New Collaboration Between US, Mexican Authorities Being Pushed

By ABC-7 Reporter Abe Lubetkin

EL PASO, Texas – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates will visit Mexico with other Obama cabinet members to discuss the escalating drug war.

State Senator Eliot Shapleigh (D-El Paso) said they’ll go next week.

In a Friday morning news conference, Sen. Shapleigh described a new collaboration between US and Mexican authorities.

Sen. Shapleigh said the federal government is now paying attention to the drug violence in Mexico, and its potential effect on this side of the border.

Without offering many details, Sen. Shapleigh said this is the biggest policy-change since the Kennedy administration.

On this same week that Governor Rick Perry unveiled the first phase of his border protection initiative, Sen. Shapleigh blasted the governor, accusing him of playing to the cameras without creating any substantive change.

“To Governor Rick Perry: quit camera-rattling,” Shapleigh said. “This is about people’s lives. Showboating does not solve problems. Getting out and getting involved and getting to the table with specific solutions does.”

In response, Governor Perry’s deputy press secretary Katherine Cesinger issued a statement, which reads in part:

“The spillover violence contingency plan was developed in early 2009 with input from our local and federal law enforcement partners to prepare for the possibility of violence spilling over into the United States, and we continue to coordinate with them…The safety of Texas citizens is the governor’s greatest concern.

Sen. Shapleigh is a public supporter of Gov. Perry’s Democratic challenger in the gubernatorial race, former Houston mayor Bill White.