Smugglers set eyes on U.S. truck program

A U.S. program that offers trusted trucking companies speedy passage across American borders has begun attracting just the sort of customers who place a premium on avoiding inspections: Mexican drug smugglers.

Most trucks enrolled in the program pause at the border for just 20 seconds before entering the United States. And nine out of 10 of them do so without anyone looking at their cargo.

The government keeps the list of participants secret, citing national security and trade secrets.

More than half of all U.S. imports now come from companies in the program, called the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, or C-TPAT.

Mexican trucking companies make up only 6 percent of global membership in the system, but they account for half of its 71 security violations during the past two years. .

In Laredo, the border's busiest crossing, nearly 700 trucks a day pass through the lane at the World Trade Bridge reserved for trucks that are certified by the trusted-carrier program, each one pausing only for a matter of seconds..

"The basic vulnerability for a truck driver remains the 'plata-or-plomo' dilemma," Mr. Flynn said, using Spanish shorthand for taking a bribe or a bullet.

Mexican authorities suspect a man who owned a participating trucking company in Aguascalientes, Mexico, was killed by drug gangs in July 2008. The slaying of Gerardo Medrano Ibarra is unsolved.

Roberto Ramirez de la Parra, then chief of operations for Mexico's customs agency, told El Norte newspaper that exporters last year became worried that organized crime was targeting U.S.-certified companies.

In the past, smugglers created their own fly-by-night businesses for smuggling, he said. Now they use major trucking corporations.

Mike Cutler sent out this article with comments:

Hi Gang:

Many years ago "Who Do You Trust?" was a program on television that was hosted by Johnny Carson even before he and his "side-kick" Ed McMahon entertained us on the Tonight Show. The title of that show could also serve as the title for the news report that this commentary focuses on. I have attached a link to an article that appeared in the Washington Times on November 24th. The news article shows how creative the narcotics smugglers are and how naive our government is. Of course, by calling our government "naive" I am giving the folks behind the program that enables trucks to barely come to a full stop as they cross the border that is supposed to separate our country from Mexico and, in fact, the rest of the world.

Consider this paragraph from the news report:

More than half of all U.S. imports now come from companies in the program, called the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, or C-TPAT. Mexican trucking companies make up only 6 percent of global membership in the system, but they account for half of its 71 security violations during the past two years.

I urge you to click on the link below and check out the news report in its entirety.

Every day and every night, federal agents and police officers go in harm's way to conduct investigations into narcotics trafficking. They spend long hours engaged in some of the most dangerous investigations a law enforcement officer can undertake. I have lost friends in the law enforcement community who paid the "ultimate price" for conducting those investigations.

Much of the crime committed in our country is directly or indirectly related to the drug trade and many of those crimes involve extreme violence and murder.

For decades our nation has declared that it was waging a "War against drugs."

Yet, even while the citizens of our nation have come to face a reduction in their expectations of freedom and privacy and additionally undergo increasing levels of scrutiny when we seek to board airliners in the name of national security, drugs flow easily across our nation's borders even as such leaders as Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security and Senator Charles Schumer, the chairman of the Senate Immigration Subcommittee declare our nation's borders secure and hence, the time is right for the implementation of "Comprehensive Immigration Reform."

If truckloads of drugs are being found to be easily crossing our nation's borders as smugglers capitalize on a program that was obviously created at the behest of corporations whose goals of increasing profit depend on removing our nation's borders, the question needs to be asked, could not weapons of mass destruction also be easily smuggled across the border with the wink and nod that apparently passes for border security? Could not terrorists and criminals also gain easy access to our nation under the auspices of a program that all be eliminates our border for "trusted" trucking companies?

But Mexico is tightening it’s border against US!

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-border-crossing25-2009nov25,0,3756431.story

Reporting from Tijuana - Driving into Mexico has been a largely hassle-free experience for decades: There were few customs inspectors, even fewer gates, and for most border crossers, no questions asked.

That’s about to change.

The Mexican government is modernizing its ports of entry along the border, including its biggest crossing in Tijuana. The new infrastructure — which includes gates, cameras and vehicle scales — is meant to help curtail the flow of drug money and weapons to Mexican organized crime groups.

But bolstered security means more border-crossing logjams, and business and trade groups fear that the new measures will deal another blow to a fragile regional economy.

But President Felipe Calderon, under pressure to show progress in his nearly three-year offensive against drug cartels, declined, saying the measures are a necessary sacrifice. Since 2008, more than 1,000 people have been slainin Tijuana, many of them with guns believed to have been obtained in the U.S.

“We want security,” Calderon said on a recent trip to Tijuana. “This requires sacrifice and measures that permit us to stop the trafficking of weapons, drugs, drug money and criminals across this border.” [snip]

Get that....MEXICO wants security!!! LOL

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