The Obama administration has been trying to determine how to follow up on the Bush-era Merida Initiative, a three-year program started in 2008 to provide $1.6 billion in equipment and training to governments in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.

While drug cartel violence continues to rise, the Mexican government at times fails to act on intelligence from the U.S. — sometimes due to corruption, the Chicago Tribune reported. U.S. officials trust Mexican President Felipe Calderon, but are less sure of others in the Mexican government, Alonzo R. Pena, deputy director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told the Tribune.

Still, Clinton’s statements affirmed the administration’s commitment to aiding Mexico in its fight against the drug cartels — the question is how. Clinton argued the U.S. should work with Mexico and Central American countries on a program like the one that helped Colombia’s government regain control from militants.

It’s a tricky balance to determine the right way forward, because the nationalistic Mexican government is wary of more active support from the U.S., experts told the Tribune:

Eric Olson, of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Mexico Center, said he senses from conversations with administration officials that “the administration still seems handcuffed by the lack of reliable partners at the operational level.”

Olson said that while he was reluctant to be alarmist, “I don’t think anybody thinks this has gotten to the bottom.”

Among the U.S. population, concern about violence in Mexico has so far largely focused on fear of spillover violence in the U.S. But putting up border fences and increasing patrol will not solve the drug cartel problem in Mexico, experts have said, and the U.S. has some responsibility because its citizens purchase many of the drugs that allow cartels to thrive.

Immigrants rights groups in the U.S., at least, should attempt to lean on the Mexican government to prevent atrocities like the mass murder of 72 would-be migrants in August, Hector Tobar argued in the Los Angeles Times today.

At least 400 mass kidnappings are carried out in Mexico each year, Tobar wrote, and immigrants rights groups should be protesting at Mexican consulates and fighting for more humanitarian aid:

Simply put: It’s wrong that people have to undertake the journey to the U.S. in the first place. People shouldn’t have to leave the land of their ancestors, their extended families, their barrios and their farms.

They leave because the promise of democracy in Mexico and Central America remains unfulfilled.

The Tamaulipas murders are really just the most sickening expression of a vast system of inequality and corruption that still defines life for millions of people.

“I suspect Republicans will also hammer immigration, a topic that preys on economic fears and highlights an issue on which Obama has not acted enough,” Christine Todd Whitman, chair of the Republican Leadership Council and a former governor of New Jersey, wrote Sunday in the Washington Post. And Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said on Fox News Sunday that the government must up the ante on border enforcement if it wants to prevent the spread of drug cartel violence into the U.S.

His rhetoric on border violence, coupled with talk about beheadings in the desert from Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, paints a dramatic picture for the urgency of the border safety problem. But the reality on the border is somewhat different — which Brewer was forced to admit Friday when she told the Associated Press she “misspoke” about beheadings:

“That was an error, if I said that,” the Republican told The Associated Press on Friday. “I misspoke, but you know, let me be clear, I am concerned about the border region because it continues to be reported in Mexico that there’s a lot of violence going on and we don’t want that going into Arizona.”

Drug cartel violence in Mexico is a huge problem, and money flowing to the cartels often comes from the U.S. Still, experts argue that the Obama administration is already making the right moves to prevent spillover violence: Long-term efforts should be focused on helping the Mexican government reestablish order, not keeping Mexican nationals out.

The Obama administration already stepped up its border efforts, sending National Guard troops to the border and signing a $600 million border security bill — pushed by Democrats — to increase patrols along the border. Violent crime is down in Arizona, and border residents say they feel safe. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has said the next step should be comprehensive immigration reform.

The New York Times agreed in a Sunday editorial:

The border crackdown has been therapy for a nation spooked. But for solving the real problems of immigration, not so much. The terror babies are a fiction, but millions of unauthorized workers are not. At some point the economy will recover. The demand for immigrant labor will heat up, and illegal crossings will rise. Companies will go begging for legal workers. The drones and the boots and the fences will deter many new migrants, but not all. Eleven million people will still be living and working outside the law.

And the country will learn that it spent billions at the border to solve a problem a sealed border won’t fix.

Although so far the U.S. side of the border has not seen an increase in violence due to cartels, the situation in Mexico is getting worse: 28,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since Mexican President Felipe Calderón took office three years ago. This is primarily due to turf wars between drug cartels, who also engage in kidnapping and human trafficking.

So far, this violence has not spilled over the border, but residents of border states fear it will. “If we don’t get control of it, you’ll see vigilantes in these states,” Don Elder, the mayor of Katy, Texas, told TWI. “We’ll see fighting in the U.S. on the street.”

Along with its funding for additional Border Patrol agents and unmanned drones, the border security bill includes funds specifically aimed at maintaining safety in the border region, with $30 million for law enforcement activities targeted at reducing the threat of violence. Obama also recently deployed an additional 1,200 National Guard troops along the border.

These are positive developments, but long-term work is also needed to remove the threat of spillover violence from Mexico, Bob Killebrew, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told TWI. “We can react to crises with pinpricks, like sending more National Guard troops, but the real solutions are more complicated,” he said.

Killebrew is the author of a CNAS report on national security and criminal drug networks that will be released in September. He said the administration has made the right moves for border safety so far by adding patrols and refocusing drug enforcement on prevention and treatment. The next steps should be to expand the Drug Enforcement Agency’s efforts at curbing Mexico’s drug cartels both within Mexico and in the U.S., where they sell drugs wholesale to American gangs, and to work with the Mexican government to fight cartels. “The focus of our war against these guys isn’t a war against drugs, it’s a war against the cartels,” Killebrew said.

The Daily Caller reported today that two former law enforcement officials had a similar take on border security:

In an interview with The Daily Caller, former Drug Enforcement Agency Task Force and Arizona State Narcotics Strike Force member Bill Richardson said he doubts Washington understands the scope of the problem. [...]

Former El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) director Phil Jordan told The Daily Caller he thinks Washington needs to make a concerted, full-scale effort to attack drug cartels.

“Our focus should not change from organized crime to going after illegal bus boys and maids,” Jordan said. “Yes, they are illegal, but the priority should be going after organized crimes.”

In other words, increasing border security is not as simple as ending illegal immigration. Immigrants rights advocates have attempted to disentangle the two issues, but to little avail: Republicans continue to call for increased border security before they will consider comprehensive immigration reform.

FOX News provides an explainer on select provisions of Arizona Senate bill 1070:

It would:

– Create a new state misdemeanor crime of willful failure to complete or carry an alien registration document.

– Allow officers to arrest immigrants unable to show documents proving they’re legally in the country.

– Ban so-called soft immigration policies at local police agencies and allow people to sue if they feel a government agency has adopted a policy that hinders the enforcement of illegal immigration laws.

– Prohibit people from blocking traffic when they seek or offer day-labor services on street corners.

– Make it illegal for people to transport illegal immigrants if the drivers of vehicles know their passengers are in the country illegally and if the transportation furthers their illegal presence in the country.

The provision is designed to target law enforcement policies that prevent officers from asking people about their immigration status, but opponents worry it will make victims and witnesses scared to work with police and prosecutors.

The bill, introduced by state Sen. Russell Pearce, would give an unprecedented amount of immigration enforcement power to local police officers — something that has divided groups in Arizona.

From the Los Angeles Times:

…police were deeply divided on the matter, with police unions backing it but the state police chief’s association opposing the bill, contending it could erode trust with immigrants who could be potential witnesses.

Immigrant rights groups were horrified, and contended that Arizona would be transformed into a police state.

“It’s beyond the pale,” said Chris Newman, legal director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. “It appears to mandate racial profiling.”

During the debate, the bill managed to win support from some state senators who expressed misgivings about the legislation.

One of the bill’s provisions is to prevent “sanctuary cities” from not enforcing immigration laws, and Republican state Rep. Russ Jones said he couldn’t think of one sanctuary city in the state. “I don’t see this as a problem, and I wonder what we’re fixing,” he said. Nonetheless, he voted for it.

A similar supportive vote came from Republican Rep. Lucy Mason, who said the bill doesn’t focus on where it needs to: the border.

This bill could represent a reaction by Republicans to border violence, in the wake of the recent death of an Arizona rancher who is believed to have been killed by an illegal immigrant or a drug smuggler. His death has gotten attention from both the media and lawmakers looking ahead to the November elections with promises of stronger border security.

And given recent comments from Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R-Ariz.) about the rancher’s death, this bill looks likely to become law.

The text of the House version is nearly identical to a Senate bill approved in February, but changes were made to create a prosecution exemption for people who drive illegal immigrants to church or who provide emergency services, according to a Phoenix Business Journal article.

Here’s the complete list of CAP’s ten reform proposals for the Department of Homeland Security’s Secure Border Initiative (SBI), a program aimed at reducing illegal immigration and major drug trafficking operations, particularly along the U.S.-Mexico border:

1. Congress should address border security through comprehensive immigration reform legislation.
2. Continue to pursue technological solutions.
3. Reach out to local communities (“Border towns need to be brought into the discussion”).
4. Collaborate with Mexico on border security.
5. Draw on the expertise of academia and industry to shape a long-term border security blueprint.
6. The federal government should maintain tight control over the performance of con- tractors and agencies, while setting schedules with the understanding that they may need to be adjusted.
7. Allow a wider variety of businesses, including small technology companies and unsuccessful SBI bidders, to join in solving border security problems.
8. Improve inter-agency communications and planning and maintain flexibility in technology design.
9. The federal government should consider a more “horizontal” approach in which a single type of technology is implemented over a broad area.
10. Improve the viability and performance of border technology programs.

During a CAP conference call today, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), chairman of the House subcommittee on border, maritime and global counter-terrorism, echoed the report’s suggestions, saying collaboration with Mexico is essential and aid to the Mexican government for controlling cartel violence needs to be expedited.

According to the CAP report, SBI is flawed because of a border fence that is too heavily relied on for border security; management and oversight issues; a Department of Homeland Security that is too slow to address mistakes; and misguided spending decisions (namely on SBInet, a technology-heavy program designed to help Border Patrol detect illegal immigrants and smugglers along the border).

Cuellar said border security should, among other things, involve detention for immigrants as a deterrent for future illegal immigration — something that he said has worked in his district. He also said there should be more funding for the use of drones as a monitoring tool along the border.

Cornyn penned a letter to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Immigration, Refugees and Border Security Subcommittee, requesting a committee hearing as soon as possible on border violence, according to a press release (via Texas Insider).

But are these politicians really looking for solutions or is this just a political tactic?

Melissa del Bosque from the Texas Observer thinks it’s all talk:

Oh, the political hand wringing over border violence. It’s as if the problem had just surfaced this week.

U.S. Senators John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchinson want a “concrete plan” according to a (much publicized) letter to President Obama  yesterday.

Governor Perry wants a predator drone. Yeah, that will help.

More political grandstanding and no action in changing a disastrous U.S. drug policy that tore Colombia apart and now has Mexico on the brink.

Jeremy Roebuck of The Monitor, a Texas newspaper, argues that Cornyn contradicted himself while talking about border violence — first saying that the U.S. encounters cartel violence, then saying there is no spillover violence.

Cornyn’s own statements Wednesday straddled both sides of that line.

“The spillover violence in Texas is real and escalating,” Cornyn and Hutchison wrote in their letter to the president. “Our border patrol agents and local law enforcement are more regularly engaged with gunmen associated with drug cartels.”

He contradicted himself, however, in a conference call with reporters later in the day in which he said, “As far as the Texas border is concerned, we have not had spillover violence, per se.”

The senator’s staff later said that he misspoke in his second statement, pointing to a kidnapping case at a McAllen Walmart that Rodriguez described earlier this week as “cartel related.”

Dave Montgomery of The Star-Telegram connected Perry’s talk about spillover violence to the governor’s upcoming re-election:

“Spillover violence,” as it’s now officially labeled, is a much-feared Mexican import that nobody wants. But law enforcement officials, municipal leaders, political figures and diplomats disagree on whether it is already showing up in Texas — and to what extent. It has also emerged as an issue in the governor’s race between Republican incumbent Rick Perry and Democratic challenger Bill White.

Responding last week to the slaying of a U.S. Consulate worker and two others in Juarez, Perry ramped up law enforcement operations along the border by activating a year-old contingency plan to deal with spillover violence. Several border-area mayors said Perry took the action without consulting them, and White suggested that Perry may be overstating the dangers for political gain.

“Exaggerating border violence can undermine economic development efforts of border communities, and that hurts Texas,” White, a former three-term mayor of Houston, said in criticizing Perry’s “secret” contingency plan.

Cornyn’s letter was signed by six other GOP committee members: Sens. Orrin Hatch (Utah), Jeff Sessions (Ala.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Chuck Grassley (Iowa), Jon Kyl (Ariz.), and Tom Coburn (Okla.).

Read more about it here.

The Texas local governments had argued that Michael Chertoff, Napolitano’s predecessor, improperly waived dozens of federal laws that could have blocked or slowed construction of the fence.

This is the second time the Supreme Court has refused to get involved in a legal challenge to the Homeland Security secretary’s authority to speed construction of the fencing. This time, SCOTUSblog reports, “the Justices examined the new case at eight separate private meetings, then still came to the conclusion that it would not rule on it.”

The high court offered no explanation for declining to review the case, which is typical.

Congress authorized (pdf) the fence in an effort to slow illegal immigration, and authorized Chertoff to waive the federal laws in 2005.

Current U.S. law requires the homeowner to be convicted of a smuggling-related crime before federal agents can seize the house, and ICE agents have complained this makes seizure too difficult.

Schumer’s idea, which is reportedly supported by the Obama administration, is nothing new. Back in July 2005, the Government Accountability Office suggested giving federal agents this civil forfeiture authority, which it already has to confiscate things like boats used to smuggle drugs.

The problem with the proposal, though, as the GAO noted in its report and testimony to Congress, is that most of these houses are rented by smugglers, who themselves often take off before the feds can arrest them, and they become fugitives. It’s not clear what good seizing the house does at that point. Moreover, it’s often not clear whether the owner of the home even knows how it’s being used by its tenants. Presumably that’s why the current law only allows the government to seize the house after proving the homeowner knowingly facilitated the smuggling operation.

“This policy needs to be fixed right away,” Schumer told The Associated Press on Wednesday after a meeting with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. “It can put a serious dent in the operations of the Mexican cartels that deal in human trafficking.”

It could also put a dent in the Southwestern rental market, particularly for Mexican renters.

Joel Millman at The Wall Street Journal reports today on a major shift away from the traditional crossings of seasonal laborers, who may have once paid a small sum to a “coyote” to help them cross the border, towards a Mexican gang-driven trade that’s led to a proliferation of “drop-houses” in the United States, particularly in Arizona, where border enforcement in the desert has been less successful than in California and Texas. There are reportedly about a thousand such “drop houses” in Arizona now.

Gang members hold immigrants hostage at these houses until either the immigrants or their future employers pay up. In one recent case, The Journal reports, “the men were being shaken down for as much as $5,000 apiece, a ransom above the $1,000 that each had agreed to pay before being spirited across the border.”

So far, the Department of Homeland Security has been addressing border violence as largely a law enforcement problem. The growing impact on immigrants, however, could create more pressure on the Obama administration to legalize the border crossings of some foreign workers as part of a broader plan for comprehensive immigration reform that immigrants’ rights groups and even labor unions have been advocating.

“The position will focus on illegal immigration into the U.S. as well as southbound gun trafficking and cash smuggling,” a Department of Homeland Security official told The Los Angeles Times. The appointment is expected to be announced today when Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano visits the Southwest border.

Bersin, who held a similar position during the Clinton administration, is credited with having helped cracked down on illegal immigration in the 1990s, slowing the number of “banzai” runs, where hundreds of people dash across the freeways and canyons from Tijuana into the United States. However, most experts say that only shifted illegal immigration eastward, and made it more dangerous for the migrants who make the trip. A recent Government Accountability Office report says that the number of border crossing deaths doubled between 1995 and 2006.

One thing Bersin will hopefully keep in mind as he attacks border violence is his experience as U.S. Attorney in San Diego, where the federal courts at the time (I was a law clerk to a federal judge there during Bersin’s tenure) were overwhelmed by drug cases, mostly involving marijuana trafficking across the border. Advising the Obama administration on how to use those federal resources more effectively — including, perhaps, decriminalizing marijuana — could prove far more effective at reducing border violence than driving more illegal immigrants into the far reaches of the Arizona desert.