Begging your oh-so-civilized pardon, but.

...isn't this kind of stuff akin to a hostile invasion?

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U.S. Agents under greater attack on Mexico border
08 Mar 2007 19:30:33 GMT
Source: Reuters
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By Robin Emmott

LAREDO, Texas, March 8 (Reuters) - Frustrated by tighter security on the U.S.-Mexico border, illegal immigrants and drug traffickers are taking it out on U.S. Agents, increasingly attacking them with guns, rocks and petrol bombs.

Assaults against Border Patrol officers rose 10 percent to 843 incidents in the year to September 2006 from the same period a year before, officials say. It is also a near three-fold increase from two years previously.

Mexican drug cartels, locked in a turf feud and under pressure from an army crackdown, are lashing out at law enforcement officers in Texas.

"The attacks against us are becoming more brazen. Drug cartels have instructed their people to go down fighting, to do whatever is necessary to get the narcotics through," said Rick Flores, Webb County sheriff in Laredo, Texas.

He said drug smugglers are increasingly taking pot shots at agents with assault rifles from inside Mexico at night, although no one has been killed.

They are also using riskier routes to bring drugs across the border, leading to clashes with U.S. Law enforcement.

Laredo lies across the Rio Grande from Nuevo Laredo, one of the Mexican cities worst hit by a fight between rival drug gangs that killed around 2,000 people last year. The area is a key entry point for cocaine.

In the Yuma sector, which covers a 125-mile (200-km) desert strip in southwest Arizona, attacks on agents rose 60 percent between last Oct. 1 and Dec. 31, official data shows.

Large groups of illegal immigrants regularly pelt Border Patrol agents with softball-size rocks, fireworks and Molotov cocktails, leaving agents with burns, bruises and head wounds.

"Immigrants are frustrated and are lashing out. It has reached the point that we are seeing attacks on an almost daily basis," said Border Patrol spokesman Lloyd Easterling.

In one assault in 2005, a group of rock-throwing illegal immigrants damaged the rotor of a Border Patrol helicopter and forced it to make an emergency landing.

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From Phoenix's Channel 12:

Guardsmen overrun at the Border

12 News
Jan. 4, 2007 02:44 PM


National Guard unit stormed while patroling the border
Border attack raises security concerns

A U.S. Border Patrol entry Identification Team site was overrun Wednesday night along Arizona's border with Mexico.

According to the Border Patrol, an unknown number of gunmen attacked the site in the state's West Desert Region around 11 p.m. The site is manned by National Guardsmen. Those guardsmen were forced to retreat.

The Border Patrol will not say whether shots were fired. However, no Guardsmen were injured in the incident.

The Border Patrol says the incident occurred somewhere along the 120 mile section of the border between Nogales and Lukeville. The area is known as a drug corridor. Last year, 124-thousand pounds of illegal drugs were confiscated in this area.

The Border patrol says the attackers quickly retreated back into Mexico.
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And for those that think that the immigration problem has nothing to do with security, the Washington Times disagrees:

Terrorists target Army base — in Arizona - - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper


Really now, how hard does it have to be? Seems simple enough to me: [Edit: tried to figure out how to put the picture in the body of the message, but it put it down at the bottom. Any suggestions?]