ONE US law enforcement agent was killed and another wounded in a roadside attack in northern Mexico on Tuesday, marking a lethal escalation in the ongoing drug fight here, officials said.
Two agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement were travelling in a dark-coloured SUV on the highway between Monterrey and the Mexican capital when they were fired upon.
Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano said the agents were “shot in the line of duty”. One agent was critically wounded and died. The second agent was shot in the arm and leg and remains in a stable condition.
“Let me be clear: any act of violence against our . . . personnel . . . is an attack against all those who serve our nation and put their lives at risk for our safety,” Ms Napolitano said.
The Mexican foreign ministry expressed its condolences and vowed to seek the assailants.
Attacks against US law enforcement in Mexico are rare. An undercover US drug agent was killed in the line of duty in Mexico in 1985, when the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Enrique “Kiki” Camarena was kidnapped and tortured by narcotics traffickers in Guadalajara.
Camarena’s killing, with the apparent complicity of corrupt Mexican officials, created a major strain in US-Mexico relations and prompted an investigation. At one point, US investigators seized Mexican suspects and whisked them back to the US for trial despite protests from the Mexican government. Until now, the aggressive American response to Camarena’s murder has often been cited to explain why Mexican drug cartels have not targeted US authorities operating in the country, knowing they would provoke the wrath of the US government.
According to Mexican news accounts, police say the attack against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took place in the state of San Luis Potosi, on Highway 57 near the town of Santa Maria del Rio. A photograph shows the SUV parked in a grassy hollow and surrounded by Mexican federal investigators.
The reason for the attack and the assailants’ identities were not immediately clear. More than 34,000 people have died in drug violence in the past four years as Mexico wages a US-backed fight against organisations that have grown rich and powerful on proceeds from drug sales to the US.
In March, an American citizen and employee of the US consulate in Ciudad Juarez was ambushed and slain as she and her husband, an El Paso sheriff's deputy, were returning home. The slaying of Lesley Enriquez and her husband, Arthur Redelfs, has not been solved. Mexican authorities brought one man to court who claimed he ordered the killings, but there has been no trial. – ( Washington Post-Bloomberg)