It would be madness for an American trucker to drive around Mexico with valuable cargo these days, given the escalating violence there. Three boys, two American, were killed last weekend in Ciudad Juarez just over the river from El Paso. Reports the U.K. Daily Mail, Two American schoolboys were among three teenagers gunned down as they looked at cars in a dealership in Ciudad Juarez on the Mexican border. The trio were killed in a hail of bullets in the city which lies just across the border from El Paso, Texas. One was found inside a white Jeep Cherokee and the other two in the courtyard.
(Note: Why do the U.K. newspapers do a better job reporting on violence in Mexico than U.S. newspapers?)The brutal killings are the latest in a growing toll of innocent American citizens killed in Mexico and are likely to heighten fears over the spiralling violence across the U.S. border.
Last weekend, 16 people were killed in Ciudad Juarez alone. Borderland Beat notes
Just thirty-eight days into the new year it's already one of the deadliest years on record with 58% of all the narco-assassinations coming from the states of Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Guerrero and Nuevo Leon.On Friday, federal officials seized $11 million worth of pot in Pharr, Texas. The Monitor reports Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents confiscated more than 13,000 pounds of marijuana found in a storage unit used to package and distribute marijuana.
(You will recall that the Texas Department of Public Safety indicated they had no concerns about safety or smuggling if the border were opened to Mexican trucks because, they say, all vehicles are inspected when they come over the border.)
Clearly, opening the border to Mexican trucks wouldn't really be part of a trade deal that benefits both sides. It would just be another giveaway of the U.S. economy to other countries.
