Border Patrol warned: Brace for violence

Is there anyone who does not feel this is a problem? If so, they need to pull themselves out of their self absorbed lives, turn off the sports and sit-coms and have a dose of reality. This is going to affect all of us eventually.

Federal officials say Border Patrol and other federal agents working chronic drug-smuggling routes along the U.S. boundary with Mexico could be targets for retaliation by well-armed cartels from south of the Rio Grande, after a new enforcement push has dramatically curbed the importation of contraband.
"I do think we have to be prepared for the fact that as we press hard on these criminal organizations, some of them will want to fight back," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told reporters earlier this week.
Admitting there had already been an "uptick in violence" against federal officers in recent months because of increased anti-smuggling operations, Chertoff said agents were not only targeting drug rings but also human smugglers as well. Despite the threats of retaliation, however, Chertoff insisted: "We want to make it very clear that ... will not cause us to back off" the current enforcement push.
As the Mexican drug and smuggling wars become increasingly violent, they are more frequently spilling across the border into the United States. Hundreds of people have been killed and wounded in the violence, especially near cities like Laredo, Texas and its Mexican sister city, Nuevo Laredo, right across the border.
Chertoff warned the situation was especially volatile for civilians.
"When civilians go down to the border, they are taking a huge chance with their own lives," he said.
The DHS chief also would not elaborate on reports some of the cartels could be preparing contract-style hits against federal agents, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported. But rumors that Mexican-based drug cartels have offered rewards for the killing of American federal agents have surfaced in the past.
A week ago the Associated Press reported that a confidential memo from federal officials warned Border Patrol agents they could be the targets of assassins hired by the smugglers of illegal aliens.
And, as WorldNetDaily reported in 2000, Border Patrol officials said the Juarez cartel – one of the largest and most deadly – at one time placed a bounty of $200,000 on U.S. federal agents.
Violence along the U.S.-Mexico border is increasing at a time when lawmakers, under mounting pressure from constituents, are redoubling efforts to make the regions safer. The drug- and human-smuggling traffic, combined with a number of reported incursions by Mexican federal police and military units, have left many in Washington nervous about security, especially in light of ongoing terror threats.
The problems along the border represent "a clear and present danger to the security of the United States," Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said.
His Texas colleague, Rep. John Culberson, also a Republican, said a recent fact-finding trip to the border "brought home to all of us that the war on terror is right in our back yard."

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