Mexico Sends Troops to Its Southern Border
By Kausha Luna, October 19, 2016
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The Mexican government has sent military forces to guard its southern border with Guatemala, amidst the arrival of thousands of U.S. bound Haitians and Africans illegal aliens.
Mexico's Ministry of National Defense (Sedna) and Navy (Semar) deployed troops to the Guatemala-Mexico border as part of the Regional Border Operation 2016. The operation is taking place between October 17 and November 17 and aims to combat smuggling networks, among other criminal activities.
The army and navy will assist at checkpoints and will patrol illegal and legal points of entry, shared by Mexico and Guatemala. Troops will be dispersed throughout the Mexican states of Chiapas and Tabasco, where illegal aliens, drugs, and firearms cross the border on a daily basis.
As a Mexican military commander explained, one of the goals of this operation is "to limit the activities of criminal organizations" on the border between Mexico and Guatemala. As my colleague Jessica Vaughan recently explained, the migrants making their way to the United States typically pay criminal organizations large sums of money to facilitate their transit through several safe countries to then claim a fear of return at the U.S.-Mexico border.
http://cis.org/luna/mexico-sends-troops-its-southern-border
