{"id":6294,"date":"2009-09-17T07:14:07","date_gmt":"2009-09-17T13:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=6294"},"modified":"2009-09-17T16:40:53","modified_gmt":"2009-09-17T22:40:53","slug":"napolitano-u-s-committed-to-breaking-up-cartels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/09\/napolitano-u-s-committed-to-breaking-up-cartels\/","title":{"rendered":"Napolitano: Breaking up cartels is a top priority"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Napolitano,

Napolitano, shown here during Wednesday\u2019s speech. (Photo by Heath Haussamen)<\/p><\/div>\n

Security and enforcement efforts are \u2018zooming along,\u2019 but immigration reform is on the back burner for now, homeland security secretary says during speech at NMSU<\/h4>\n

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano<\/a> reiterated the president\u2019s stated commitment to immigration reform during a speech at New Mexico State University on Wednesday, but said she could not say when such a proposal will come to the forefront.<\/p>\n

She also did not promise that such reform would happen at all, but pointed out that President Barack Obama has said immigration reform will be a top priority once the debate over health care reform concludes.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, the groundwork is already being laid behind the scenes for an immigration reform bill. Napolitano said it would include a proposal similar to the DREAM Act<\/a> — which would grant certain undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United States as children and graduate from high school the opportunity to earn permanent residency.<\/p>\n

Any reform bill, she said, must address the fact that \u201cwe are a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants and opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur hope is that a bill will come out,\u201d she said about immigration reform. \u201cI\u2019m not going to give you a timetable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018A historic moment\u2019<\/h3>\n

In the meantime, Napolitano told hundreds of people during her keynote address at the Domenici Public Policy Conference<\/a>, efforts to step up border enforcement and interrupt the flow of drugs from Mexico and the flow of weapons and cash into Mexico are \u201czooming along.\u201d<\/p>\n

Napolitano spent much of her time listing all of the programs related to border enforcement and security that have received increased funding — including the tripling of the number of intelligence agents and the inspection, for the first time, of vehicles and trains heading south into Mexico.<\/p>\n

She said the Mexican government is more willing to cooperate and involved in the fight against the cartels than ever before, which presents a unique opportunity to break up the cartels. The Mexican government has started inspecting vehicles going into Mexico for the first time, she said, and has sent federal agents — and in the case of Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez, the military — to help quell violence.<\/p>\n

In addition, the two governments are working more closely together. Napolitano noted an attempt to develop a system that would allow the sharing of information between local, state and federal law enforcement agents on both sides of the border nearly instantaneously.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really stand at a historic moment,\u201d Napolitano said. \u201cThis is a time that we just have not seen before, and may not see again, so it\u2019s very important.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018It needs to be done\u2019<\/h3>\n

Napolitano said she could cite all the statistics to show that the situation is improving, but those numbers don\u2019t tell the real story. And when a University of Texas-El Paso student talked about the severity of the violence in Ju\u00e1rez during a question-and-answer period, the secretary\u2019s tone turned somber.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not easy, and it does not fit into an organizational box, and it\u2019s not quick,\u201d she said of efforts to break up the cartels. \u201cBut it needs to be done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Acknowledging that it\u2019s going to be a long fight, Napolitano said her message is that \u201cthe United States is going to be there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Immigration reform is on the back burner for now, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said during a speech at NMSU on Wednesday. In the meantime, she said, efforts to step up border enforcement and interrupt the flow of drugs, weapons and cash across the border are \u201czooming along.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1],"tags":[140,133,116],"class_list":["post-6294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","category-uncategorized","tag-border-and-immigration","tag-nmsu","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}