Mexican stand-off (BOTH borders)

 Mexico has it’s border crossing problems too, though it looks like its starting to get a handle on the “illegal alien” situation:

President Felipe Calderon hopes to accomplish the sweeping immigration reform Washington has failed to adopt — not just cracking down on the southern border but also creating a guest-worker program and improving conditions for illegal Central American migrants.
…
The Interior Department said it will soon reveal details of its Safe Southern Border Program to move against illegal crossers, violent gangs in the border zone and abuse of migrants by authorities throughout Mexico.

What a concept! Meanwhile, the news on OUR on-going border has to do with what’s crossing… and more importantly, from where to where…

400+ people were arrested in what the media is calling a crackdown on MEXICAN drug smuggling. Yeah, the drugs are coming through Mexico:

Authorities said the cartel shipped or drove tons of the drugs from Colombia and Venezuela to Mexico. From there, they were taken over the south-west border and broken down in Los Angeles, San Diego and other cities before being distributed nationwide.

The drugs were distributed in Nevada, Arizona, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Colorado, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Illinois, Kansas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Washington and Oregon.

In a minor story from WKRN, Nashville TN (announcing that Tennesee’s Governor was going to go see for himself what his National Guardsmen and women were expected to do along the Arizona border, I noticed these two paragraphs:

But a standoff between four Tennessee guardsmen and an unidenified group of armed men along the Mexican border in Arizona last month led to questions about the rules of engagement.

Six to eight gunmen _ possibly heading for Mexico with drug money _ approached the troops at an overnight observation post Jan. 3. No one fired a shot, and the confrontation ended when American troops withdrew to contact the Border Patrol. The gunmen then fled into Mexico.

Notice that the gunmen were not coming FROM Mexico, but headed TOWARDS Mexico. This has been buried in the news stories. This, and the later news report about a truckload of arms and explosives stopped just outside Matamoros don’t suggest that ICE isn’t checking what — or who — is leaving the country. 

These stories are being buried by things like those drug arrests.  It’s obvious what the SOURCE of the violence in northern Mexico related to the narcotics trade is though.  As I’ve said so often, isn’t farmers looking for work (or even farmers whove gone into the methamphetimine business — and the domestic narcotics trade isn’t that huge to begin with) but the huge amounts of cash and weapons coming in from … obviously not Guatemala. 

An impolite question. Who is protecting the arms and gun runners, that they seem to have no trouble getting across from the U.S. side?