by CHQ Staff
Our friend Daniel Horowitz of Conservative Review alerted us to this astonishing incident and prompted our further investigation. On April 13, at around 2 p.m. Central Time, a group of five or six suspected Mexican soldiers approached an unmarked vehicle of two U.S. soldiers stationed at the border in El Paso County, Texas, and ordered them out of the vehicle.
According to Newsweek, which obtained the “serious incident report,” the soldiers were in fact active duty members of B Battery, 1st Battalion, 37th Field Artillery Regiment, not from a National Guard unit. The Mexican soldiers disarmed one of the U.S. soldiers and placed his sidearm in the U.S. vehicle.
While the soldiers were parked south of the border fence near Clint, Texas, they were north of the Rio Grande riverbed, which placed them “appropriately in U.S. territory,” according to Maj. Mark Lazane, a spokesman for NORTHCOM. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Department of Defense (DOD), after inquiring of the Mexican government, were informed that the Mexican soldiers thought that the Americans were south of the border. “Throughout the incident, the U.S. soldiers followed all established procedures and protocols,” according to NORTHCOM.
Horowitz says NORTHCOM confirmed that there are approximately 2,800 service members assigned to the border mission. “This includes approximately 1,200 on the Mobile Surveillance Camera mission, plus about 1,000 service members hardening ports of entry in Texas and New Mexico. There are approximately 200 personnel as part of a crisis response force, with the remainder being headquarters and logistics personnel supporting the mission.”
The Washington Examiner reported that the Mexican soldiers carried FX-05 Xiuhcoatl rifles. (The FX-05 Xiuhcoatl is a Mexican manufactured assault rifle issued only to the Mexican Army’s Special Forces units and Airborne Infantry Brigade.) The Mexican soldiers detained and questioned the U.S. troops. They took a Beretta M9 service weapon from one American soldier and put it in the CBP vehicle. Officials from the U.S. Northern Command said the Americans complied with instructions from the Mexicans “in an attempt to de-escalate a potential volatile situation.”
“An inquiry by CBP [Customs and Border Protection] and DOD [Department of Defense] revealed that the Mexican military members believed that the U.S. Army soldiers were south of the border. The statement went on to say, “after a brief discussion between the soldiers from the two nations, the Mexican military members departed the area.”
This indicates that the Mexican soldiers became aware of their mistake following the discussion.
The Examiner cited an official’s statement that the Pentagon is now investigating the incident, an investigation that “will help us modify any instructions that we’re giving the troops” about how to deal with such situations in the future.
According to reporting by ZeroHedge.com, both US soldiers reported hearing someone yell vámonos in Spanish from the Mexican side. The Americans said, the Mexican soldiers went back to their “dark blue Ford pickup truck with a tactical rack in the back.” The truck departed from the area, heading westbound on the border.
Red State reports this has been going on for a long time: In 2007, the Border Patrol reported 42 instances of the Mexican Army crossing into the United States. In 2008, the US Border Patrol arrested seven Mexican soldiers after their armed HMMWV broke down inside the US (source). In 2014, Duncan Hunter looked into the situation of Mexican troops violating US territory:
Armed Mexican troops and police regularly stray across the U.S. border, according to statistics the Department of Homeland Security provided to Congress that indicate more than 500 of them have jumped the border in the past decade.
Gil Kerlikowske, the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said in a letter to Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican, that, in many of those cases, the armed Mexican military or law enforcement personnel ended up in confrontations with American authorities, and 131 people were detained.
According to reporting by WND’s Cristina Laila, tensions are high at the US-Mexico border as a record number of illegal aliens are crossing over into the US.
American citizens are beginning to take matters into their own hands after the US government failed to uphold its basic commitment to protect the borders from invaders.
More than 300 ‘asylum seekers’ trying to illegally cross the US border surrendered to an armed militia of New Mexico citizens comprised of ex-cops and veterans.
In March alone, over 100,000 illegal aliens were detained by US border patrol.
According to Ms. Laila’s reports, over 1.5 million illegal aliens will enter the United States in 2019 if the surge continues at the current rate.
None of the reports explained what the Mexican military was doing patrolling north of the Rio Grande.
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Photo “Mexican Military” by Tomascastelazo. CC BY-SA 3.0.
