El Paso To Ask Feds For Help Treating Wounded Mexican Cops

EL PASO, Texas (AP) – El Paso County officials want the federal government to take over transporting and caring for wounded Mexican police officers seeking treatment in a local public hospital.

County Judge Anthony Cobos pleaded for help Tuesday, four days after two police officers wounded in an ongoing turf war among powerful Mexican drug cartels were brought to the county hospital in El Paso.

The officers’ arrival prompted the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office to provide tight security to prevent Mexico’s violence from spilling into the United States. It is the second time this year deputies have guarded the county hospital, the only Level 1 trauma center for 280 miles.

“This is the responsibility of the federal government,” Cobos said after meeting with officials from Homeland Security, the U.S. Army and other agencies. “Don’t put the burden on the local community. This is clearly the result of the federal government’s policy on the war on drugs.”

Cobos said the county doesn’t have the money to fund massive security efforts every time a wounded police officer, or anyone else caught up in Mexico’s ongoing violence, seeks medical care in the U.S. He also questioned the laws and policies that federal officials have used to allow these wounded officers into the United States.

Lorenzo de la Torre, the assistant police chief in Casas Grandes, and his boss, Juan Etiene, were wounded Thursday and brought to El Paso on Friday. Casas Grandes is about 140 miles south of El Paso.

Mexican officials said last week that de la Torre was gravely wounded while Etiene’s hand was injured.

The officers’ immigration status was not available Tuesday.

Cobos said he’s been told that Etiene was released from the hospital. Details about de la Torre’s condition and Etiene’s whereabouts were not released Tuesday.

“I believe they may have needed a level of medical attention, but absolutely safety was on their mind,” Cobos said.

Hospital officials have said that federal law bars them from refusing treatment in an emergency situation.

Chief Customs and Border Protection Officer Rick Lopez said this week that he could not discuss specific instances of someone arriving at the border in need of medical care. But not everyone seeking care is admitted to the U.S., he said.

“It’s not a given that just because you arrive in an ambulance we just open the door,” Lopez said. “There’s a lot more that just opening the door and saying come on in.”

In life or death situations, Lopez said, patients are generally allowed into the country for medical care.

“If the person is gravely injured … then you have to take into consideration, if they are going to a hospital they aren’t going anywhere and may be allowed in,” Lopez said.

Lopez did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment Tuesday afternoon.

El Paso County Sheriff Jimmy Apodaca said his office spent more than $47,000 to secure the hospital for three weeks starting in mid-January when Fernando Lozano Sandoval, a U.S. citizen and commander with the Chihuahua State Investigations Agency, was treated for multiple gunshot wounds after an attack in Ciudad Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso.

Apodaca said he did not know how much the latest security detail would cost. His office plans to ask the Mexican federal government to help cover the costs, Apodaca said.

Veronica Escobar, an El Paso county commissioner who sat in on Tuesday’s closed-door meeting, said earlier in the day that she worries the city is being used as a safe haven.

“One of the patients who was brought over (Friday) was not a trauma patient and could have been treated anywhere,” Escobar said. “There is a pattern emerging where we are seen as a safe haven for injured Mexican officials. That’s what the police chief was doing, he was seeking safe haven.”

Cobos said one solution could be to transfer patients from Mexico to secure military hospitals or other government-run facilities outside El Paso.

“A community right on the border is not the best place” to treat targets of violent drug cartels, Cobos said.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)