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 News from Around the Americas | January 2006 
Texas Sheriff Says Mexican Military-Issue Items Were Used in Confrontation
 Associated Press
| | Members of the Mexican Federal Police walk along the Mexican side of the Rio Grande River near Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2006. Mexico insisted Wednesday that the men in military-style uniforms who crossed the Rio Grande River and confronted Texas law officers with guns drawn earlier this week were drug smugglers, not soldiers. (AP/Gregory Bull) |
El Paso, TX — Drug-smuggling suspects dressed in Mexican military-style uniforms who were involved in an armed confrontation with Texas lawmen on Monday were using a Mexican military-issue Humvee and weapons, the Hudspeth County sheriff said Friday.
"It was military," said the sheriff, Arvin West, whose officers were involved in the incident. "Due to the pending Congressional hearings, I can't comment further."
Sheriff West said the determination that the equipment was military-issue came from the federal government, but he would not elaborate.
An Army spokesman said he could not confirm the sheriff's statement.
The Mexican Foreign Relations Department said it would have no comment, but other Mexican officials have said the uniforms and other equipment could have been stolen. Mexico's foreign relations secretary suggested on Thursday that the smugglers might have been American soldiers or American criminals disguised as Mexican soldiers.
Police gear is sold at street stands in Mexico, and kidnappers and drug smugglers there wear it regularly.
The chief of the United States Border Patrol, David Aguilar, said here on Friday that he could not rule out Mexican soldiers' involvement in the incident, which occurred in a remote spot along the Rio Grande about 50 miles east of El Paso.
But the Mexican government has denied that any soldiers were involved.
The smugglers abandoned more than a half-ton of marijuana as they escaped back across the border without a shot fired.
Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, and other officials have said they will seek hearings investigating such border incursions.
Mr. Aguilar said he had spoken with his Mexican counterparts and was assured that an intense investigation was under way in Mexico.
A California newspaper reported this month that Mexican military units had entered the United States 216 times since 1996. It cited a Department of Homeland Security document, but the department secretary, Michael Chertoff, has said that many of those incidents were just mistakes.
Also Friday, Mr. Aguilar said members of the Border Patrol and other law enforcement agencies were reporting that a new violent tactic was being used against them: rocks wrapped in cloth, dipped in gasoline, set on fire and thrown across the border.
Most of the incidents have happened near San Diego, he said, and one officer has been injured.
The authorities have said that they fear a deadly confrontation as attacks against Border Patrol agents increase. In the last fiscal year, there were 778 reported incidents, compared with 396 in the 2004 fiscal year. |
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