A Horse Race Across the Desert

The Front Lines of the Border Battle part II

I did just about everything you can do on the border; in fact, nobody else that I know of in television news has done what I’ve done down there. I flew with the helicopter team. I rode with the horse team. I rode ATVs, watched the unmanned drone team w

ork, flew in helicopters, and went out to sea with the water team on the border of San Diego. The list goes on and on, and on. If it’s been done on the border, I probably covered it or done it.

At times, but not often enough, in response to the ongoing war with the drug lords, Mexican Presidents would attempt to contain the corruption and crime. Mexican federal troops have been sent into cities and regions where the cartels are powerful. Still, some worry the campaign against the drug lords only intensifies the violence and is also being done with little weight, basically, image over substance. During one of these crackdowns, we got a chance to sit down for an exclusive interview with Mexico’s Attorney General and President Calderon’s right-hand man, Eduardo Medina-Mora Icaza. He told me at the time that working with the Americans is essential because Mexico sits between the drug-growing regions of Colombia and the United States, and the flow needs to be stopped to protect everyone involved.

“This is a shared problem; this is not a problem happening just in Mexico, it’s an equation that has elements going from south to north, such as drug shipments, as there are elements that are relevant going north to south, such as weapons and cash,” says Medina-Mora. He seems to put more of the blame on the weapons and cash coming south, rather than the drugs and migrant trade headed north into the US.