Mexico Deploys Troops to US Border

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - The Mexican government said March 27 it has sent more than 2,500 soldiers and federal police to curb soaring violence in a border state across from Texas and New Mexico.

Agents began arriving March 26 in Ciudad Juarez near El Paso, Texas. About 200 people have been killed in this Chihuahua state city of 1.3 million since Jan. 1.

"In this battle, no group will be able to withstand the government's will and force," Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mourino said at the initiative's unveiling in Ciudad Juarez.

Chihuahua is home to the town of Palomas, across from Columbus, New Mexico, where at least 40 people have been killed so far this year. Earlier this week, Palomas' police chief sought asylum in the U.S. after his deputies abandoned him and he received death threats.

Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora blamed the violence on drug cartel reaction to a government crackdown, under which President Felipe Calderon has already deployed more than 20,000 federal agents nationwide, to combat a wave of killings, beheadings and grenade attacks.

"The violence ... is a sign of (the gangs') weakness, decay and decline," Medina Mora said.

The soldiers and federal agents will patrol throughout Chihuahua and evaluate local police in an effort to weed out corrupt officers, authorities said.

Speaking in the central state of Morelos on Thursday, Calderon touted the recent arrest of two alleged top cartel leaders as evidence of his government's resolve to fight the gangs.

More than 3,000 people, including more than 300 police officers and some 40 soldiers, have died since Calderon took office in December 2006 and began the crackdown, according to the Mexico City newspaper Reforma. 

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