After all, Mexican officials are involved in aiding and abetting the border-jumping criminals – so how can we expect them to help end the problem?

The U.S. Border Patrol arrested a Mexican immigration official who was allegedly trying to help a group of undocumented migrants sneak into the United States, the Mexican government said Sunday.

Immigration agent Francisco Javier Gutierrez was arrested at a checkpoint near Alamogordo, N.M., about 100 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, the Mexican Interior Department said in a news release.

Gutierrez had been fired on corruption allegations last year but returned to his job after winning a court case in which he claimed he had been unfairly dismissed, according to the National Immigration Institute.

The Mexican government promised to cooperate with U.S. authorities in the case. A spokesman for the Border Patrol in El Paso, Texas, declined to comment Sunday.

Gutierrez's arrest comes just days after the Mexican and U.S. governments exchanged terse diplomatic notes about security on the border.

We must acknowledge that, in this, the Mexican government is our enemy, not our ally.

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Not only are the cabrones running the Mexican government denying the possibility that their troops are helping smuggle drugs into the US, but now they are accusing the US military of doing so.

Mexico's top diplomat suggested Thursday that American soldiers disguised as Mexican troops may have been in the military-style Humvee filmed earlier this week protecting a marijuana shipment on the border.

Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez also told a news conference that U.S. soldiers had helped drug smugglers before. However, he offered no evidence.

* * *

Derbez said Thursday that the men photographed by Texas law enforcement could have been Americans.

"Members of the U.S. Army have helped protect people who were processing and transporting drugs," Derbez said. "And just as that has happened ... it is very probable that something like that could have happened, that in reality they were members of some of their groups disguised as Mexican soldiers with Humvees."

Yes, there have been stray individuals who have done so -- and they are arrested, indicted, prosecute, and imprisoned. These things do not happen in Mexico to police and military.

And then there is this little outrage.

Derbez also said his country will send a diplomatic note to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demanding that U.S. officials tone down their comments on Mexico's security and immigration problems.

Why don't we send some troops over the border into Mojado Land to do something about its security and immigration problems instead.

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You know, just to make it clear that we are serious about cross-border incursions by the Mexican military? Especially if they are helping to smuggle drugs or illegal aliens.

Men dressed as Mexican Army soldiers, apparent drug suspects and Texas law enforcement officers faced off Monday on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande, an FBI spokeswoman said today.

Andrea Simmons, an agency spokeswoman in El Paso, told The Associated Press that Texas Department of Public Safety troopers chased three SUVs, believing they were carrying drugs, to the banks of the Rio Grande during Monday's incident.

Men dressed in Mexican military uniforms or camouflage were on the U.S. side of the border in Texas, she said.

Simmons said the FBI was not involved and referred requests for further details to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin of Ontario, Calif., reported today that the incident included an armed standoff involving the Mexican military, suspected drug smugglers and nearly 30 U.S. law enforcement officers. It said Mexican military Humvees were towing what appeared to be thousands of pounds of marijuana across the border into the United States.

The incident follows a story in the Bulletin on Jan. 15 that said the Mexican military had crossed into the United States more than 200 times since 1996.
Chief Deputy Mike Doyal of the Hudspeth County Sheriff's Department told the newspaper that Border Patrol agents called for backup and were joined by Hudspeth County deputies and DPS troopers. Mexican army personnel had several mounted machine guns on the ground more than 200 yards inside the U.S. border, the newspaper said.

Doyal said deputies captured a Cadillac Escalade that had been reported stolen from El Paso, and found 1,477 pounds of marijuana inside. He said Mexican soldiers set fire to one of the Humvees stuck in the river.

The site is near Neely's Crossing, about 50 miles east of El Paso, it said.

Why no shooting in this situation (or any of the other 200+ incidents)?

"It's been so bred into everyone not to start an international incident with Mexico that it's been going on for years," Doyal said. "When you're up against mounted machine guns, what can you do? Who wants to pull the trigger first? Certainly not us."

The border in this area is clearly marked – it is called the Rio Grande – and such crossings are frequent. They are denied by the Mexican government.

It is time for the US to make this a shooting war. It might be the only thing that will get the attention of the Mexican authorities and make them realize that the US is serious about border security.

If we really are serious about border security.

MORE AT: Michelle Malkin, Jawa Report

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This is becoming more of a problem – what will the US do about it?

The U.S. Border Patrol has warned agents in Arizona of incursions into the United States by Mexican soldiers "trained to escape, evade and counterambush" if detected -- a scenario Mexico denied yesterday.

The warning to Border Patrol agents in Tucson, Ariz., comes after increased sightings of what authorities described as heavily armed Mexican military units on the U.S. side of the border. The warning asks the agents to report the size, activity, location, time and equipment of any units observed.

It also cautions agents to keep "a low profile," to use "cover and concealment" in approaching the Mexican units, to employ "shadows and camouflage" to conceal themselves and to "stay as quiet as possible."

Border Patrol spokesman Salvador Zamora confirmed that a "military incursion" warning was given to Tucson agents, but said it was designed to inform them how to react to any sightings of military and foreign police in this country and how to properly document any incursion.

Mr. Zamora added that although incursions by the Mexican military do occur, they usually have taken place in areas of the border "not marked by monuments or signs." He said U.S. military units also have crossed mistakenly into Mexico.

Is it time for US border agents – or perhaps military personnel – to shoot to kill when confronted with invading military forces? Will we defend our sovereignty as we did in the 1840s and 1010s, or will we simply let foreign troops cross our frontier with impunity?

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When the city of Costa Mesa decided to allow its police to enforce violations of immigration law found in the course of other police work, it provoked quite a controversy.

Activists clashed in Costa Mesa on Tuesday night over the city's decision to become the nation's first authorizing its police department to enforce federal immigration laws.

A 3-2 vote last month to train police officers to work with federal immigration officials and sheriff's deputies to determine the immigration status of suspects arrested for other crimes has made the city a battleground in the national controversy over immigration policy.

Mayor Allan Mansoor, who proposed the idea, has stressed that enforcement will focus on those accused of serious crimes and that no random sweeps will occur.

"The public has been demanding this," said Mansoor, who is also an Orange County sheriff's deputy.

About 80 activists massed before Tuesday's council meeting, singing in Spanish and carrying hand-painted signs reading "Nobody Is Illegal" and "Mansoor Is a Bigot." Other signs proclaimed the United States the property of Mexico and Americans as the interlopers.

Some 40 opponents of illegal immigration also gathered, some shouting, "America is a nation of laws!"

I have only one thing to say to the border jumpers and their supporters -- INTERLOPE THIS!

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Guillermo Martinez threw a rock at a Border Patrol agent while trying to jump the US border. The agent responded to this life-threatening assault by opening fire. The result? One dead violent immigration criminal.

Now the Mexican government, which protects its southern border, is using the incident to demand that the US not ratchet-up its own border security.

"This occurrence does no more than provide evidence that only a law that guarantees legal entry and is respectful of human rights can resolve the migratory problem both countries face," Ruben Aguilar, the chief spokesman for President Vicente Fox, said Monday.

Many Mexicans oppose the U.S. measure, which would build more border fences, make illegal entry a felony and enlist military and local police to help stop undocumented migrants.

Aguilar said the death of Guillermo Martinez showed that extending border walls will not curb illegal immigration.

Martinez died Saturday in a Tijuana hospital, the Baja California state attorney general's office said. He died one day after he was shot by a U.S. Border Patrol agent near a metal wall separating that city from San Diego, according to witnesses cited by Mexican officials.

Raul Martinez, a spokesman for the Border Patrol said the agent had been "assaulted by an individual who threw a large size rock."

"The agent, fearing for his life at that time, fired one round at the individual, who fled back to Mexico," Martinez said Monday.

The spokesman, who is not related to the dead 18-year-old, said U.S. investigators were unsure if the victim had been struck by the bullet because he crossed back into Mexican territory.

Mexico's federal Attorney General's Office said the probe was opened against "whomever is found to have been responsible," but did not name a suspect. Mexico generally does not try to apply its laws to events that occurred in other nations.

Investigate all you want – the government of Mexico has no authority in this case. And please consider Mexico’s own policies before demanding that we open the borders to any Juan, Jose, and Pedro who wants to come to this country.

Mexican officials have grown increasingly vocal in their opposition to the House bill passed Dec. 16, which Foreign Relations Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez branded as "stupid and underhanded." Fox has called it shameful.

Officials of Mexico's federal Human Rights Commission have acknowledged that Mexico already employs some of the same methods in its own territory. But Aguilar again attacked the U.S. measure Monday, saying "walls and police crackdowns never will resolve migration problems."

But we really know what the issue is all about. It isnÂ’t one dead border jumpe.

In 2004, Mexican migrants in the United States sent home more than $16 billion in remittances, according to Mexico's central bank, giving the nation its second biggest source of foreign currency after oil exports.

It is all about the cash.

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The Washington Post tells us today that there is a split on immigration.

When Congress returns to the unfinished business of immigration early in the new year, lawmakers will be trying to reconcile sometimes conflicting public attitudes on an issue that has become a crusade to some conservative Republicans but has defied effective solutions over the past three decades.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll taken in mid-December found Americans alarmed by the federal government's failure to do more to block the flow of illegal immigration and critical of the impact of illegal immigration on the country but receptive to the aspirations of undocumented immigrants living and working in the United States.

"You wonder why politicians are not always consistent," said Republican pollster Glen Bolger. "It's because public opinion's not always consistent."

Immigration still ranks below the war in Iraq, terrorism, health care and the economy on the public's list of priorities, but in many parts of the country -- not just those areas near the Mexican border -- it has become an issue of pressing significance because of its economic, racial and, more recently, national security implications.

If there is any consensus today, it is on the need for enhanced border security, driven not only by traditional concerns about jobs and the strains illegal immigrants put on state and local resources but also by newer worries that the porous border makes America more vulnerable to terrorists. The public and politicians are far more divided on the difficult question of how to treat the roughly 11 million illegal migrants already in the country.

In other words, there isn't as great a split as the Post seems to think there is. Border security and immigration reform are generally supported -- so we want to stop the border hemmoraging that has gone on for years. The only place for division is over what to do with those who have already jumped the fence or breast-stroked across the Rio Grande. We are not sure about amnest or enforcement.

And I understand the ambivalence. My students here in Houston are 50% Hispanic. Of those, at least half are the children of non-citizens, including a number of children who are in this country ilegally themselves. Do I wish to see my students and/or their families deported? For the most part, no I don't (I always have the kid I want deported to the third ring of Hades or beyond the orbit of Pluto) -- my love for these kids as individuals prevents me from taking such a position. But how do we then deal with the issue of their immigration status? That is the sort of issue that confounds American public opinion on the issue.

So I'll ask you -- how do we deal with the 11 million?

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