The incident where a U.S. Border patrol agent was held at gunpoint has been making the rounds and new information is coming out. Gateway Pundit points to this Washington Times article which notes that there have been more than 200 armed incursions into the United States by Mexican Military personnel since 1996 and noted that this incursion is suspiciously similar to other incidents in the same area:

Sunday night’s incident bears similarities to other incursions by armed men in Mexican military gear in recent years:

cThe incident occurred in the same area where heavily armed Mexican soldiers riding in a Humvee shot at a Border Patrol agent in 2002. A .50-caliber bullet ripped through the agent’s rear window as he sped away.

Mexican officials denied at the time that the shooters were Mexican soldiers, saying they were criminals using military uniforms. It is a position they steadfastly have maintained.

But the agent who reported encountering the gunfire was certain he saw soldiers, said Mr. Tuffly. He said at the time that the agent was able to identify their attire “down to a T, and it matched exactly what they [Mexican soldiers] wear.”

That purported incursion began after a Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation police ranger reported being chased by men in a Humvee.

cA year ago, U.S. law enforcement authorities were confronted by gunfire from automatic weapons as they chased and caught a drug-smuggling suspect in Texas trying to flee back into Mexico, the Hudspeth County (Texas) Sheriff’s Office said.

No one was hurt in that incident, and the gunmen were not identified, although the area has been the scene of similar incidents over several months, including a confrontation in January 2007, when heavily armed men in Mexican military uniforms fired on Texas officers with a .50-caliber machine gun mounted on a camouflaged Humvee.

The men were identified at the time by Hudspeth County Sheriff Arvin West as “soldiers.”

In that incident, Hudspeth County deputies pursued three sport utility vehicles back to Mexico after spotting them driving north from the Rio Grande. The pursuit ended on the U.S. side of the border when the deputies encountered 10 heavily armed men in what they described as battle-dress uniforms.

At that time, deputies found 1,400 pounds of marijuana in one of the vehicles abandoned after it blew a tire early in the pursuit. Another made it into Mexico and a third got stuck in the Rio Grande and was burned by the “soldiers” after it was unloaded.

Robert J. Caldwell just had an interesting article in this month’s Soldier of Fortune magazine where he examines what’s at stake in Mexico’s war on the Cartels, the biggest of which is whether or not Mexico will become a failed state with a large, corrupt and well armed military sitting on our border. Don’t be squeamish, subscribe to SOF and you’ll get a lot of stories the MSM doesn’t cover.

Juarez, Mexico continues to devolve into lawlessness as Cartel soldiers murder the senior homicide investigator for Chihuahua state. The violence in Mexico is so bad home businesses that armor personal vehicles have sprung up. The San Diego Weekly Reader has a great article on how Tijuana is a hellhole.

Republicans and Democrats have both failed to secure our border and worse have failed to acknowledge how vital helping the Mexican government defeat the Cartels is to our national security. If Mexico cannot control its military now, what will happen when the Cartels completely destabilize the government? The mass migration of illegals into America is in part driven by the desire to escape these lawless regions, and unless we can help Mexico regain control of its now disputed territory there is no measure we can take that will secure our borders, and protect the brave men and women who guard it.