U.S. OFFICIALS BRACE FOR SPILLOVER VIOLENCE FROM MEXICO

AUSTIN -- The state and federal governments have prepared contingency
plans to deal with "spillover violence" from across the border as
Mexican troops clash with ruthless drug cartels terrorizing the
United States's southern neighbor.

"Anything you can think of that's happened in Mexico, we have to
think could happen here," said Steve McCraw, Gov. Rick Perry's
director of homeland security. "We know what they're capable of."

A crackdown by Mexican President Felipe Calderon has turned the City
of Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, into a war zone as
federal troops battle feuding cartels.

Thousands of soldiers and agents have surged into the border city in
the government's latest effort to free Mexican citizens from a daily
spectacle of assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings ordered by
rival drug czars. McCraw predicted that the violence in Mexico "will
get worse before it gets better."

Mexico's active duty armed forces total more than 130,000 and are
being aggressively used to combat the cartels. But U.S. Sen. John
Cornyn, R-Texas, told reporters last week that Mexico's two largest
drug cartels have fielded a combined army of 100,000 foot soldiers
to battle not just government forces, but also each other.

The potential threat

The state's contingency plan was developed under the umbrella of
Operation Border Star, a multi-agency law enforcement offensive led
by Perry's homeland security office. The plan, which has not been
released publicly, envisions differing scenarios of violence, such as
kidnappings or a takeover by hit squads, with a corresponding
response by law enforcement, said McCraw.

While declining to elaborate on specifics for security reasons,
McCall called it a "very aggressive plan to deal very quickly with
all threats that might be posed."

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has also prepared
contingency measures to respond to cross-border violence, said DHS
spokeswoman Amy Kudwa. Like the state plan, the federal response
"contemplates a number of contingencies that could result from
violence" in Mexico, said Kudwa.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, interviewed last
week on the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, said the grisly murders and
kidnappings that are signatures of the Mexican drug wars haven't made
their way north.

"But let's be very, very clear," she added. "This is a very serious
battle. It could spill over into the United States. If it does, we do
have contingency plans to deal with it."

Fears of instability

A Defense Department study raising the possibility that the
narco-violence could undermine the Mexican government has also
prompted fears of a mass migration of refugees that would require a
large-scale humanitarian response.

The U.S. Joint Forces Command, in a speculative assessment of global
security threats, listed Mexico and Pakistan as two countries that
"bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse."

"The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government,
its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under
sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels,"
said the report. "How that internal conflict turns out over the next
several years will have a major impact on the stability of the
Mexican state.

"Any descent by ... Mexico into chaos would demand an American
response based on the serious implications for homeland security
alone," the study said.

Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who was director of the Office of
National Drug Control Policy under President Clinton, said in a
report last month that Mexico is "fighting for survival against
narco-terrorism" and warned that the country's worsening problems
pose a threat to U.S. security.

"In the next eight years," he predicted, "the violent collection of
criminal drug cartels could overwhelm the state and establish de
facto control over broad regions of northern Mexico. A failure by the
Mexican political system to curtail lawlessness and violence could
result in a surge of millions of refugees crossing the U.S. border."

Preparations for migration

Perry and others disagree with the speculation that Mexico is on the
verge of collapse, pointing out that the country is a robust trading
partner and that the government is in an aggressive battle with the
cartels. But state Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, chairman of the
Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee, said Texas
nevertheless needs to be prepared.

"Talk of a collapse of the Mexican government is very, very
premature, and, at this point in time, unlikely," he said. "However,
I think that for Texas to be responsible to its citizens it has to
consider a contingency plan were conditions to worsen in Mexico.
There is no question that any type of upheaval in Mexico would lead
to more people from Mexico coming across the border illegally in
large numbers."

A state response being prepared by the governor's office, he said,
would include medical treatment, food, shelter and other assistance
"for people that are fleeing their country out of concern for
themselves or the lives of their families." The response would also
likely deal with economic disruptions along the border, he said.

McCraw, interviewed last week, confirmed that the governor's office
has plans to deal with a migration surge resulting from "any
calamity" but said there is no indication that Mexico is vulnerable
to collapse. Planning for a migration influx, he said, is separate
from the contingency plan for spillover violence.

"Do we plan for mass migration scenarios?," he said. "Of course. The
answer is 'absolutely.' ... But the scenarios could be a natural
disaster, pandemic flu, serious problems in South America, Central
America. The State of Texas prepares for all scenarios ... for all
hazards, all threats."

A look at the problem

Perry's Operation Border Star, which has evolved from three previous
operations since 2005, is a multi-jurisdictional offensive designed
to dismantle smuggling and present a show of force all along Texas'
1,254-mile-long border with Mexico.

Tied to a central command in Department of Public Safety headquarters
in Austin, the operation includes DPS troopers, the Texas Rangers,
the U.S. Border Patrol, the Coast Guard, local sheriffs and police
and other state and federal agencies. Over the past four years, says
Perry's office, serious crime along the border has dropped by 65 percent.

The Legislature authorized $110 million for Border Star in 2007, and
Perry is asking for $135 million from the 2009 Legislature. Perry has
also thrown his support behind legislation sponsored by Carona to
crack down on transnational gangs operating on the Texas side of the
border in collaboration with the cartels in Mexico.

Gangs such as the Mexican Mafia, the Texas Syndicate, Barrio Azteca
and MS-13 have become an increasing threat in the United States, said
Carona, sometimes recruiting members from Texas schools. The gangs,
whose members are often bilingual and, in many cases, are U.S.
citizens, also have a strong base of operations in Texas prisons.
McCraw called transnational gangs the "single-biggest organized crime
threat" on this side of the border.

The Mexican drug wars claimed more than 5,700 lives in Mexico in
2008, including 1,600 in Juarez, where the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels
are battling for supremacy. About a half-dozen cartels are rooted in
Mexico, accounting for an estimated $27 billion-a-year business
through the smuggling of drugs and human cargo. In turn, says McCraw,
bulk cash, weapons and stolen vehicles flow back into Mexico from the
United States to fortify the illicit operations.

Thus far, says McCraw, violence on the Texas side of the border
hasn't risen to the level that would trigger full-scale
implementation of the contingency plan. But a shootout in Reynosa and
protests on international bridges on Feb. 17 sent Border Star command
posts into a "hot loop" alert to escalate monitoring and
intelligence activities before returning to normal 24 hours later,
McCraw said.

Bracing for trouble

Border area law enforcement officers say they are braced for a
spillover if conditions worsen. "We're in a state of readiness across
the border," said Don Reay, executive director of the El Paso-based
Texas Sheriff's Association.

In El Paso, which has been ranked as one of the nation's safest
cities for the past decade, Sheriff Richard Wiles said "there is a
lot more drug smuggling" through the El Paso corridor because of a
federal crackdown that closed off a major route through Florida.

El Paso, he said, has become a home for a number of stash houses as
drug couriers store their goods in abandoned warehouses or vacant
houses to wait for the most opportune time to ship them north into
the U.S. interior. Local officials have responded with a "stash
house initiative" urging citizens to report suspicious activity.

Additionally, 30 shooting victims from cartel-related incidents in
Mexico came to El Paso last year for treatment at the county
hospital. "We have to deal with the security issues to make sure that
the cartel doesn't come over to finish the job," he said.

Terrell County Sheriff Clint McDonald said his desolate border county
of 1,200 people has largely been spared from the drug trade despite
the county's depiction as the scene of a soured drug deal in the
movie No Country for Old Men; actor Tommy Lee Jones played a
fictional Terrell County sheriff.

McDonald, however, began worrying that the real-life serenity may one
day evaporate after aerial photos revealed the construction of
caliche roads leading down to the river on the other side of the
border. McDonald fears that drug dealers are preparing a new route
into the United States in case law enforcement crackdowns close off
their corridor in El Paso and other areas.

"Being the least populated county on the border, we have to know that
when it does hit the fan over there, they have already built roads to
get to us," he said. "It's kind of like the movie. We can't stop
what's coming."

This report includes material from The Monitor in McAllen.