Mexicali, Mexico—April 25, 2006: In what was declared as “the mother of all battles,” Mexico’s president, Vicente Fox, commenced war on his country’s drug cartels last year. Hundreds of troops and federal police were assigned to scour the cities along the U.S.-Mexico border. Drug dealers would be sought after and arrested, and the violence and bloodshed that stained the border towns would be washed away with a flash flood of authority. But Mexico’s war on drugs has not gone as planned.

Just last month, the decapitated heads of two Mexican drug enforcement officers were found in Acapulco, posed beneath an ominous signpost: “So that you learn to respect.”

Mexico and its bordering states have suffered an extreme surge in violent acts of ruthlessness. Drug gangs routinely launch grenades at law enforcement buildings, ambush security officials, and carry out executions against undercover drug agents. Four officers were shot to death last month in the border town of Nuevo Laredo, and another Mexican police officer was murdered there just last week. In all, 1,500 lives have been lost along the border, more than twice as many homicides than the year preceding President Fox’s declaration to combat drugs. That’s because intense interest in the $10 billion a year drug business is tied to another lucrative commodity crossing the border: human beings.

The smuggling and exploitation of illegal immigrants from Mexico into the United States breeds increasingly callous bands of criminals. Desperate Mexicans in search of the American dream are forced to act as drug mules in exchange for direction and protection en route to America. At a going rate of $1,200 per person, smugglers are parlaying the multi-million-dollar human trafficking industry with the multi-billion-dollar drug trade. Of course, greediness breeds ruthlessness.

Human traffickers along the Mexican border are blamed for increasingly violent attacks on Border Patrol agents, whose job it is to prevent people from crossing into the United States illegally. Working in tandem with upper-level human traffickers are the “coyotes,” a powerful criminal element that prey on those being trafficked into the US. The coyotes are notorious for robbing and raping those they’ve been paid to escort across the border, and leaving potential liabilities—those who may attract attention or lag behind—to die in the desert. Like any business, it’s about cutting your losses.

In the Mexican border towns that bleed into Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas, the danger faced by law enforcement officers is immeasurable. Rich and powerful criminal elements are routinely carrying out ambushes and executions in order to fulfill America’s incessant craving for illicit drugs and cheap labor across the border.

President Fox appears to have known exactly what his law enforcement officers were getting into by taking on the drug cartels. It is the mother of all battles, indeed.