An Intellectual Preparation Guide for Joint Task Force Southern Border

The orders came down and your unit is headed to the US-Mexico border to take part in Joint Task Force Southern Border. It’s an important mission intended to stop illegal border crossings and the flow of deadly drugs into the United States. The US military is most effective when it has a deep understanding of its operating environment. In places like Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, where the United States lacked cultural and historical understanding, it has achieved, let’s say, sub-optimal results. This mission is no different, understanding the unique challenges of the US-Mexico border is critical. In this short guide for commanders and staff, I hope to provide you with some invaluable advice on navigating operations on the border and some critical homework to help you understand the region in which you will be operating.

A Challenging Environment

The first thing you will need to do is establish the right mindset. This is nothing like you have experienced before. If you are using Iraq or Afghanistan deployments as a frame of reference, you will find that this is more likely to be detrimental to mission success. You are operating in the continental United States. This is intensely political. There’s a reason why the Department of Defense has avoided becoming deeply involved in this mission in the past. You won’t just be operating in the Sonoran Desert—you’ll be operating in a congressional district! Furthermore, the economic importance of the border is hard to overstate. Mexico is the top US trading partner, an astounding $1.5 million of legal trade crosses the border every minute.[1] Essentially, the border is a minefield of economic and political interests.

Adding to this charged environment is a challenging bureaucratic and command and control situation. US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) is the combatant command in charge of Department of Defense homeland defense efforts. It provides support for homeland security and manages DoD security cooperation with Mexico. US Army North (ARNORTH) has traditionally maintained the US Army relationship with the Mexican Secretariat of National Defense, including regular border contact and commanders’ meetings. Joint Task Force North (JTF-N), initially established in 1989 as Joint Task Force Six, has had the mission of coordinating military support to law enforcement agencies and counterdrug efforts along the border. Now, Joint Task Force Southern Border is the “synchronizer of all joint capabilities and the land force commander for USNORTHCOM as we conduct operations on the southern border.”[2] Add on to these commands the National Guard units from the four border states and there are some obvious issues with deconfliction among Army units working on the border.

It doesn’t stop with military units. Customs and Border Protection has the lead for securing the border and inspecting commerce as it moves through the ports of entry (POEs). The State Department has five consulates just over the border supervised by the US Ambassador at the US Embassy in Mexico City. Joint Task Force Southern Border activities will need to be coordinated with these entities that may not always be aligned with the Department of Defense viewpoint. Furthermore, differences in authorities are a constant struggle. Best to keep a Judge Advocate General officer on speed dial.

In addition to the US galaxy of units, departments, and agencies; the Mexican government has its security forces arrayed along the border. The Mexican Secretariat of National Defense divides the country into military regions and zones. There are six zones and three regions on the US border as well as a number of military garrison commands in border cities. There are also state police and municipal police as well the fairly new National Guard—a gendarmerie type force under the military. Managing relations with Mexican security forces is an essential component of border security. It is a complex security environment in which a multitude of blue forces with overlapping responsibilities are working to stem tens of billions of dollars of illicit goods (humans, narcotics, and weapons) trafficked by organizations that adapt quickly to circumvent obstacles in order to meet the market demand for illicit goods—primarily drugs.

Get a FAO

The maze of stakeholders and interests is daunting. Luckily, there are highly trained experts that know the problems and know the players. US Army Foreign Area Officers (FAOs) are provided language training, advanced civil schooling, and in-region training to become experts in their regions. There are FAOs at USNORTHCOM, ARNORTH, and the US Embassy in Mexico City. Many seasoned FAOs have completed multiple assignments in Mexico or Mexico-focused positions. These officers know Mexico and have networks that can help resolve issues with Mexican counterparts and in the US joint interagency environment. Ideally, Joint Task Force Southern Border would be assigned a FAO. If not, the best alternative would be to build a close relationship with the FAOs at ARNORTH and/or the Army Attaché from the embassy in Mexico City, who travels regularly to the border region.

Build Historical Context

To be successful (or at least not cause massive damage) you need to understand the history and culture of Mexico, the US-Mexico military/security relationship, transnational crime in Mexico, and the border.

If there is one book I could recommend it’s A Tale of Two Eagles by Craig Deare. You should read the entire thing, but at a minimum you should read the introduction, conclusion, the section on territorial losses to the United States (pp. 32–40), and the section on US interventions in Northern Mexico and Veracruz (pp. 47–51).[3]

For the voracious readers on the staff (looking at you S2s and G2s), Fire and Blood; A History of Mexico, by TR Fehrenbach is, in my humble opinion, the best English language history of Mexico out there. It’s easy to read and Fehrenbach pulls no punches.[4]

Some of his observations may no longer be valid based on greatly improved relations since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). However, Octavio Paz’s essay “Reflections: Mexico and the United States” contains brutally honest assessments of the bilateral relationship. Like this evergreen gem, “In general, Americans have not looked for Mexico in Mexico; they have looked for their obsessions, enthusiasms, phobias, hopes, interests–and these are what they have found.”[5] Read Paz and try to examine Mexico objectively.

To understand the border and the border community, I recommend The Border: Exploring the U.S.-Mexico Divide by David Danelo. A combat tested Marine who later held a senior position at US Customs and Border Protection, Danelo’s reflections on the border are honest and his perspective is relatable to military personnel. You will find in this book a dichotomy, there is a separation but there is also a common community that straddles the border. Every single sergeant and above in Joint Task Force Southern Border should read chapter six, in which Danelo explains the accidental killing of US citizen Esequiel Hernández by a USMC element on a border security mission.[6] Alternatively, personnel can watch the documentary The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández.[7] As I mentioned, this mission is in the United States and is intensely political, understanding the importance of rules of engagement and escalation of force is paramount.

To better understand the military’s historical role in the Southwest, check out The US Army on the Mexican Border: A Historical Perspective by Matt M. Matthews. This is a fantastic summary of US military operations on the border.[8]

Building on the review by Matthews, I highly recommend some focused reading on two distinct periods of military actions on the border – the Mexican-American War and the Punitive Expedition. Joseph Wheelan’s Invading Mexico is a solid choice. Read chapters five through eight to understand how the deployment of US forces to the border led to skirmishes and a larger conflict than anyone in Washington intended. “In his practice of foreign policy, James Polk was an adept of the black diplomatic art of graduated pressure – partnering the threat of military action with aggressive negotiation.”[9] Sound familiar? Pancho Villa and Black Jack Pershing by James Hurst is also a very useful reference to understand the US response to the Villa raid on Columbus, New Mexico. Pay particular attention to chapter six and the engagement at Carrizal between US and Mexican troops.[10] There are limits to Mexico’s willingness to cooperate with the United States. In a speech commemorating the 1914 US seizure of Veracruz, President Claudia Sheinbaum said, “Only those that would sell out their homeland are in favor of going in search of foreign help to resolve the internal problems in our country!”[11] Mexican sovereignty and US interventions loom large in Mexican history.

I love Narcos on Netflix and you can’t beat that scene in Sicario at the POE. However, shows and films are made to entertain and provide a distorted picture of reality. If you want to understand how transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) grew in power in Mexico, you would be well served to read Ioan Grillo’s El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency.[12] Grillo is a fearless journalist that is still reporting on Mexico. Subscribe to his Substack to keep up with the latest on criminal activity and security. I would also add that Insight Crime is an invaluable resource for following TCOs in Mexico, as are Borderland Beat and Small Wars Journal–El Centro.[13]

Language and Communication Matter

Imagine a situation in which the Mexican National Guard pins a group of traffickers against the Rio Grande. A firefight ensues, tracers cross the border, rounds impact the hull of a Stryker in overwatch. Multiple unidentified drones quickly appear and start to drop bomblets against the Mexican forces. Now you have an intensifying three-way firefight developing. Probably not the time to break out your first semester high school Spanish on a call with the local Mexican commander. Or worse yet, realize that you don’t even have communication with your counterpart on the other side of the border. Effectively deconflicting multinational actions can prevent an international incident that leads to a political and economic firestorm.

Corruption is rampant in Mexico. The country was ranked 140 out of 180 on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index—tied with Iraq.[14] Yet, a minimal level trust is necessary to avoid fratricide and coordinate operations. The value of coordination far outweighs the costs of operational security losses. There will be those who will demand that bilateral communication be conducted over secure radio transmissions. Secure coms don’t matter if one of the people on the other end has been compromised by a TCO. In addition, equipping Mexican elements from police to military units with interoperable secure radios—that they will use —is simply not feasible. The realistic choice is to simply use commercial communications, most likely this will be WhatsApp.

It may be tempting to see Spanish as a low barrier to communication in the border environment. No doubt troops in the Joint Task Force will speak Spanish. Tracking language capabilities and leveraging them for tactical operations is extremely useful. However, a bilingual speaker is not a trained interpreter. Just like Arabic or Dari, a lot can be lost in translation. For senior leader engagements, a qualified interpreter is key to avoiding miscommunications.

A Final Word of Caution

I’ve worked as a FAO in multiple countries. All countries are unique and have their challenges. In many countries the relationship with the United States is straightforward, in others it is more complex. The US-Mexico bilateral relationship is the most complicated US relationship in the world. It would be a grave error to underestimate the strong ties that bind our countries and the deep historical animosities that separate us. I wish you the best of luck. And, enjoy your time on the border where you will find some of America’s most beautiful lands and most interesting people!

Endnotes

[1] “Trade in Goods with Mexico.” US Census. 2025, https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c2010.html.

[2] Samarion Hicks, “Joint Task Force-Southern Border Assumes Authority of Southern Border Mission.” US Army, 25 March 2025, https://www.army.mil/article/284048/joint_task_force_southern_border_assumes_authority_of_southern_border_mission.

[3] Craig A. Deare, A Tale of Two Eagles: The US-Mexico Bilateral Defense Relationship Post Cold War. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.

[4] T. R. Fehrenbach, Fire and Blood: A History of Mexico. New York: Da Capo Press, 1995.

[5] Octavio Paz, “Reflections: Mexico and the United States,” trans. Rachel Phillips, The History Teacher. Vol. 13, no. 3. 1980: p. 403. https://doi-org.ezproxy4.library.arizona.edu/10.2307/491679

[6] David J. Danelo, The Border: Exploring the U.S.-Mexican Divide. Mechanicsburg: Stackpole Books, 2008.

[7] Kieran Fitzgerald, The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández. 2007.

[8] Matt Matthews, “The US Army on the Mexican Border: A Historical Perspective.” The Long War Series Occasional Paper 22. Fort Leavenworth: Combat Studies Institute Press. 2007, https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/combat-studies-institute/csi-books/Matthews_op22.pdf

[9] Joseph Wheelan, Invading Mexico: America’s Continental Dream and the Mexican War, 1846-1848. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2007, p. 65.

[10] James W. Hurst, Pancho Villa and Black Jack Pershing: The Punitive Expedition in Mexico. Westport: Praeger, 2008.

[11] Claudia Sheinbaum, “Versión Estenográfica. 111 Aniversario de La Defensa Del Puerto de Veracruz” Mexico City: Government of Mexico, 21 April 2025, https://www.gob.mx/presidencia/es/articulos/version-estenografica-111-aniversario-de-la-defensa-del-puerto-de-veracruz?idiom=es.

[12] Ioan Grillo, El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2011.

[13] CrashOut, https://substack.com/@ioangrillo. InSight Crime, https://insightcrime.org/. Borderland Beat, https://www.borderlandbeat.com/. Small Wars Journal, https://smallwarsjournal.com/about-el-centro/.

[14] “Corruption Perception Index.” Transparency International. 2024, https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2024.

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