REPORT: MEXICO DRUG VIOLENCE COULD SPILL INTO U.S.

Drug-gang violence that plagues Mexico is worsening and could spill
over into the United States, according to a new report by a
consultant on Gov. Rick Perry's Texas Border Security Council.

While Mexican President Felipe Calderon has deployed as many as
20,000 troops and federal police to battle the country's powerful
drug cartels, gangsters are fighting among themselves for dominance
as the flow of drugs continues into America.

The 17-page document to be released Wednesday said that more than
2,100 people were killed in drug-related violence since Jan. 1,
making 2007 the deadliest year yet.

The U.S. side of the border is vulnerable because, the report
asserted, law enforcement is poorly coordinated, undersupplied and
sometimes corrupt.

But drug violence, which has become a part of daily life in many
Mexican border communities, has not materialized to a significant
extent in American sister cities.

The document's chief author is former State Department
counterterrorism agent Fred Burton, now of the Austin-based Stratfor
consulting firm. It comes as U.S. and Mexican officials are putting
the finishing touches on an anti-narcotics aid package worth at least
$1 billion.

Praising Calderon's resolve to take on the drug traffickers in the
first 11 months of his six-year term, U.S. officials said the aid for
Mexico is essential for both countries.

"We can't afford to screw up this opportunity," U.S. Rep. Silvestre
Reyes, D-El Paso, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee,
said last week as he left for a meeting in Mexico City to discuss the
aid package with senior Calderon administration officials.

"We've not seen this kind of opportunity to impact the gangs."

Offensive working? Although Calderon's offensive against the cartels
appeared to have little impact in its early months, gangland killings
steadily declined through the spring and summer after peaking at 319
in March, according to the Mexican government. Some 195
gangland-style killings were reported in August.

The bloodletting has slackened in Nuevo Laredo -- across the border
from Laredo -- in Acapulco and in the towns of Michoacan state where
many of last year's killings took place.

"There is a lessened expression of violence," Mexican Attorney
General Eduardo Medina Mora told foreign reporters recently. "We
think the criminal organizations have changed their strategy as a
reaction to the forceful response by the Mexican government."

But Burton's report asserted that despite Calderon's efforts, the
security situation in Mexico is deteriorating, even if the cartels
have generally been careful about who they kill.

"Cartel hitmen use a variety of techniques to kill and intimidate
rival drug traffickers, as well as uncooperative or corrupt police
and civil officials," it said. "The level of brutality involved
rivals that of tactics used by death squads in Iraq, but Mexican
cartel violence is noteworthy in that it is usually more precise and
carefully targeted."

Fighting for northern routes Few systems are in place to keep the
violence from spreading across the border, Burton's report said. "The
majority of this vulnerability comes from Mexico, where an
institutionalized system of corruption and intimidation exists."

It continues: "On the U.S. side, however, the under-reporting of
crimes ... and corruption among low- and mid-level U.S. law
enforcement officials facilitate the northward spread of cartel activity.

Traffickers are fighting for control of smuggling routes from ports
and to northern border cities they use as trampolines into the United States.

Despite the report's criticism, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
spokesman Steve Robertson said the United States and its Latin
American partners have landed major punches in the past year.

He pointed to more than $205 million in cash found in an upscale home
in Mexico City in March, believed to be the largest cash seizure in
law-enforcement history, and the seizure that same month of about 21
tons of cocaine aboard a ship believed to be headed for Mexico.

Counting victories Also, as U.S. and Mexican officials negotiated the
aid package, Mexico's successes stacked up. Its soldiers captured 3.2
tons of cocaine from a private jet forced to crash land in the
Yucatan Peninsula in September, and they recovered nearly 12 tons of
the drug after a raid on a warehouse in Tampico earlier this month.

This week, Mexican customs agents seized 15 tons of precursor
chemicals used to make crystal methamphetamine.

"Actually, 2007 has been very successful for DEA and our Mexican
counterparts ... ," Robertson said. "We are optimistic we are making
a difference. To the naysayers -- the apologists who say we are not
making progress -- we will continue to fight the good fight."

Allison Castle, a spokeswoman for Perry, said the state is trying to
fortify the border but needs more federal help. She pointed to a
recent program in which state funds have been used to pay overtime to
keep more police and other officers on guard along the Rio Grande.

"There are people who seek to do us harm," she said. "This report
underscores why we must remain vigilant."