TANCREDO SEIZES ON BORDER SHOOTINGS

Blames Mexican Troops With Drug Links

WASHINGTON -- Fresh from his second trip to the Mexican border this year,
U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo charged Wednesday that Mexican army troops continue
to cross the border into the United States and sometimes fire shots at U.S.
law enforcement personnel.

The Littleton Republican said the latest shooting occurred Sunday on the
Arizona side of the border inside the remote Tohono O'odham Nation, an
Indian reservation. No one was injured, but Tancredo said his conversations
with border police left him no doubt that the shooting occurred.

"I went to see where this happened," he said of his trip on Sunday and
Monday, which had been scheduled before the incident. "It was absolutely in
the United States. This is flat ground. This is the desert. The only people
who could have fired there were the Mexicans."

Neither a Border Patrol spokesman in Tucson nor the Immigration and
Naturalization Service could confirm the incident. "If it is under
investigation, we don't comment on it," said INS spokeswoman Nancy Cohen in
Washington, D.C.

INS officials have confirmed a previous incident reported by border agents
to Tancredo in the same area in May. The State Department later lodged a
formal complaint with Mexico about the incident in which the rear
windshield of a Border Patrol vehicle was shattered, apparently by a
gunshot fired by a Mexican soldier.

In that incident, as in the latest, Tancredo claimed that the Mexican
soldiers were involved in drug trafficking. "Everyone I talked to, both the
Tohono O'odham Nation police and the border police, believe it was
drug-related," Tancredo said of Sunday's incident.

Tancredo said he also visited Calexico, Calif., a border town where he said
Border Patrol agents recently reported being shot at by smugglers.

Tancredo, who has sharply criticized security along the Mexican border,
said he plans to visit the Canadian border later this month.

The Colorado lawmaker has attacked President Bush's proposals for relaxing
immigration from Mexico and urged the administration to send U.S. troops to
guard the borders. The leader of the Congressional Immigration Reform
Caucus, he has pushed Congress to sharply limit immigration.