Are you thinking what we're thinking? That it's a good idea to keep the border closed to unsafe trucks from a country where drug lords control most of the prisons and don't even hide their power and influence any more?
For a roundup of the worst drug-related atrocities in Mexico, click here.
About those prisons, Reuters reports:
Six out of 10 Mexican prisons are "self-governed" by prison gangs or drug cartels, according to a report issued Monday by the country's human rights commission.
Commission representative Andres Aguirre said at a news conference that Mexico's prisons also are plagued by overcrowding, a shortage of guards and corrupt employees who sometimes help with breakouts.Earlier this month, Reuters reported,
More than 130 inmates escaped through a tunnel from a Mexican prison on the border with the United States in one of the worst jailbreaks the country's beleaguered penal system has suffered in recent years...
Corrupt prison officials may have helped the inmates escape, said Jorge Luis Moran, chief of public security in Coahuila, adding that U.S. authorities had been alerted to help capture the fugitives if they try to cross the border...
There have been numerous mass breakouts in the last few years from Mexico's penal system, and prison officials are frequently accused of complicity with drug cartels.Fortunately, very, very few Mexican trucks travel beyond the border zone in this country as part of the cross-border trucking pilot program.
