THE BORDER REPORT

The National Guard has been reporting incursions by the Mexican military into Arizona; something that isn't news to Arizona residents, except that the source of information is now a unit of the U.S. Armed Forces. This can turn interesting really quick, the marijuana harvest season is about to kick off into full glory and drug seizures will begin to skyrocket on the U.S. border as a result all the way up to December. Add some corrupt elements of the Mexican military and 6,000 National Guard soldiers, some with combat experience, and sooner or later, there's going to be a collision. U.S. Border Patrol agents and Tohono O'odham police officers rarely directly encounter the soldiers, sources tell me. Instead, an outgunned law enforcement officer will back off and - maybe - call in the report to avoid tangling with the armor-plated Humvees topped off with .50-caliber machine guns. I don't know what the National Guard's policy is going to be when the encounters begin to increase. The news was first reported last week by Local 2544, union for the U.S. Border Patrol's Tucson sector. The National Guard, perhaps trying to avoid the political equivalent to an Arizona monsoon, has said nothing about these encounters. But the harvest season in southern Sonora is already beginning. The marijuana fields cultivated by the Adan Salazár syndicate in San Bernardo and Navojoa are being prepared and the trafficking will begin anew, peaking out past Thanksgiving then beyond. The Mexican Army's involvement with the narco-trafficking is - and I'm being optimistic here - scattered. There does not appear to be another Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo running the military's anti-drug task force. The general was arrested in February 1997 after he'd been hired by Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the Lord of the Skies, while he was in charge of the National Institute for the Combat of Drugs. His position added a lovely twist to the typical corruption in the country: the Mexican drug czar was working for Mexico's most powerful capo. If there's an official this high up the Fox's administration who's gone to the dark side, we haven't heard anything. But military soldiers have repeatedly been tracked coming into the United States, most famously last January in Hudspeth County, Texas, when U.S. sheriff's deputies came under fire. Mexico dismissed the short-lived combat as drug traffickers disguised as soldiers. The U.S. held hearings, members of Congress howled in outrage on Lou Dobbs and nothing was done. And that's where this thing is going to get interesting. Now we have Mexican military encountering U.S. soldiers. The U.S. soldiers are unarmed. Given a couple of potentially lethal encounters and that may soon change.