US agents shot at, tension mounts on Mexico border

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[align=left]US agents shot at, tension mounts on Mexico border[/align]

[align=left]Reuters | January 6 2006[/align]

[align=left]FLASHBACK: The Secret Border Wars[/align]
Mayhem and terror in Southern states to protect government drug cartels

[align=left]FLASHBACK: Former DEA Agent: Mexican Commandos Killing In South West US To Protect Bush Drug Cartel[/align]

[align=left]MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - U.S. Border Patrol agents have come under fire twice along the Rio Grande in Texas in recent days amid rising tension on the frontier with Mexico, although no one was reported wounded, U.S. authorities said on Thursday.[/align]

A Border Patrol spokesman said unknown gunmen fired on agents on patrol in Brownsville, Texas, late on Wednesday. It was not immediately clear if the shots came from Mexico or from within the United States.

"Shots were fired, no one was injured and the FBI have taken the case over," Jose Rodriguez, a spokesman for the Border Patrol in McAllen, Texas, said by telephone.

Rodriguez said the shooting was the second along the same stretch of the Rio Grande in the past week, after agents patrolling the area in a launch on Friday came under a volley of gunfire from Mexico.

"On that occasion the shooters were hiding in brush on the Mexican side of the river ... The launch was struck by five bullets, although there were no injuries," he said.

That incident came on the same day a Border Patrol agent fatally shot a teenage Mexican immigrant as he crossed the border near San Diego on December 30, triggering widespread anger in Mexico and calls for a full investigation.

Speaking to Mexican diplomats late on Wednesday, President Vicente Fox reiterated calls by the Mexican government for clarification of the killing, and pledged to "ensure that total justice is done in the case."

The 2,000-mile (3,200-km) U.S.-Mexico border has always been dangerous, although violent attacks on Border Patrol agents have risen in recent months, especially in Arizona, where around half the 1.2 million undocumented immigrants nabbed crossing from Mexico were detained last year.

The Tucson sector Border Patrol said attacks on agents havroe almost doubled in recent months, and included cases in which officers have been shot at, rammed with cars and pelted with rocks by immigrants and smugglers.

pisshead Reviewed by pisshead on 01-06-2006. US agents shot at, tension mounts on Mexico border US agents shot at, tension mounts on Mexico border Reuters | January 6 2006 FLASHBACK: The Secret Border Wars Mayhem and terror in Southern states to protect government drug cartels FLASHBACK: Former DEA Agent: Mexican Commandos Killing In South West US To Protect Bush Drug Cartel MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - U.S. Border Patrol agents have come under fire twice along the Rio Grande in Texas in recent days amid rising tension on the frontier with Mexico, although no one was reported Rating: 5

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if must be good if they need to pay a company to tell us how great it is, despite what people on the border know about the situation...and those who are willing to report about what goes on around the border...don't count on the mainstream media or the tv though.

Fox hires lobbyist to sweeten U.S. views on immigration

Los Angeles Times | December 28, 2005
BY SAM ENRIQUEZ

MEXICO CITY -- President Vicente Fox has rehired the Texas public relations man and GOP political consultant who quietly helped engineer his election victory in 2000. This time, Fox wants Rob Allyn & Co. to put the brakes on growing anti-immigration, anti-Mexican sentiment in the United States.

Last week, the U.S. House approved a bill to add 700 miles of border fencing and make illegal immigration a felony. Fox denounced the measure as shameful. His foreign minister called it stupid and underhanded.

''The contributions of Mexicans in the United States, who are making their best effort, generating lots of wealth, are not known,'' said Rodrigo Iván Cortés Jiménez, an elected deputy in Mexico's lower house and a member of its commission on foreign affairs.

The immigration bill, expected to reach the Senate in February, has no provision for allowing temporary Mexican workers -- a further slap, in Fox's view. He and President Bush agree on the need for a ''guest worker'' program.

Fox cannot seek reelection next year, and his legacy may rest in part on his pledges to secure an agreement with the United States to grant legal status to the millions of Mexicans living and working illegally north of the border.

So the Mexican leader last week turned to the political operative who helped him topple Mexico's longtime ruling party to win the presidency.

Rob Allyn helped George W. Bush defeat Ann Richards for the governorship of Texas in 1994. Three years later, Allyn saw another potential winner in Fox, then governor of Guanajuato state. He agreed to join Fox's presidential campaign, but only in secret.

For three years, Allyn worked clandestinely, helping craft Fox's message of change, as well as his TV commercials, his polling and his wardrobe. Allyn made dozens of trips to Mexico, traveling under one of three pseudonyms.

Fox, of the National Action Party, came from behind to defeat Francisco Labastida of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which had ruled Mexico for seven decades. During Mexico's official campaign season in the first six months of 2000, Allyn worked with Penn, Schoen & Berland, a polling and political consulting firm. They operated Democracy Watch, a nonpartisan group hired by Mexicans to conduct national exit polls as a hedge against election fraud.

After the July election, Allyn told the Dallas Morning News he hid his work for Fox because he didn't want to be a political liability. Mexicans are sensitive to foreign interference, especially involving the United States.

Allyn, who also worked on the Bush presidential campaigns, now faces a bigger challenge with the migration issue.

Demands to stem illegal immigration are growing louder in the United States as Mexican and Central American workers spread across the country.

''Our focus is on public opinion, which influences policy outcomes in Congress,'' said Allyn, 46, who grew up in Huntington Beach, Calif., and moved to Texas when he was in high school. ``There is a huge misperception among the U.S. public about Mexico.''

Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez said Allyn's message should be that Mexicans have sunk roots deep in their U.S. neighborhoods and that they contribute more through their work, taxes and families than they take away in public services.