North America

US plans to further militarize its southern border irk Mexicans

US plans to further militarize its southern border irk Mexicans

Mexicans continue to express rising outrage over US plans to further militarize its southern border with Mexico under a border security bill that is certain to win passage in the US Senate.

“We are ‘friends and neighbors,’ as is repeated ad nauseam, but the US is about to militarize the border with Mexico as if we were at war,” said Mexican Congressman Fernando Belaunzaran with the left-wing Democratic Revolution Party in a tweeted this week, cited Wednesday in a Los Angeles Times report.

“Neighbors don’t do this to each other,” wrote prominent news anchor Jorge Ramos of major Mexico-based broadcast TV network in the country’s Reforma newspaper.

The development comes as the US Senate is set to vote on a draft bill to spend USD46 billion to further secure American southern border with Mexico.

According to the report, the extraordinary spending plan for the US-Mexico border – which supporters have labeled as “surge,” after the major US force increase in Iraq in 2007 – “was included as an amendment to a broader immigration bill that appears almost certain to pass in the Senate this week.”

The additional funds would add nearly 20,000 Border Patrol officers, nearly doubling the current border force. It would further provide funding for the “completion of 700 miles of border fencing and 24-hour surveillance flights by drones,” the report notes.

Meanwhile, on a nationally broadcast radio show, respected Mexican journalist and academic Lorenzo Meyer suggested that Mexico City should retaliate against the US move by kicking out American CIA spies and military officials that are collaborating with the Mexican government in the battle against the country’s drug cartels.

Meyer further pondered that Mexico could also react to US military measures at its southern border “by refusing to accept any more American retirees,” the report adds.

Most of the criticism against surging US security measures at its Mexican border reportedly comes from the country’s left-leaning leaders, who point to the long-held opinion here that American border policy, with its walls, fences and armed border agents, amounts to an insult to the Mexican nation.

Back to top button