Mexico's crisis of lawlessness

News about violence along the U.S.-Mexico border has become increasingly alarming and last week it became downright jarring with a report of 72 Central and South American migrants found slain on a ranch just south of the border.

Seventy-two.

Mexico is becoming a bona-fide basketcase state, something akin to having a Somalia on our southern flank, and it deserves serious attention considering evidence that gang-driven crime is creeping across the border.

The Associated Press reports that since Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched a crackdown on gang activity in 2006, more than 28,000 people have been killed.

Last week, Mexican officials announced that there will be a “serious reassessment” of Calderon’s strategies in the ultra-violent border city of Juarez. It seems there needs to be an even broader serious reassessment, and the U.S. government should be involved in some fashion as well.

It is a conundrum, of course. What can the United States do, beyond providing limited assistance?

While American options are limited south of the border, addressing the problem in this country should be more of a priority for the federal government than it appears to be so far.

An Arizona sheriff contends that Mexican drug cartels now control parts of that state. “They literally have scouts on the high points in the mountains and in the hills and they literally control movement. They have radios, they have optics, they have night-vision goggles as good as anything law enforcement has.”

High-speed chases, gunfights, kidnapping and other types of gang-driven crime have found their way to the state of Arizona, and probably other border states.

And the federal government’s most recent response? The Bureau of Land Management has placed 15 signs along a 60-mile stretch of Interstate 8 — located about 100 miles north of the border — warning travelers that they are entering an “active drug and human smuggling area” and they may encounter “armed criminals and smuggling vehicles traveling at high rates of speed.”

Arizona political leaders have asked for 3,000 National Guard troops, and instead they’ve gotten 30 that are expected to arrive this week. Arizona voters passed a law that mirrors federal immigration enforcement law, and what do they get from the feds: lawsuits challenging the state law.

There is a crisis on the southern border, and it shouldn’t be that hard for Americans in distant locations to understand the distress and urgency that are being expressed in our border states.

Imagine if 72 people were slain on a ranch just north of the Canadian border, criminals were wantonly entering our state, and our federal government was posting signs on U.S. 2 warning travelers they are in an “active drug and human smuggling area.”

We would consider it an outrage, and if we weren’t getting help, we’d be taking actions very similar to Arizona’s.