Pelosi urges Obama to step up aid to battle Mexican drug cartels

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is pressing President Obama to deliver more money to aid the Mexican government as it battles with area drug cartels that have created a lawless environment across the border.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday she is sending three top House Democrats to Mexico to meet with President Felipe Calderon and assess the level of additional support the U.S. can provide.

{mosads}Lawmakers point to “war-like conditions” that have taken root in the Chihuahua region of Mexico, spilled over the border into New Mexico and Texas and led to increased violence in U.S. cities. The issue has rapidly become a major priority for the Congress and the Obama administration, competing with the troubled economy and voter backlash over executive bonuses paid out from taxpayer bailout money.

“Our fates are tied in many ways. And the relationship between our countries is an issue of the highest priority to this Congress,” said Pelosi on Thursday. “What happens on one side of the border affects the other side.”

Violence reached new levels last month when the mayor of Juarez, a Mexican city with 1.6 million people that serves as a major transit point for drug smugglers, moved his family to El Paso, Texas, after receiving threats against his and their lives.

The move corresponded with the resignation of the city’s police chief after a drug cartel promised to kill a police officer every 48 hours if he did not step down. The city’s police director of operations, a police officer and a prison guard had been killed by the cartels in days prior.

The recently passed omnibus spending bill included $300 million to supply the Mexican government with helicopters, police training and other tools to wage war against the cartels, which were responsible for more than 6,000 murders last year in Mexico.

Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), a former Border Patrol agent who represents the district that includes El Paso, said that’s not enough money. The funds set aside are part of a larger $1.4 billion to be given to Mexico over the next three years.

{mospagebreak}“That’s why the Speaker is sending a group of us, to get an assessment of how [Calderon] feels,” said Reyes, who as chairman of the Select Intelligence Committee is a member of the group headed to Mexico this month.

“When we come back we’ll report back to the Speaker and decide whether to increase the proportion for next year.”

Pelosi, who met with Calderon in January, emphasized that she would act upon the recommendations made by Reps. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, who are joining Reyes on the trip.

{mosads}Obama announced earlier in the week that his first trip to a Latin American country as president would be to Mexico in April. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is planning her own trip next week.

Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, pressured the Obama administration to take a more proactive stance on Mexico’s war against the drug cartels. On Tuesday he launched into officials from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for not asking Congress for more money to increase manpower, technical equipment and inter-agency communication.

“Your resources are insufficient,” he told a panel of agency officials testifying before the committee. “You ought to be raising hell and bringing those demands to this committee.”

“The kind of funds which have been allocated to Mexico are small compared to what we spend in other places,” he added.

But Specter can rest assured, because in the coming months the Mexican government can expect to see an influx in money and support from Obama and Capitol Hill, said a foreign-policy analyst with the Cato Institute.

“The situation in Mexico is deteriorating at such a pace that it is getting the attention of Congress and the president, and probably after [Obama] comes back he’s going to make a step to … put more money into the plan or expand it somehow,” said Juan Carlos Hidalgo, a project coordinator for Latin America at the libertarian think tank.