THE BORDER REPORT

Like the reporters who cover them, federal agents engage in paranoid delusions for much the same reason that dogs lick their own testicles.

Here's the latest contrivance: The Mexicans are coming.

Federal and state law enforcement agencies in Arizona expect some nasty clashes with narco-refugees fleeing Sonora into Tucson and Phoenix in the coming weeks, a federal intelligence report obtained by BorderReporter.com shows.

The report's speculative and salacious; sometimes I wonder if some Feds don't secretly hope these nightmare scenarios come true. Then the gringo reporters who serve as their lapdogs get wind of these things and publish the moist fantasies of excitable agents, like these. And these. The day that the killers working for Shorty Guzmán acknowledge having to seek permission to work in the U.S. as if it required some special visa to do so is the day I will renounce my U.S. citizenship.

Other parts of this report make me think some bureaucrat in the Arizona HIDTA is trying to build a not very convincing argument that the Americans are going to lose control of the border. One of the resulting outcomes of their fantasy is that weapons and money will be smuggled south in semi-trucks. How the hell do they think the money and guns are heading down now? Or does this bola de ratas assume they have the border so tightly controlled that money and guns aren't making their way south?

As usual with these war-game scenarios, there's some facts that are used to corroborate the fiction. If you don't look too hard, you'd never notice the holes.

As the war draws on between the Sinaloan Federation against the Juárez Cartel, Beltrán Leyva and the Zeta faction, more police officers and cartel operatives are crossing into the United States to escape.

Nogales has had 65 homicides, the majority of those narco-ejeccuciones, this year. As usual, it's not so much how many were killed as how high the killings go that really matters.

On Aug. 24, the second-in-command for Arturo Beltrán Leyva's Nogales operations is murdered along with a 17-year-old girl accompanying him. She dies in Tucson. On Aug. 26, gunmen with AK-47s and a .45 kidnap two people. One resists and is killed. The second does not and is kidnapped. Retribution comes three days later. Aug. 29, four people are killed; three are decapitated, a message written in blood to the Sinaloans to leave this city alone.

With that backdrop laid out, the HIDTA report gets fun:

"Rumors indicate the cartels authorized their operatives in the U.S. to hunt down and kill cartel members who have defected."

Possible Impact, Spillover Onto the United States

To avoid possible violence in Mexico, drug traffickers and law enforcement officers may relocate family members into the U.S. with the following possible outcomes:

1. Increased home invasions and homicides.
2. Family members possessing high-powered weapons in their vehicles.
3. Intimidation of relocated cartel members and their families.
4. Mexican cartels may employ street gangs including MS-13 and Barrio Azteca of El Paso, Texas, to carry out acts of violence against cartel figures in the U.S. (Apparently there's no street gangs in Tucson or Phoenix for them to use – mm)

Possible Impact on Law Enforcement in the United States

The Mexican military presence near the border may cause traffickers to use deadly force to push their loads into the U.S. with the following possible results:

1. Threats against law enforcement officers and first responders.
2. A rise in assaults against illegal aliens and rival cartel members.
3. Shootouts near the border pose a threat to U.S. citizens and law enforcement because suspects can quickly exit Mexico and flee into the U.S.
4. Cartels will gather intelligence on rival cartels and police enforcement activities in the United States.
5. Transport of weapons and currency southbound in tractor trailers.

The Arizona HIDTA is the task force that coordinates drug enforcement efforts between state, local and federal agencies. Basically, it handles the intel and the money. Keep in mind that this intelligence report probably took a month to prepare.

-- Michel Marizco