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Subject: Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment, Barry R. McCaffrey, Robert H. Scales, PhD
CJH    10/8/2011 2:05:19 PM
Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment

"Strategic America’s fight against narco-terrorism, when viewed at the strategic level, takes on the classic trappings of a real war. Crime, gangs and terrorism have converged in such a way that they form a collective threat to the national security of the United States. America is being assaulted not just from across our southern border but from across the hemisphere and beyond. All of Central and South America have become an interconnected source of violence and terrorism. Drug cartels exploit porous borders using all the traditional elements of military force, including command and control, logistics, intelligence, information operations and the application of increasingly deadly firepower. The intention is to increasingly bring governments at all levels throughout the Americas under the influence of international cartels."

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"Impact on Texans Fear and anxiety levels among Texas farmers and ranchers have grown enormously during the past two years. Farmers, ranchers and other citizens in border communities are caught in the crossfire of escalating cross-border violence resulting in large part from conflicts between cartels, paramilitary enforcement groups and transnational gangs struggling for control of key drug and illegal alien smuggling routes into the U.S. from El Paso to Brownsville. Some Texas farmers and ranchers have even abandoned their livelihoods to move their families to safer ground. Living and conducting business in a Texas border county is tantamount to living in a war zone in which civil authorities, law enforcement agencies as well as citizens are under attack around the clock. The Rio Grande River offers little solace to the echoes of gunshots and explosions. News of shootings, murders, kidnappings, beheadings, mass graves and other acts of violence coming across the border go far beyond any definition of “spillover violence.”"

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"A consensus has emerged among both citizens and state border officials that they believe U.S. federal agencies too often define their way out of the problem. As a consequence, extortions, violence and cartel corruptions of local officials are not routinely reported. Another factor revealed in testimonials by citizens living and earning their livings on the border strongly suggests that intimidation by cartels also is taking its toll on the reporting of border incidents. As one farmer noted:

“We see a lot of things, but we keep our mouths shut about it. We just don’t want to be on anybody’s hit list. I keep to myself. The people that are doing what they’re doing they keep to themselves. If I see something, I ignore it. I look the other way, but there is a problem. It’s really bad. Here on the river, you see a lot of stuff and you don’t pay attention to it. You walk away. You try to stay in an area where they see you, so if somebody gets caught, they don’t say, ‘Well they called somebody.’ You know, just try to blend in and not create any waves.”"

 
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CJH       10/16/2011 3:51:23 PM

Farmers and ranchers whose families have spent generations on the Texas side of the

border reflect on how the character and intent of border crossing immigrants have changed

over the past three years. They now see most of the intruders on their land as men tattooed

with the marks of cartels, gangs and in some cases Hezbollah members. They are

confronted often with border-crossers who demand to use their phones or trucks. Texas

homes are now surrounded by strangers who harass the owners until they concede their

land for use by the cartels. Farmers refuse to travel at night.

About 75 miles from the Mexican border, Brooks County is not a border county but it

contains the Falfurrias Border Patrol checkpoint. Smugglers constantly try to get around

that checkpoint and evade local law enforcement. Illegal immigrants from Mexico, Central

and South America, Pakistan, India, Africa, China and elsewhere turn up day and night. Rival

gangs fight for valuable Brooks County territory to smuggle and also to steal oil from the oil

fields and tap pipelines. Decaying human remains litter the landscape. The cost of autopsies

and burials of illegal immigrants and the medical treatment of smuggling survivors drain the

County’s meager budget.

Smugglers regularly cross ranches to move their loads around the checkpoint, cutting

fences, breaking water lines and sometimes stealing vehicles. Encounters by ranchers with

groups of menacing strangers are commonplace. The situation is so bad that owners of a

ranch in Brooks County packed up and left their 38,000 acre ranch because the area has

become, as they described it, a war zone. Their home had been broken into, their land littered

with garbage and the distinct sounds of gunfire could be heard from their front porch day and

night. The ranch runs alongside Farm Road 755 which law enforcement calls a “main

smuggling corridor” for the cartels.

Cartels proudly boast they have established training camps inside Texas. They have taken

control of urban gangs and now use them like retail franchises to distribute drugs, launder

money and arrange for the southward export of deadly firearms. Ranchers may not say

much to the media for fear of reprisal or retaliation by the cartels. But they do talk to each

other, every day, about what they see, hear and experience. They also have expressed their

thoughts and feelings to the Texas Department of Agriculture, which has publicly

documented many of those stories at >

 
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CJH       10/16/2011 4:19:59 PM
" The top six cartels are a legitimate threat to national security and should be placed on the Foreign Terrorist Organizations List."

 

 
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