In a historic first, Josefina Vazquez Mota was chosen on Sunday to be the presidential candidate for Mexico’s National Action Party (PAN). Vazquez Mota’s primary win makes her the first woman in Mexico’s history to be chosen to run for president by one of the country’s three main parties. The road to Los Pinos, the Mexican equivalent of the White House, will be a difficult one. The lineup is now set. Currently leading in the polls is Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) candidate Pena Nieto. With the PRI party, however, comes …
Last week, in Merída, Mexico, the leaders of Chile, Mexico, Peru, and Colombia met to affirm their shared commitment to economic integration, growth, and competitiveness. You may not have heard of the summit. In fact, a Google search of recent U.S. news articles covering the meeting of the “Pacific Alliance” turns up only nine results. It seems that while the United States’ key partners in Latin America were meeting to discuss critical economic and trade issues, America failed to pay much attention. America’s disregard, however, makes little sense. With a …
Last night, NBC Nightly News continued its series “Mexico: The War Next Door.” In its latest segment, NBC highlighted the much discussed and debated issue of cross-border violence and drug trafficking in Texas. Flying overhead in helicopters with officials from the Texas Department of Public Safety Air Patrol, the film crew showed images of high-speed chases on U.S. highways and men hiking through Texas backlands with 80-pound bales of marijuana on their backs. The story reports: Federal officers here, who spend every day in the sky, say drug trafficking in …
In an op-ed for FOX News Heritage’s Jim Carafano lays out policy ideas that can lead to true immigration reform. The main argument was that immigration reform cannot begin with Amnesty. There are many other ways to confront the problem of illegal immigration, but Amnesty is a “non-starter” The first thing we must do, Carafano argues, is secure our borders. This will require a partnership with Mexico. Carafano states: …we can and must do more stateside to secure the border. But we need sensible security measures, with D.C., the states …
How goes the battle for the border? Heritage Foundation Latin American specialist Ray Walser and I spent some time on the border at Laredo, Texas, with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the U.S. Border Patrol. Laredo is America’s largest inland port of entry. Last year, 1.64 million trucks passed through the port, representing about $70 billion in commerce. Also in transit were hidden stacks of cash, guns, cocaine, heroin, and marijuana, as well as people illegally trying to enter the United States. The job of CBP and the Border Patrol, …
The illegal immigration of Mexicans to the U.S. has “sputtered to a trickle” due to an increase in economic and educational opportunities in Mexico coupled with a surge in border violence. At least, that is what The New York Times reported earlier this year. Ignoring that the apprehension of 447,500 illegal immigrants along the southwest border in fiscal year 2010 can hardly be called “trickle,” has the economy in Mexico really seen such drastic improvements that economic conditions are pushing fewer and fewer Mexican citizens to head to the U.S.? …
A persistent threat scenario against the U.S. has been foreign terrorist organizations—acting independently or in cooperation with violent transnational criminal organizations, and perhaps backed by anti-American regimes in the region—launching a terrorist attack from across our southern border. It is a scenario the Obama Administration has recognized but generally minimized. For example, the U.S. State Department’s 2010 Country Reports on Terrorism reported: The threat of a transnational terrorist attack remained low for most countries in the Western Hemisphere. There were no known operational cells of either al-Qa’ida- or Hizballah-related groups …
Officials from the U.S. federal government have admitted to arresting, then releasing mere hours later, a man who admitted to manufacturing hundreds of improvised explosive devices for a Mexican drug cartel, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The man was arrested last week in Mexico, where authorities reportedly seized materials that could be used to manufacture 500 grenades. The U.S. Attorney’s office in Phoenix, AZ, declined to charge Jean Baptiste Kingrey, the Wall Street Journal reported, despite the strenuous objections of at least one agent from the …
During the past week, the U.S. and Colombia indicted and arrested more than 50 individuals charged with organizing maritime and aerial smuggling of cocaine from Colombia to the U.S. via Central America and Mexico. The arrests again reflect the sustained nature of close law enforcement cooperation between the U.S. and Colombia. This cooperation has been nurtured patiently over more than a decade. By stark contrast, cooperation between Washington and Mexico has been harmed as a result of Operation Fast and Furious, the botched law enforcement operation that allowed more than …
The latest horror of August 25 has shaken Mexico. In a brazen and senseless assault, reportedly part of an extortion plot, members of the deadly Zetas criminal organization firebombed a casino in Monterrey, Mexico. In the ensuing inferno, 52 Mexicans—mainly middle-class women with no drug connections—died. Mexican President Felipe Calderon denounced the casino outrage as an unprecedented “abhorrent act of terror and barbarism.” He appealed forcefully to the U.S. and the Obama Administration to do something about drug consumption and the southward flow of guns into Mexico. On August 26, …
