Rice University expert available to discuss US intelligence units embedded in Mexico

CONTACT: Franz Brotzen
PHONE: 713-348-6775
E-MAIL: franz.brotzen@rice.edu

Rice University expert available to discuss US intelligence units embedded in Mexico

HOUSTON – (Feb. 24, 2010) – The Washington Post published a report today (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/23/AR2010022305560.html) on plans to embed U.S. intelligence personnel, likely from the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI, in Mexican law enforcement units in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas.

With President Felipe Calderon’s incredibly bloody war on Mexico’s drug cartels entering its fourth year, the move indicates that any and every possible option to curb the bloodletting, which claimed more than 2,600 lives in Juarez alone last year, is being considered and adopted. As U.S. “border czar” Alan Bersin indicated at the Puentes Consortium, a leadership forum held last month at Rice University, the door is open for big moves for both countries to work together on the border.

For the Puentes (“bridges” in Spanish) Consortium, researchers from Mexican and U.S. universities worked together on policy papers in which they assessed the problem and offered unorthodox, “out-of-the-box” solutions for the security issue on the border. In one of them, Rice Baker Institute fellow Chris Bronk and Monterrey Institute of Technology Dean Bernardo Gonzalez-Arechiga advocated for the creation of binational intel units of the sort mentioned in the Washington Post piece.

To read the complete paper, visit http://www.bakerinstitute.org/PuentesConsortium

To speak with Bronk, contact Franz Brotzen at 713-348-6775 or franz.brotzen@rice.edu.