March 13, 2012, Homeland Security Today

When US Border Patrol agents go about their duties along the Southwest border this year they won’t just be seeking illegal aliens, stopping transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) and enforcing American law. They will be implementing a new strategy along the roughly 2,000 miles of US-Mexico border...

...According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, Observations on the Costs and Benefits of an Increased Department of Defense Role in Helping to Secure the Southwest Land Border, senior Defense Department officials complained that there was a lack of a Southwest border strategy and it was hampering them in identifying, planning and defining [Department of Defense]’s role in providing border assistance...

“We lack a complete understanding of where and how TCOs operate and function in this country,”

“Individual police departments or federal agencies may know how and where the [Los] Zetas or Sinaloa cartel[s] operate in a US city or in a particular area, but an integrated mapping of these organizations and an inter-agency strategy involving both federal and state agencies as partners in efforts to disrupt and dismantle these criminal networks sadly does not exist.”