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