By JORGE VARGAS
Associated Press Writer
NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico- Mexican soldiers and federal agents began patrolling this embattled border city Monday while dozens of Nuevo Laredo police officers were investigated for possible links with organized crime, officials said Monday.
The Mexican government deployed federal forces to three states to contain surging violence linked to organized crime over the weekend.
The new deployment comes amid evidence that organized crime has penetrated some local police departments, presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar told a news conference in Mexico City.
“There are very clear clues of the relationship between the police of Nuevo Laredo with drug trafficking; thus the decided action,” Aguilar said.
President Vicente Fox already had sent hundreds of soldiers and federal agents to the border cities in March to restore order. But concerns about lawlessness were reignited last week with the killing of Nuevo Laredo’s police chief just hours after he took office.
Federal police and troops stood guard outside city police stations across the border city of Nuevo Laredo on Monday, two days after local police opened fire on a convoy of federal agents _ wounding one _ as they arrived at the city across the U.S. border from Laredo, Texas.
About 60 police officers who got off the night shift early Monday remained inside the Nuevo Laredo police headquarters but officials wouldn’t say whether they were under arrest.
Local police could have suspected the convoy was a front: Mexican criminal groups often attempt to pass themselves off as law enforcement. But the attorney general’s office has insisted that its investigative police made no provocative movements and never fired.
There was no sign of city police officers at work in Nuevo Laredo on Monday. The attorney general’s office and local officials refused to say whether the city police department had been formally closed or taken over.
Forty-one city police were detained immediately after Saturday’s confrontation and were flown to Mexico City for questioning.
Despite concerns about corruption, federal authorities have to rely on state and local police “who know how crime operates, who is who in every place,” Aguilar said.
Federal police and investigators _ backed up by military forces _ made more than 70 arrests as they arrived over the weekend in the states of Baja California, Tamaulipas and Sinaloa, Aguilar said.
Aguilar declined to say how many officers and troops were participating in the new operation, which will include military highway patrols and roadblocks.
Violence has surged in many of Mexico’s northern border cities as reputed drug kingpin Joaquin Guzman leads an offensive to control drug smuggling along the entire Mexico-U.S. border, according to federal prosecutors.
The new federal deployment _ dubbed “Operation Mexico Secure” _ also targets Guzman’s home state of Sinaloa, the home state of many drug chieftains that has seen more than 250 killings this year.
U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza issued a statement Thursday decrying “the rapidly degenerating situation along the border and the near-lawlessness in some parts.”
President Fox’s spokesman noted on Monday that Mexican gangs are equipped with high-tech weapons that only could have come from the U.S. black market.
He said help is needed from U.S. authorities to control weaponry that “only is in the hands of industries and companies of the United States and that passes as contraband toward Mexico.”