March 25, 2011 – San Diego, CA – Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano’s recent remarks concerning border safety are wrong and give citizens a false sense of security.
Napolitano stated that the idea that violence is spilling into U.S. border cities is “wrong” and that “the border is better now than it ever has been.” The violence that has occurred along the border in recent years shows that crime indeed is spilling over from Mexico. Three Border Patrol agents have been murdered by the cartels in the last three years, ranchers and citizens have been gunned down in border communities, and the Phoenix area has risen to become a cartel related crime hotspot.
If the border was better now than it has ever been Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry would not have been brutally murdered by heavily armed Mexican criminals operating over 13 miles inside the United States. In some countries that is construed as an act of war, but here we get words not deeds when Napolitano terms events like this as evidence, “there is much to do with our colleagues in Mexico in respect to the drug cartels.”
It is time for the political games to stop for fear of insulting the government of Mexico. U.S. citizens are being kidnapped and killed while our Border Patrol agents fight a war at home that no one will allow them to win. Not one more Border Patrol agent should fall or citizen be victimized because our government fails to act. Mexico is hemorraghing violence and we are being hit with the splatter.
The U.S.-Mexico border is unsafe and to say anything else is not true.
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The National Border Patrol Council is a professional labor union representing more than 17,000 Border Patrol Agents and support staff. The NBPC was founded in 1965, and is recognized as one of the most effective labor organizations in the Federal sector.
