Feds bolster agents on border with Mexico

— -- The U.S. will soon send a large contingent of federal agents to its southern border to help stem the recent violence in northern Mexico, the nation's Homeland Security chief said Thursday.

"Every American has a stake in this," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a phone interview with USA TODAY. "Violence on the border easily seeps into our communities. It also creates a fear in border communities that the rule of law doesn't apply anymore, and that's just unacceptable."

The new initiative will mobilize more border-enforcement teams, multiply the number of intelligence analysts working on the border, and step up searches of cars going into Mexico from the USA, Napolitano said. She said she won't reveal the number of extra agents or how much money will be spent until a formal announcement is made in coming weeks.

The push will come within Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection, the two main federal agencies responsible for patrolling the USA's 2,000-mile border with Mexico.

Napolitano said the increase in agents is in response to violence by drug cartels, including assassinations of police, kidnappings and beheadings, that has roiled through Mexican border towns in the past year, killing more than 6,000 people.

"We take this extremely seriously and intend to make some significant movements to the southwest border," Napolitano said.

The initiative is separate from the $1.4 billion in military help and equipment, known as the Merida Initiative, pledged by the U.S. to the Mexican government.

Details of the latest initiative came together after she spoke with Mexican President Felipe Calderón and his attorney general, Eduardo Medina-Mora, who suggested ways the USA can help their war on the cartels, Napolitano said.

Calderón has deployed about 40,000 troops across the country to disrupt the drug cartels, leading to unprecedented spikes in violence.

President Obama has made helping Calderón win the war against the cartels a top-priority, Napolitano said. Mexico's drug wars are starting to spill across the border, leading to drug-related kidnappings in cities near the border and other crimes, she said. The Mexican drug wars are "very high" on her list of national security issues, she said.