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| One Mexico border is quiet, maybe too quiet |
| By latimes.com |
| Published: 09/16/2009 |
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Reporting from Mexicali, Mexico - In Tijuana, schoolchildren get lessons on how to duck during gangland shootouts. Ciudad Juarez cops patrol with military escorts, and the morgue there is spilling over with gunshot victims. But here in Mexicali, people fear the desert sun more than drug hit men. The city of 700,000 has a homicide rate comparable to that of Wichita, Kan., and one of the biggest police deployments is Operation Beat the Heat, in which officers haul blocks of ice to shantytown residents. There hasn't been a bank robbery in Mexicali in 18 months, or a reported kidnapping in a year. Mexicali is considered so safe that top law enforcement officials from Tijuana raise their families here, and are seen visiting restaurants and movie theaters without the phalanx of bodyguards that usually follows them everywhere else. But is Mexicali an oasis of tranquillity, or just a mirage? Across the border in California's Imperial County, U.S. authorities believe the Baja California state capital has become the major staging ground for drug trafficking into the U.S. The Calexico port of entry now leads the nation in cocaine seizures, with a 64% increase in overall drug seizures for the period from October 2008 through July 2009 compared with the same period a year earlier, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Read More. |
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