More border violence; shots fired

[LANTIRN]

http://www.ktsm.com/news/border-incu...-to-the-nation

EL PASO - A national watchdog group says the Mexican Government incursion that happened just a few miles outside of El Paso could be a major security threat to the nation.

The Zaragoza Bridge was very active on Thursday, just hours after hunters reported being shot at and robbed by Mexican gunmen who crossed the river into the United States. The Border Patrol says those gunmen were Mexican Federal Police Agents, but they said the shooting and robbery were not part of their initial investigation.

"This is a crisis situation on the border and unless a citizen seems to run into it as the hunters did, the government is not really going to tell you about it," Tom Fitton said.

Fitton is the President of Judicial Watch, a national watchdog group in Washington DC. His organization won a fight with the government to gain access to information on border incursions and even obtained video of a border incursion that happened in El Paso in 2008. Fitton says, the data proves border incursions are happening at an alarming rate.

"We were shocked to find that the incidents involved shots fired on both sides of the border, unmarked helicopters invading U.S. airspace, drug smuggling and confrontations between U.S. Border Patrol Agents and armed members of the Mexican Military," he said.

Fitton told us the data also shows some of the incursions weren't accidents.

"The most recent incident, as reported by your station there, shows that it was not only purposeful, but criminal in the sense that they came over and seemingly robbed folks," he said.

It's a problem Fitton says is rising and could be dangerous to border security if ignored by Washington.

"What it means, and it shows, is the border is obviously un-secure and unsafe. With the recent restrictions regarding hunting on the border you have to wonder, who controls our territory? The Mexican Government or the U.S. Government?."

Border Patrol hasn't released any more information on what exactly happened. They did tell us that Border Patrol Agents witnessed Mexican Police Agents crossing back into Mexico, and several agencies are now investigating. Today the International Boundary and Water Commission announced that Border Patrol is only allowing hunters through the gates during daylight hours because of what happened.

[oh1bullitt]

Set up a shit load of rednecks with beer and rifles on the border and then see how many get across. Offer them ten bucks a head.

[ceyko]

Set up a shit load of rednecks with beer and rifles on the border and then see how many get across. Offer them ten bucks a head.

I'd be willing to bet a lot of people would do it for free. I'd take a few days PTO a year to help. I'm not going to volunteer to help for the current way of doing things, which does nothing.

[svauto-erotic855]

Set up a shit load of rednecks with beer and rifles on the border and then see how many get across. Offer them ten bucks a head.

They did just this during the Eisenhower administration. Google "Operation Wetback". You will find pictures of dead bodies stacked up like firewood.

[Captain Crawfish]

come on in! bring your family come on in!

[CexMashean]

They did just this during the Eisenhower administration. Google "Operation Wetback". You will find pictures of dead bodies stacked up like firewood.

I couldn't find the pictures, but i see nothing wrong with doing it all over again.

[svauto-erotic855]

I couldn't find the pictures, but i see nothing wrong with doing it all over again.

The government didn't give a bounty but they protected land owners from being prosecuted for shooting illegals. I had a book about it awhile back that showed various TX and NM ranches with piles of wetbacks who had been killed.

[Geor!]

And in related news, my suspicions were proven:



The heated Congressional investigation into the botched Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives program Operation Fast and Furious reached a whole new level on Friday.

New emails obtained by the Los Angeles Times appear to show senior Obama administration and White House officials were briefed on the gun-walking operation. The three White House officials implicated by the LA Times’ reporting are Kevin M. O’Reilly, the director of North American Affairs for the White House national security staff; Dan Restrepo, the president’s senior Latin American advisor; and Greg Gatjanis, a White House national security official.

The emails were sent between July 2010 and February 2011, before the scandalous ATF program was exposed, according the LA Times.

The LA Times says a senior administration official denies that the emails which lead Fast and Furious ATF agent William Newell sent to O’Reilly — who later briefed Restrepo and Gatjanis –included details on “investigative tactics” used in the program. By “investigative tactics,” the White House means how ATF agents facilitated the sale of firearms to drug cartels via “straw purchasers,” or people who could legally buy guns in the U.S. but did so with the intention of selling them to individuals who would traffic them to Mexico.

Those emails apparently show Newell and O’Reilly discussing how the program was affecting Mexico.

Another explosive new detail that emerged on Thursday was a set of documents showing senior officials in Phoenix attempting to cover up a connection between Fast and Furious weapons and U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry’s death.

In a letter sent to Ann Scheel, the new acting U.S. Attorney for Arizona, House Oversight committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley wrote that high-ranking Phoenix officials tried to “prevent the connection [between Terry’s death and Fast and Furious weapons] from being disclosed.”

Internal emails also show that recently resigned Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke and his deputy Emory Hurley made the decision because “this way we do not divulge our current case (Fast and Furious) or the Border Patrol shooting case.”

UPDATE 3:04 p.m.:

Though the White House has claimed these newly discovered emails didn’t contain any details on the “investigative tactics” officials used in Operation Fast and Furious, one comment has surfaced suggesting otherwise. Politico reports that, in an August 18, 2010, email to O’Reilly, Newell described the details of what was going on.

“I appreciate and respect the struggles the [U.S. Attorney’s Office] has to go through with juries in this State to convince them of the illegality of this. We routinely have ‘straw’ purchasers tell us that ‘yeah, I knew what I was doing was wrong but the money was good and who cares — the guns are going to Mexico right?’” Politico reports Newell wrote to O’Reilly last year.