Mexican President and Minutemen Promise To 'Rescue' Juarez

Minuteman founder calls for U.S. Army incursions to stop drug cartel violence.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Tuesday promised to "rescue" and "rebuild" the city of Juarez, which has been plagued by 4,700 slayings since early 2008, the El Paso Times reported.

Calderon, who was in the border city in his third visit there in a month, called the weekend slayings of three people connected to the U.S. consulate "resentful, inadmissible and profoundly deplorable," the Times said.

In a speech to several hundred people, Calderon offered a plan that would attack poverty, improve education and health facilities and offer financial assistance to families in an effort to combat organized crime and the drug war that has turned Juarez into the most dangerous city in Mexico, if not the world, the paper reported.

Meanwhile, Mexican officials said Tuesday they are confident they would soon arrest those responsible for killing Lesley A. Enriquez, 34; Arthur H. Redelfs, 36; and Jorge Alberto Salcido Ceniceros, 37, in a pair of drive-by shootings Saturday as the three left a children's birthday party, the Times reported.

"We expect the investigations of the Chihuahua state attorney general, with help from the Mexican federal attorney general and the U.S. law enforcement agencies, will result in the detention of the people responsible for the crimes," Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz said Tuesday.


Investigators continue to look into many theories concerning Saturday's killings, and FBI officials in the United States believe the shootings may not have targeted the victims because they were U.S. citizens but may have been a case of mistaken identity, according to The Associated Press.

Meanwhile, the founder of the Minuteman Project, a controversial organization of private U.S. citizens formed several years ago to monitor the U.S.-Mexico border for the flow of illegal immigrants, called on the U.S. government to issue an ultimatum to Mexico or face an incursion by U.S. Army Airborne Rangers, El Paso television station KVIA ABC-7 reported.

Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist said in a news release that the United States should tell Mexico: "Either terminate the criminal empires that influence your nation, and threaten to cripple the United States, or risk the incursion of U.S. soldiers to do the job for you," KVIA said.

"It is outrageous to think so many anti-war liberals complain about the 3,480 deaths in Iraq since March 2003, but conveniently say nothing about the suffering which stains Mexico. Deaths in Mexico as the result of the out of control Drug War have topped well over 20,000 since 2006." Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist said in the news release. "Do you mean to tell me the lives of women, children and the good families in Mexico don't count? The victims are human beings, families trying to live in peace, but it seems the U.S. political establishment has turned a blind eye to their suffering. Well, the Minutemen haven't!"

Gilchrist said it is time to give Mexico an ultimatum.

"The stage is set because our Congress refuses to enforce our immigration laws; therefore we are left with few choices. I am suggesting certain elements from the Army's three major Airborne divisions be deployed into Mexico. Any incursions, however, should be swift and decisive, with surgical precision aimed directly at the geographic locations of the drug cartels and the persons running them."

Categories: Mexican Crime, minute men, president felipe calderon