Mexico and US look at border incident

Houston Chronicle:

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison on Wednesday demanded the Department of Homeland Security investigate a border standoff between U.S. lawmen and about 20 heavily armed drug smugglers wearing Mexican military-style fatigues.

"I am deeply concerned," Hutchison, R-Texas, said in a statement. ''I urge (Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael) Chertoff to fully investigate this matter and report to Congress the details and confirm whether or not Mexican military officials were involved."

Also Wednesday, Mexican authorities asked to meet with a West Texas sheriff to view photographs taken during the standoff, which occurred Monday about 50 miles east of El Paso near the Rio Grande international boundary.

Hudspeth County Sheriff Arvin West said the photos show the smugglers' vehicles as well as scenes of men unloading drugs while fatigue-garbed gunmen stood guard. No shots were fired, he said.

Mexican officials denied the guards were soldiers, asserting they were impostors driving military-style vehicles and wearing uniforms that were not military-issue. Mexican soldiers are prohibited from driving within 3.2 miles of the Texas border, the officials said.

West, however, insisted that the men were Mexican soldiers.

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The episode began Monday afternoon, when sheriff's deputies and two state troopers began a chase of a trio of sport utility vehicles on Interstate 10. The vehicles turned off the highway and headed toward a shallow crossing on the Rio Grande near Fort Hancock.

There, Texas officers came upon a military-style, green Humvee along with the 20 gunmen. One of the vehicles, loaded with 1,400 pounds of marijuana, was abandoned on the Texas side of the river and set afire. Guarded by the armed men, two other vehicles crossed the Rio Grande.

The gunmen were armed with assault rifles, West said, not 50-caliber machine guns as originally reported by the Texas Border Sheriff's Coalition, a group of law enforcement officials.

Meanwhile, FBI officials in El Paso said they gathered evidence connected to Monday's incident to hand over to the Mexican attorney general's office. But a bureau spokesman said a criminal investigation has not been opened because no federal agent was assaulted.

In Austin, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety said the standoff is not being investigated by that agency because troopers only assisted Hudspeth County deputies in the chase.

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The Washington Times reports that Texas border sheriffs also concerned:

A Texas border sheriff yesterday demanded that the U.S. and Mexican governments investigate incursions into the United States by heavily armed drug escorts dressed in Mexican military uniforms "before someone gets killed."
Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez Jr., who heads the Texas Sheriff's Border Coalition, said a growing number of suspected incursions and violence aimed at the area's law-enforcement officers is making the border "a pretty dangerous place."
"We have tried everything we know to make the federal government aware of the problems at the border and how they have affected us," said Sheriff Gonzalez, who has fewer than two dozen deputies to patrol 1,000 square miles, including 60 miles of Texas-Mexico border.
"It appears our government is covering this thing up because it just doesn't want to admit there is a problem," he said. "Trade between the United States and Mexico may be more important to Washington than human lives."

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