By Chris Roberts
El Paso Times
EL PASO — As Mexico struggles to transform from “a soft dictatorship to a democracy,” the United States must keep violence from spilling over while ensuring that job-creating commercial traffic flows freely, says the top official in charge of protecting this nation’s borders.
Mexico is at a turning point, said Alan Bersin, head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. As Mexican President Felipe Calderon sends federal and military personnel into towns where grisly executions have become ordinary, drug cartels escalate the violence, Bersin said Friday.
He spoke at the conclusion of the 7th Annual Border Security Conference at the University of Texas at El Paso.
“It’s not now time to retreat,” Bersin said. “We are at a difficult point. And in fact (cartel-related violence) has been characterized as a crisis of legitimacy -- an effort on the part of organized crime to challenge the legitimacy of the state.”
Not so long ago, Bersin said, “the Mexican mafia had infiltrated the highest levels of government. In those years it was unspoken. It was under the table. It was bought and paid for.”
Despite the current chaos, Bersin said, some things have improved. U.S. agents still investigate the records of the Mexican law enforcement officers they work with, he said, but more opportunities are opening up.
“We must stand side by side with our Mexican partners, those who are trying to build a new Mexico, an honest Mexico,” Bersin said.
And, contrary to some election-year claims, this nation’s Southwest border is safer than it has been in many years, Bersin said. Killings of a border rancher in Arizona and a “young pollero,” or immigrant smuggler, near a bridge on the El Paso-Juarez border have inflamed passions on both sides, he said.
“There are temptations to veer off and misinterpret what happens,” Bersin said. People must overcome old ways of thinking and work together to “build economic security,” he said.
A positive step, he said, came Friday when President Barack Obama signed into law a bill providing $600 million for border security.
“We need to continue to build a border that can withstand all threats,” Bersin said. “This bill does that in a very important way.”
With the money, Bersin’s agency will create a strike team with 1,000 Border Patrol agents and put 250 more customs officers in the nation’s ports of entry. Also in the bill is money for 250 additional Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials and support for many other agencies dealing with immigration.
Bersin said his new employees will be used to create a mobile force that can respond where there is most need. That need shifts from year to year as illegal immigration and smuggling operations look for the routes of least resistance. And the flexibility will help ensure that ports of entry have the staffing required to minimize waiting times, he said.
The money also will be used to assist Mexican law enforcement with ballistics analysis, DNA analysis and information sharing, said U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas.
“These additional (Customs and Border Protection) officers are necessary to clamp down on the illicit flow of weapons, drugs, and money, and are also vital to the efficient management of cross border traffic,” Reyes said in an e-mail.
“Many more officers are needed to fully meet (the agency’s) staffing needs, and I will continue urging my colleagues in Congress and the administration to continue investing in our ports.”
In this city, the El Paso Intelligence Center is expected to receive additional intelligence analysts. The center collects and shares information on the smuggling of drugs, people and weapons. It is made up a federal, state and local law-enforcement agencies.
Nelson Balido, president of the San Antonio-based Border Trade Alliance, agrees that more customs officers are needed. “We need 10 times that amount,” Balido said in a phone interview. “I think we’re so concerned with what happens between those ports of entry that we forget about the ports of entry.”
Businesses cannot afford to hold large amounts of merchandise in warehouses, Balido said, particularly in bad economic times. That requires quick responses from suppliers, many of which are in Mexico.
Because of long waits at the border, “they are losing money,” Balido said.
And those products are sent all over the country. “It’s not just the border that’s affected,” he said.
Bersin challenged businesses to find private-sector solutions.
And in a meeting with The Paso del Norte Group before his talk, he asked them to recruit more businesses for existing programs that speed border crossings.
Technology also will improve the flow of commerce, he said.
A new program will allow cargo inspections inside Mexico, tracking of trucks to ensure they are not diverted, and monitoring of containers to make sure they are not opened, he said.
However, it could be as long as four years before the program is in place, he said.
“Security and facilitating (legal border crossings), we don’t look at them as being mutually exclusive,” Bersin said. “If we pass through the low risk, then we get an opportunity to focus our inspection resources on those that pose higher risk.”
Economic activity will help ease poverty in Mexico by creating jobs, Balido said. A health economy ultimately would marginalize cartel activity, as well, he said.
Bersin agreed that the ultimate solution to Southwest border issues will be economic security.
“To see ourselves as a North American economy is a critical dimension of our future in the United States,” Bersin said.
“If you combine the natural resources of Canada with the fiscal and financial capital and knowledge of the United States with the human labor resources of Mexico, it will put us in a very good place to compete.”
Copyright 2010 El Paso Times, a MediaNews Group Newspaper