Border Sheriffs: Security Impossible Without More Federal Help

A recent gathering of law enforcement officers highlighted the growing divide between the federal government and local authorities on issues of border security. Sheriffs in the southwest say that violence from the Mexican drug wars already has spilled over to the United States, despite Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s recent statements to the contrary. Sheriff Arvin R. West pointed to a place on the map along the southern U.S. border where he serves in Hudspeth County, Texas. Here, he said, between Interstate 10 and the Rio Grande, a population hangs by a desperate thread. The sheriff calls it “Almost America,” full of people who believe they’ve been left to fend for themselves in the face of encroaching violence from Mexico. Federal agents provide little protection for the swath of land running between the highway and the river, West said. Nobody said that life along the U.S.-Mexican border was pretty. But local sheriffs there will say that it's downright ugly — more violent and dangerous than the federal government will admit. They have the community scars and pictures to prove it. They brought the latter to a law enforcement conference last week in suburban Washington D.C. The sheriffs, along with a longtime Border Patrol agent and a West Coast gang expert, held nothing back as they spoke to fellow lawmen. Mexican drug cartels have a military arsenal, and they're stocking weapons in the United States, said Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez, whose jurisdiction covers 1,000 square miles near the southern most tip of Texas...more