The attorney general of Texas on Wednesday released a letter he sent to U.S. President Barack Obama urging stronger federal action to secure the U.S.-Mexico border following the spillover of Mexican drug gang violence into Texas.

While Obama is in full campaign mode, few believe he will do anything to lose the support of illegal aliens and their supporters. Credit: WH Press Office

In his letter sent to the White House, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott used the recent shooting of a deputy sheriff in a border county and other similar incidents as examples that cartel-related violence is threatening the security of the U.S. and that the president should do his job and secure the U.S.-Mexico border

Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Hugo Rodriguez was wounded after shooting and killing a Gulf Cartel member involved in a drug-related kidnapping northeast of Edinburg early Sunday morning, the attorney general said.

“Unfortunately, last week’s gun battle in Hidalgo County was not an isolated incident,” he noted.

In January 2011, public works employees were repairing a road near a known drug-smuggling route when they were suddenly fired upon from the southern side of the border near Fort Hancock, Texas.

Texas police officers in June 2011 exchanged gunfire with drug smugglers who attacked them from across the border. In May, U.S. Border Patrol agents near Mission, Texas, also came underfire. And in September, a victim was killed when cartel operatives exchanged gunfire in McAllen, Texas, according to the letter to Obama.

According to a blog for a major Washington, DC, watchdog group, an equally serious national security challenge has been created with a growing number of Mexican nationals seeking political asylum in the United States to escape escalating drug-cartel violence in their country.

The movement started in 2006, when Mexican President Felipe Calderon declared war on drug cartels and gangs. Tens of thousands of Mexicans have been killed and heinous acts of violence, such as dismemberments and decapitations, are on the rise, according to the blogger for Judicial Watch, a non-partisan group that investigates government and political corruption.

In fact, Mexican drug-cartel violence “has reached epic proportions and routinely spills into U.S. border towns.”  Earlier this year the Dallas News reported that more than 13,000 people have been murdered throughout Mexico in 2010. The Judicial Watch blog states the killings are committed in disturbing and cruel ways not previously seen.

Within the last two weeks, three high-level cartel leaders have been arrested inside the U.S., Abbott noted.

Reports indicate cartel criminals frequently hide in Texas to avoid the violence in Mexico, “but the violence is already starting to follow these criminals to the United States, as the increasing cartel activity in South Texas demonstrates,” he stated in his Obama letter.

Abbott asked the federal government to “immediately dedicate more manpower to border security — especially along the 1,254 mile Texas border, which remains unacceptably porous.”

A version of this column originally appeared in island-adv.com.

Readers Comments (2)

1. Davy Crockett says:

   April 22, 2012 at 4:06 pm

   Why does this site publish such outdated information?

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   • Staff says:

     April 22, 2012 at 5:35 pm

     This article was posted last year.

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