Border crisis now 'pure invasion that requires military buildup'
By: WND - 4-23-19
RE:
https://www.wnd.com/2019/04/border-c...itary-buildup/
Verdict follows incident when Mexicans trespassed, detained U.S. soldiers.
The immigration crisis on the southern border with Mexico is a “pure invasion that requires military buildup.”
That’s the assertion of Daniel Horowitz, senior editor of the Conservative Review, who reacted to a report that several Mexican soldiers approached U.S. military personnel on American soil and disarmed them.
The Pentagon is now investigating the confrontation and plans to “modify” instructions it gives troops confronted by such incidents, the Washington Examiner reported.
Mexico, meanwhile, has added belligerence to its aggression, with officials telling Reuters it has “deep concern” about an armed civilian organization that confronts people who cross into the U.S. illegally.
“These types of practices can drive human rights abuses of people who migrate or request asylum or refuge in the United States,” Mexico’s Foreign Relations Ministry said in a statement.
Horowitz recounted the April 13 confrontation.
“Around 2 p.m. Central Time, a group of five or six suspected Mexican soldiers approached an unmarked vehicle of two U.S. soldiers stationed at the border in El Paso County, Texas, and ordered them out of the vehicle. According to Newsweek, which obtained the ‘serious incident report,’ the soldiers were in fact active duty members of B Battery, 1st Battalion, 37th Field Artillery Regiment, not from a National Guard unit. The Mexican soldiers disarmed one of the U.S. soldiers and placed his sideaerm in the U.S. vehicle,” his report said.
“While the soldiers were parked south of the border fence near Clint, Texas, they were north of the Rio Grande riverbed, which placed them ‘appropriately in U.S. territory,’ according to Maj. Mark Lazane, a spokesman for NORTHCOM. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Department of Defense (DOD), after inquiring of the Mexican government, were informed that the Mexican soldiers thought that the Americans were south of the border.”
He warned: “The Mexican government is powerless to control the cartels at our border. But somehow when it comes to belligerently confronting our own soldiers on our own soil, the Mexicans seem to muster the personnel and temerity to defend their side of the border. Moreover, they apparently have the unbridled impudence to complain about armed American citizens defending our border, while they have permanently transformed our country in the worst way imaginable through their disrespect of our sovereignty. This is clearly no longer about immigration, but about a pure invasion that requires a military buildup.”
He said he asked NORTHCOM and the State Department if they had conveyed “concerns” to Mexico and asked for an apology, and both refused to comment.
He wrote, “Zach Taylor, a retired 26-year veteran of the Border Patrol who has formed a group of retired border agents to better educate the public on the border, told CR that he is convinced these Mexican soldiers were making a political statement.”
“At the reported location the Rio Grande River is distinct and easily identified in relation to the actual international boundary,” asserted Taylor, who still lives near the border in Arizona. “That one of the supposed Mexican soldiers took one sidearm from an American and put it in the American vehicle is curious, as if the Mexicans knew exactly who they encountered, where they were encountered, and were simply making a statement. What the purpose of that statement was is open to broad speculation, but on the face of it, this was probably political – as in showing that to Mexico, borders mean nothing.”
He questioned why the Mexican government has the ability to cross into the United States and detain military personnel “but is seemingly powerless to deal with the cartels on its own side of the border?”
And he said Washington’s “lackluster” response is a concern.
Border security, after all, he explained, “is literally the No. 1 job of our federal government.”
“Failing to secure our borders is a breach of the social contract of government, as laid out in the Declaration of Independence, and if there is anything that would ever justify the citizenry to take action, it is this issue,” he said.
The Washington Examiner reported a senior defense official confirmed the Pentagon is reviewing the April 13 incident.
“No official protocol exists for how to navigate a run-in with a foreign military, but the senior official said the soldiers were trained to ‘de-escalate’ the situation,” the Examiner reported. “By surrendering at least one gun, they followed existing protocol, though it left them unarmed.”
Federal officials said the location where the confrontation occurred is “kind of confusing,” because the physical border barrier sites are well into U.S. territory.
Reuters reported the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico objected to the actions of a group called the United Constitutional Patriots, whose volunteers patrol the border and confront people who enter the country illegally.
Trump campaigned on a promise to secure the border, and while Democrats previously authorized funding for border security, they have adamantly refused to do so now.
The dispute led to a partial government shutdown that began just before Christmas.
Trump subsequently declared a national emergency on the border, which allows him to use allocated money to build security barriers.