Border fight steps up

WASHINGTON (AP) — Hundreds of federal agents, along with high-tech surveillance gear and drug-sniffing dogs, are headed to the Southwest to help Mexico fight drug cartels and keep violence from spilling across the U.S.-Mexico border, Obama administration officials said Tuesday.

The border security initiative, which expands on efforts begun during the Bush administration, is aimed at drug traffickers who have wreaked havoc in Mexico in recent years and are blamed for a spate of kidnappings and home invasions in some U.S. cities.

The plan was announced as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton prepares to travel today to Mexico for the start of several weeks of high-level meetings between the two countries on the drug violence issue. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder are expected to meet with Mexican officials in early April.

The Obama administration’s multiagency plan includes nearly 500 agents and support personnel. However, officials did not say where the additional agents would come from or how long they would stay at the border.

Napolitano said officials were still considering whether to deploy the National Guard to the Arizona and Texas borders with Mexico, which the governors had requested.

Authorities said they will increase the number of immigrations and customs agents, drug agents and antigun trafficking agents operating along the border. The government also will allow federal funds to be used to pay for local law enforcement involved in southwestern border operations, and send more U.S. officials to work inside Mexico.

Prosecutors say they will make a greater effort to go after those smuggling guns and drug profits from the U.S. into Mexico.

The administration is also highlighting $700 million that Congress has already approved to support Mexico’s efforts to fight the cartels.

Among the moves the government is making:

USending about 350 additional personnel from the Homeland Security Department for a host of border-related work, including doubling the border enforcement security teams that combine local, state and federal officers.

UAdding 16 new Drug Enforcement Administration positions in the southwestern region. DEA currently has more than 1,000 agents working in the region.

USending 100 more people form the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to the border in the next 45 days.

UBoosting the FBI’s intelligence and analysis work on Mexican drug cartel crime.

UIncreasing the inspection of rail cargo heading from the U.S. into Mexico and putting X-ray units in place to try to detect weapons being smuggled into Mexico.