Two Mexican soldiers and a security guard were temporarily detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers after crossing into United States on Friday at the Paso del Norte Bridge in Downtown El Paso, a CBP spokesman said.
The guard and uniformed soldiers, who were armed, were stopped about 2 p.m. near the foot of the bridge on the U.S. side, said Roger Maier, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection. The type of firearm carried by the soldiers was not immediately available.
The three detainees were interviewed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, released without charges and returned to Mexico, Maier said.
“It was determined these individuals were attempting to perform an operation to remove illegal vendors from the bridge and were attempting to seek assistance, cooperation from U.S. authorities at the bridge,” Maier said.
The soldiers had been in the Juárez area for only a couple of days and were not familiar with border-crossing protocols, Maier said.
Mexican military officials with Joint Operation Chihuahua said in a statement that soldiers of the 75th Infantry Battalion were chasing a suspicious person who ran into U.S. territory. Officials praised the “excellent” cooperation of U.S. authorities.
The border line is set at the middle of the top of the international bridges.
On Monday, the Mexican army sent an estimated 2,000 new soldiers to Juárez as part of a rotation of soldiers. Soldiers, including military police, can regularly be seen posted on international bridges checking vehicles leaving and entering Mexico.
By Daniel Borunda / El Paso Times
Posted: 01/17/2009 12:00:00 AM MST
MONTERREY, Mexico — A huge weapons cache found in a ranch building near the Texas border this week was the nation’s single largest weapons bust in 20 years, said the federal attorney general’s office, or PGR, in a statement Friday. A Mexican army unit found the stockpile, which included 89 assault rifles and more than 83,000 rounds of ammunition, on Thursday near Miguel Alemán, a border city just south of Roma, authorities said.
Soldiers also seized about 9 metric tons of marijuana and arrested five people at the ranch, called “El Mezquitito,” the Defense Ministry said in a brief statement.
The latest wave of military and federal police action in the troubled border region continued Friday when police chased and exchanged gunfire with organized crime suspects along the main highway between Matamoros and Ciudad Victoria, authorities said.
The pre-dawn shootout began when drivers of a late-model Hummer and a Land Rover failed to stop for police, resulting in a 20-mile high-speed chase, authorities said. Two people in the Land Rover were arrested with four firearms and about $10 worth of Colombian pesos in their possession, according to police.
An unknown number of occupants in the Hummer escaped, leaving 37 firearms, 29 packs of cocaine, 500 boxes of ammo and 12 grenades in the vehicle.
Thursday’s record weapons bust by the military was a fortuitous act, according to news reports quoting a regional military spokesman. During a routine patrol before sunrise Thursday, soldiers stopped a Jeep Grand Cherokee and detained the driver, who reportedly tipped them off to the stash. Federal press statements didn’t include that detail.
On Friday morning, Mexican news media began buzzing with reports that 100 soldiers had surrounded the PGR’s offices in Matamoros, sparking speculation that a high-value drug gang target had been arrested — or that the military was investigating the federal agency.
The PGR’s news office said officials would comment on the mobilization today.
Mexico’s military has flooded the troubled region in the past month after a spate of violence that included the slaying of a politician and police officers.
Days after they arrested four Nuevo Laredo police in January, soldiers raided at least five city police stations from Nuevo Laredo to Matamoros, taking away officers’ firearms.
Only two of hundreds of disarmed officers were reportedly arrested but as of Friday, most police forces still had not been given their weapons back, in spite of requests from Tamaulipas state officials worried about an increase in common crimes.
Luis Astorga, a sociologist with the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said the raids were a military show of force to put cops in line, rather than a strategic long-term plan to fix police forces.
“The federal government and all the governors know that the (city-level) police are up to their necks in the transferring of drugs and the protection of traffickers,” said Astorga, who has authored books on drug trafficking and the military. “It’s a bit like, ‘Look, we’re watching you.’”
Tamaulipas is the territory of the Gulf Cartel, whose alleged leader is behind bars in Houston waiting a federal trial
Sean Mattson – Express News
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