US President Barack Obama will deploy up to 1,200 more troops to the border with Mexico and seek US$500 million in extra funds to battle drug trafficking, a US official said on Tuesday.
“As part of his comprehensive plan to secure the Southwest border, President Obama will request US$500 million in supplemental funds for enhanced border protection and law enforcement activities,” the senior administration official said.
“The president will also deploy up to an additional, requirements-based, 1,200 National Guard troops to the border,” he said.
The extra troops would “give immediate support to counternarcotics enforcement” and help with intelligence, he said.
The move comes after Mexican President Felipe Calderon last week urged US lawmakers to halt the flow of arms over the border into Mexico, in a bid to stem his country’s bloody drug war.
In a state visit to the US, Calderon challenged US lawmakers to help his country tackle the drug-related violence that has claimed the lives of nearly 23,000 people in Mexico since the end of 2006.
“We cannot ignore the fact that the challenge to our security has roots on both sides of the border,” Calderon told US lawmakers.
He said more than 90 percent of guns used by drug traffickers in Mexico come from the US.
Some 70,000 weapons were confiscated over the last three years, and “more than 80 percent of those ... came from the US,” Calderon said.
The violence has increasingly spilled across the border into the US, prompting politicians in states neighboring Mexico to call for border reinforcements and the deployment of more troops.
Among those most vocal in calling for increased security is Arizona’s Republican Senator John McCain, who said on Tuesday that the new deployments would be insufficient.
“It is simply not enough ... We need 6,000. We need 3,000 across the border and an additional 3,000 National Guard troops to the Arizona-Mexico border, ” McCain told fellow lawmakers.
Since coming to office, Obama has worked to show US support for Calderon’s war against the drug cartels, publicly admitting that most of the weapons used in the violence come from the US, which is also the end destination for much of the narcotics sold by the cartels.
Meanwhile, the Mexican Foreign Ministry urged the US to use the extra 1,200 troops to pursue criminals, rather than migrants.
“Mexico is confident that the National Guard personnel will enhance efforts to combat transnational organized crime which operates on both sides of the border and... not conduct activities directly related to the implementation of immigration laws,” the ministry said.
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