MEXICO DRUG WAR PROMPTS FEDERAL CONTINGENCY PLAN

The Department of Homeland Security has contingency plans to rush
additional personnel and other resources, including the U.S.
military, to parts of the southern border if law enforcement agencies
on the ground are overwhelmed by spillover effects from escalating
criminal violence in Mexico, department officials say.

Several border states likewise are drawing up contingency plans, amid
growing concern about possible cross-border effects of the violence
in Mexico, which claimed more than 5,300 lives last year - double the
number in 2007.

The escalation has included videos of torture and executions posted
on the Web - a tactic former officials say was likely copied from
Muslim terrorists - and hours-long firefights between authorities and
criminals toting large-caliber automatic weapons. A State Department
travel advisory for U.S. citizens last week compared these incidents
to "small-unit combat."

The DHS plan, which "does not change or supersede any existing
authorities ... addresses how a number of government agencies would
deploy federal resources to help state and local partners on the
ground if local resources were overwhelmed," DHS spokeswoman Amy Kudwa said.

She said the agencies would include the U.S. military "as needed."

"We have been coordinating with the Department of Defense," she said.

The Department of Defense "is aware of the DHS plan," said spokesman
Lt. Col. Almarah Belk. The department "has provided some information
on potential DOD-unique resources/capabilities - based on historical
precedent - that could be employed in support of the DHS plan, if asked."

Neither Col. Belk nor Ms. Kudwa would give specifics, but nonlethal
military capabilities such as air transport are used in federal
disaster response.

Ms. Kudwa said the DHS operations plan had been drawn up last summer
to address "a broad spectrum of contingencies," including the
possibility that the violence in Mexico might "spill over the border
in such a way that it exceeds the capacity of federal, state and
local law enforcement on the ground to respond."

News of the plan, first revealed last week by Homeland Security
Secretary Janet Napolitano, comes on the heels of the State
Department warning for Americans planning to visit Mexico, and of a
report from the U.S. National Drug Intelligence Center, which found
that Mexican cartels "maintain drug-distribution networks or supply
drugs to distributors in at least 230 U.S. cities."

Several border states also are addressing the issue, which was one of
a number of concerns raised with Miss Napolitano by California Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, in a meeting Monday, according
to state officials.

"This is on our radar," said Jay Alan, a spokesman for the California
Emergency Management Agency. He said the question had come up "not
necessarily in a formal way" during discussions among the 10 states
from both sides of the border - four U.S., six Mexican - who were
negotiating a memorandum of understanding on emergency management.

In Arizona, Lt. James Warriner, a spokesman for the Department of
Public Safety, told UPI that the violence was "definitely creeping
across the border into Arizona" in the form of military-style home
invasions, kidnappings and human-trafficking operations.

"There have been home invasions ... using the tactics" familiar to
law enforcement because of their employment by Mexican cartels. "They
are very heavily armed" and sometimes wear paramilitary-style
uniforms, Lt. Warriner said.

Analysts say the extreme nature of the violence in Mexico is in part
a product of the destabilizing effects of President Felipe Calderon's
use of the army and federal authorities to crack down on the cartels
- - which has provoked shootouts with police and escalating violence
between the cartels as markets are destabilized by the removal of key players.