Cartels suspected as high-caliber gunfire sends Border Patrol scrambling on Rio Grande

[lostinblue 1,989]

Cartels suspected as high-caliber gunfire sends Border Patrol scrambling on Rio Grande

EXCLUSIVE: RINCON PENINSULA, Texas -- U.S. Border Patrol agents on the American side of the Rio Grande were forced to take cover Friday night when high-caliber weaponry was fired at them from the Mexican side of the river, sources told FoxNews.com.

The weapons were fired at the U.S. side of the riverbank in the area of the Rincon Peninsula across the Rio Grande from Reynosa, Mexico, at about 8:30 p.m., sources said. Bullets ricocheted into an area where Border Patrol agents were positioned, Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, told FoxNews.com.

Border Patrol sources confirmed Gohmert's account, and said the shots may have been fired by .50-caliber weapons.

"We don't have any armor that can stop a .50-caliber round, so our Border Patrol agents had to take cover when the rounds were richocheting around them," said Gohmert, who has been in the area for the last week to get a first-hand look at the border situation.

"When the shooting stopped, about 40 to 50 people came out on the U.S. side and turned themselves in. So clearly the rounds were being fired to suppress every effort to stop anybody intervening with anyone or anything coming across," Gohmert added. "We have no idea what or how many or whom came across with the other illegal immigrants."

Sources said they believe the gunfire came from members of Mexican drug cartels, which include former military members trained in shooting that type of weaponry.

Border Patrol sources said the rounds were clearly identifiable because .50- caliber weapons make a distinctive noise when fired. Sources said they also believe this is the first time that Border Patrol agents have taken direct fire from the Mexican side of the river in this area.

"I don't know why we're out here like sitting ducks," one Border Patrol source said. "We need help."

As of Saturday evening, a Border Patrol spokesman did not immediately return FoxNews.com's request for comment.

The Rio Grande sector has been the busiest part of the 2,000-mile border with Texas in recent months as a surge of illegal immigrants, many from Central America, has poured in to the U.S. in the mistaken belief that U.S. policy allows for them to remain in America once they make it in. More than 60,000 unaccompanied children had crossed in the last nine months. But Border Patrol officials have warned that the deluge has left the border largely unattended, and vulnerable to cartel infiltration.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/07/20/cartels-suspected-as-high-caliber-gunfire-sends-border-patrol-scrambling-on-rio/

Looks like they need to ban .50 cal in this country....where is the kenyan..... What guns did holder ship to the drug cartels. ??????

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

How do you figure? Should the border patrol have access to military grade weapons? Should the police?

Someone was complaining in another thread about how law enforcement is becoming too militarised.

What's your solution to this problem?

[lostinblue 1,989]

How do you figure? Should the border patrol have access to military grade weapons? Should the police?

Someone was complaining in another thread about how law enforcement is becoming too militarised.

What's your solution to this problem?

Report: Gov. Rick Perry to mobilize Texas National Guard troops to secure U.S.-Mexico border

Texas Gov. Rick Perry ® reportedly plans to dispatch the Texas National Guard to the U.S. border with Mexico, according to news reports.

Perry will announce his plans Monday to mobilize some 1,000 guardsmen to the Rio Grande Valley to increase security at the border, according to the Monitor, a south Texas newspaper. The newspaper quoted a state senator and an internal memo it obtained from a state official’s office.

Perry spokesman Felix Browne told The Washington Post he would neither confirm nor deny the report, but said all details will be given at a news conference at 2 p.m. Central time Monday in Austin. It was unclear what mission the guard will have.

The news comes amid the continued surge of young immigrants, most of them from Central America, crossing the border and scattered protests in a few U.S. cities from those who don’t want them housed in their midst. Perry, a potential 2016 Republican presidential contender, spoke in Iowa and elsewhere in recent days, promising to take matters into his own hands if President Obama does not act.

Perry is among Republicans who have been calling the border situation Obama’s “Katrina,” a reference to the political beating taken by President George W. Bush after federal authorities botched the post-hurricane operation in New Orleans in 2005. It’s a clear signal Republicans will use the border crisis against any Democratic contender in 2016.

“If the federal government does not do its constitutional duty to secure the Southern border of the United States, the state of Texas will do it,” Perry said Sunday at a Republican barbecue in Iowa.

Following the murder of Arizona rancher Robert Krentz in 2010, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) ordered the National Guard to patrol the border to protect New Mexico residents. Republicans in Congress have been urging Obama for some time to use the guard along the border.

Perry, who has been asking Obama to make the call, recently told Fox News Sunday that mobilizing the troops now is important “because this flood of children is pulling away the border patrol from their normal duties of keeping bad people, keeping the drug cartels, they’re being distracted, so that I would suggest is a very obvious reason that those National Guard troops should come play an important role.”

Obama sent the guard to the border in 2010 to support the Border Patrol. In 2006, Bush, in response to requests for support enforcing federal immigration laws from the governors of Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas, sent some 6,000 National Guard troops to the Southern border for the same reason.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/07/21/gov-rick-perry-to-mobilize-texas-national-guard-troops-to-secure-u-s-mexico-border/

[UncleBeer 244]

Perry's only right on this because the preznit is so dreadfully wrong on it. All the Guard can do is arrest illegals and turn 'em over to ICE, who in many cases, those with records of murder and terrorism. That the left pretends this is a good thing is pure insanity.

And, the Texas-Mexico border is 1,254 miles long. 1000 Guardsmen won't make a whole lot of difference.

[lostinblue 1,989]

They also have to be allowed to fire back if fired upon.... Something not allowed now on the border. (from what I have read,)

[mota bhai 2,675]

I don't believe it's controversial to say that our border patrol forces should be able to defend themselves. But this is 0bama's America, maybe it is.

[SMOKE 1,426]

yes, I saw that. +1 sir