Kansas City customs port considered Mexican soil?

[Soldier4Christ]

Kansas City customs port considered Mexican soil?
WND investigation finds new evidence U.S. facility to be on foreign territory

A Mexican customs facility planned for Kansas City's inland port may have to be considered the sovereign soil of Mexico as part of an effort to lure officials in that country into cooperating with the Missouri development project.

Despite adamant denials by Kansas City Area Development Council officials, WND has obtained emails and other documents from top executives with the KCSmartPort project that suggest such a facility would by necessity be considered Mexican territory – despite its presence in the heartland of the U.S.

The documents were obtained with the assistance of Joyce Mucci, the founder of the Mid-America Immigration Reform Coalition, under the provisions of the Missouri Sunshine Law from the City of Kansas City, Mo., and from the Missouri Department of Economic Development.

The documents reveal a two-year campaign initiated in 2004 and managed by top SmartPort officials to win Mexico's agreement to establish the Mexican customs facility within the Kansas City "inland port." Kansas City SmartPort launched a concerted effort to advance the idea, holding numerous meetings with Mexican government officials in Mexico and in Washington to push the Mexican port idea in concert. The effort involved Missouri elected officials, including members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate.

The documents make clear that Mexico demanded Kansas City pay all costs.

To date, the Kansas City Council has voted a $2.5 million loan to KC SmartPort to build the Mexican customs facility in the West Bottoms near Kemper Arena on city-owned land east of Liberty Street and mostly south of Interstate 670.

"Kansas City, Mo., is leasing the site to Kansas City SmartPort," Tasha Hammes of the development council wrote to WND last month. "It will NOT be leased to any Mexican government agency or to be sovereign territory of Mexico."

Yet, an email written June 21, 2004, by Chris Gutierrez, the president of the KC SmartPort, stated that the Mexican customs office space "would need to be designated as Mexican sovereign territory and meet certain requirements."

Even more recently, an email dated March 10 of this year was sent by Gutierrez to a long list of recipients that left no doubt that KC SmartPort has not yet received federal government approval to move forward with the Mexican customs facility. Gutierrez informed the email recipients that the processing a critical form, designated "C-175," needs approval by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection before the form is passed to the State Department for final approval. The processing and approval of the C-175 application is holding up the final approval of the Mexican customs facility.

In the same memo, Gutierrez reported on a recent meeting in Washington: "Both sides (U.S. and Mexican officials) met several weeks ago and the 'document' or as the U.S. refers to it the 'C-175' is near completion. This document is the basis for the procedural, regulatory, jurisdictional, etc. for the project. It defines what will happen and how and what laws, etc. allow this to happen. Both sides have put a lot of effort into this document."

Gutierrez appeared concerned that the intensive lobbying done by KC SmartPort could be a wasted effort if the final U.S. government approvals were not completed before Mexico elected a new president this week.

"The process for the document is for U.S. Customs to present the document to the acting Commissioner and officials with the Dept of Homeland Security," he wrote. "This will happen in March. The document will then be reviewed by the U.S. State Dept who has been consulted on the document all along so they are aware of it. State will make the recommendation on the diplomatic status of the Mexican officials and the documents fit with existing agreements, accords or treaties. Mexico will wait for this recommendation and then get the sign off of their Foreign Ministry (Secretary [Luis Ernesto] Derbez and Under Secretary [Geronimo] Gutierrez are well versed on the project and support it). The hope of both sides is that this will be completed before the Mexican presidential elections in July."

Gutierrez's March 10 email ended by expressing a hope that discussion of the Mexican customs facility issue could be kept from the public, obviously concerned that press scrutiny might end up producing an adverse public reaction that could destroy the project. Gutierrez specifically proposes a low-profile strategy designed to keep the KC SmartPort and the Mexican customs facility out of public view.

"The one negative that was conveyed to us was the problems and pressure the media attention has created for both sides," he wrote. "They want us to stop promoting the facility to the press. We let them know that we have never issued a proactive press release on this and that the media attention started when Commissioner (Robert) Bonner was in KC and met with Rick Alm. The official direction moving forward is that we can respond to the media with a standard response that I will send out on Monday and refer all other inquiries to U.S. Customs. I will get the name from them to refer media calls."

Robert C. Bonner is the commissioner of CBP within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Rick Alm is a reporter for the Kansas City Star.

On May 16, Bonner addressed the Chamber of Commerce in Kansas City, saying the Mexican customs facility idea "could be enormously important to Kansas City and the surrounding area, and would – or should – facilitate trade for U.S. exporters by expediting the border clearance process for U.S. goods and products exported to Mexico." Bonner added that "If the Kansas City SmartPort is implemented, Kansas City could become a major new trade link between the U.S. and Mexico."

Among those copied on Gutierrez's email of March 10, 2006, was George D. Blackwood, the president of NASCO (North America's Super Corridor Coalition, Inc.). Blackwood is an attorney with Blackwood, Langworthy & Tyson in Kansas City. He also served as the former chairman of the North American International Trade Corridor Partnership, which he helped found in 1998 when he was serving as mayor pro tem of Kansas City. NASCO supports the Kansas City SmartPort's initiative to establish a Mexican customs facility as part of the NASCO SuperCorridor project.

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If this is true and not just another conspiracy theory it is a complete outrage. Little by little Americans rights and territory are being given away to others to control.

[Soldier4Christ]

Docs reveal plan for Mexican trucks in U.S.
Internal e-mails belie public statement, suggest aim to expand quietly

Despite claims to the contrary, a planned Midwest "inland port" with a Mexican customs office will not be restricted to railroad traffic, according to internal documents obtained by WorldNetDaily.

As WND has reported, Kansas City SmartPort plans to utilize deep-sea Mexican ports such as Lazaro Cardenas to unload containers from China and the Far East as part of the North American Free Trade Agreement super-highway plan.

The plan would include the hotly contested allowance of Mexican trucks on U.S. roads, WND has reported, but Tasha Hammes of the Kansas City Area Development Council has insisted the port will be restricted to railroad traffic.

Hammes has argued the railroad link is "nothing new, other than the fact that Kansas City Southern acquired the Mexican railroad serving this port and that major work has been done on the port of Lazaro Cardenas so that it has higher capacity and can handle larger containers."

But internal e-mails make it clear that officials, hoping to stay below the radar of public opinion, plan to expand from rail to trucks after the Mexican customs facility is operational.

The Mexican customs facility project was championed by David W. Eaton, president of Monterrey Business Consultants in Monterrey, Mexico, and the former executive director of North American International Trade Corridor Partnership, a non-profit group with the aim of internationalizing U.S. highways to facilitate trade with Mexico and Canada.

In a Jan. 7 e-mail, Eaton writes:

    They are still going back and forth on the rail and truck focus. However, according to Manuel [Manuel Ruiz, a Mexican customs official], the first stage will most likely be "rail only" with trucking added later.

Kenneth Hoffman of the law firm Blackwell Sanders Peper Martin, outside council to KC SmartPort, was copied on Eaton's e-mail. A few minutes later, Hoffman answered, supporting the phase-in strategy:

    My feeling is that we need to get this done in such a way that [the Mexican customs facility] is successful when it opens. If it starts small that is fine as long as there is productive work that we can point to as evidence that the effort was worthwhile. We can expand to trucks after getting the process up and running.

The e-mails are consistent with a position paper Eaton authored for the Montreal-based Institute for Research on Public Policy, entitled "Roads, Trains, and Ports: Integrating North American Transport."

In the paper, Eaton argued railroad transport should be developed as the first mode to bring containers from China through Mexican ports into the U.S., because "one unit train can carry the equivalent of approximately 250 trucks."

Moreover, Eaton had argued that use of Mexican trucks was impaired by the poor condition of Mexico's roadways and the wear and tear on Mexican trucks resulting from overuse. Eaton had concluded "North America would be well served by linking its rail infrastructure and systems," which has been advanced by Kansas City Southern's acquisition of Mexican railroads.

An examination of the internal e-mails from Kansas City SmartPort over the last two years shows the development of the city's international "inland port" concept – including the Mexican customs facility – involved an ambitious multi-year process with the aim of tying into the emerging corridor-oriented NAFTA Super-Highway network.

Development of the KCSmartPort vision included active involvement of the North America’s SuperCorridor Coalition, or NASCO, a non-profit group "dedicated to developing the world’s first international, integrated and secure, multi-modal transportation system along the International Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation Corridor to improve both the trade competitiveness and quality of life in North America."

Chris Gutierrez, president of KCSmartPort, frequently copied NASCO President George Blackwood on details of the negotiations with Mexican and U.S. officials regarding the Mexican customs office.

An April 26 e-mail from Gutierrez included Blackwood among the list of recipients. In his message, Gutierrez reported he worked directly with the office of Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., and with Mexican government officials to apply political pressure to influence the State Department and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, to move faster in approving the Mexican customs facility application:

    CBP told me that the State Department is reviewing the C-175 [form needed to approve Mexican customs facility]. Bond's office has calls into the State Dept; letter to Gil Diaz [Mexican Secretary of Finance] went out last week asking him to encourage CBP and State Dept to move it along. Here is the draft letter to Minister [Luis Ernesto] Derbez [Mexican Foreign Ministry Secretary]. I was still tweaking it but here it is for your review.

In 1998, before becoming NASCO president, Blackwood established the North American International Trade Corridor Partnership while he served as mayor pro tem of Kansas City. The NAITCP has been absorbed into NASCO.

A NAIPC summit meeting in 2004 was attended by Mexican officials, including Secretary of Finance Gil Diaz, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Geronimo Guiterrez, Deputy Counsel of Mexico Noemi Hernandez, Counsel of Mexico in Kansas City Everardo Suarez. Also in attendance was Kansas City, Mo., Mayor Kay Barnes and the president and CEO of Kansas City Southern railroad, Mike Haverty.

Photographed on the first page of the summit executive summary is Robert Pastor, an American University professor who has written "Toward a North American Community," a book promoting the development of a North American union as a regional government and the adoption of the amero as a common monetary currency to replace the dollar and the peso.

Pastor also was vice chairman of the May 2005 Council on Foreign Relations task force entitled "Building a North American Community" that presents itself as a blueprint for using bureaucratic action within the executive branches of Mexico, the U.S. and Canada to transform the current trilateral Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America into a North American union regional government.

[Soldier4Christ]

More evidence Mexican trucks coming to U.S.
Internal document anticipates increasing volume of traffic

An internal document shows a planned "inland port" in Kansas City anticipates an increasing volume of Mexican truck traffic, despite claims it will be restricted to railroad transports from south of the border.

WND has obtained, via a Missouri Sunshine Law request, an internal spreadsheet analysis prepared by the port project, Kansas City SmartPort, indicating that "with marketing," it projects that in 2010 a high of 508 trucks per day would pass through a Mexican customs facility located at the port. The volume would grow to a projected high of 881 trucks per day in 2015.

As WND has reported, KC SmartPort plans to utilize deep-sea Mexican ports such as Lazaro Cardenas to unload containers from China and the Far East as part of the North American Free Trade Agreement super-highway plan.

The plan would include the hotly contested allowance of Mexican trucks on U.S. roads, WND has reported, but Tasha Hammes of the Kansas City Area Development Council has insisted the port will be restricted to railroad traffic.

Internal KC SmartPort e-mails obtained by WND show that both Kansas City and Mexican officials were concerned that enough truck volume would be processed through the Mexican customs facility to make the project economically viable for Mexico to maintain a customs staff on site.

A Jan. 13, 2005, e-mail from David Eaton, the president of Monterrey Business Consultants in Monterrey, Mexico, who is credited with first proposing the Mexican customs facility, stresses the need for success:

    Other communities such as Dallas and San Antonio have requested that Mexican Customs put facilities in their communities. Mexico has determined that our project will be the Pilot and others will not be approved until it is determined that this works … as Ken Hoffman [outside counsel to KC SmartPort] said … we need to make sure this works! [ellipsis in original]

An e-mail dated Jan. 10 from Jose M. Garcia, representative of Mexico's Ministry of Finance in Mexico's Washington, D.C., embassy, asks KC SmartPort President Chris Gutierrez to be more precise. Garcia wrote:

    The statistical data show in the study hardly offers us a list of potential users (targets), those that we (Mexican Customs and USCBP [U.S. Customs and Border Protection]) must attract and convince to move their cargo through [KC SmartPort] and be cleared by US and Mexican Customs. This list will be used for our promotional efforts.

Replying to Garcia's e-mail, Erendira Rodriguez of KC SmartPort affirmed Jan. 17 that "SmartPort has $400,000 specifically to market the [Mexican customs] facility and the increased exports of U.S. products to Mexico. The marketing will not start until there are more assurances that the facility will open."

KC SmartPort consistently has maintained to WND that the Mexican customs facility was intended to be for outbound exports to Mexico only and would separate from the Lazaro Cardenas-to-Kansas City corridor. In a June 29 e-mail to WND, Hammes of the Kansas City Area Development Council emphasized the distinction:

    The proposed KC Customs Port and Lazaro Cardenas to KC Corridor (made possible by KCS [Kansas City Southern]) are two non-related, separate efforts that KC SmartPort is supporting. (One is rail, the other truck. There is no crossover between the corridor and the proposed facility.)

Yet, that contention is inconsistent with a U.S.-Mexico Freight Flow Analysis presented on the KC SmartPort website. According to that study, conducted for KC SmartPort by MARC [Mid-America Regional Council], the dominant mode for hinterland trade export to Mexico was rail.

As the MARC report noted on page 5, "For the SmartPort hinterland, grain products were the largest export commodity group. Manufactured and intermediate goods were the top import commodities." And, again, "Turning to exports by mode, rail is forecast to grow faster than truck which reflects the predominance of bulky and lower value commodities in the export trade with Mexico."

Still, KC SmartPort argues the Mexican customs office is for outgoing trucks only and that only the Kansas City Southern railroad will be used to import goods that enter Mexico via the port of Lazaro Cardenas.

Hammes wrote in her June 29 e-mail to WND: "Mexican trucks will NOT be coming to KC or utilizing the facility."

Even more emphatically, she stated a paragraph later:

    The containers that come in through the port of Lazaro Cardenas will enter the U.S. on a U.S. railroad (Kansas City Southern) NOT a Mexican Railroad or via Mexican trucks. The LC to KC corridor is a rail corridor ONLY. As I stated earlier, this is nothing new other than the fact that KCS acquired the Mexican railroad that served the port of Lazaro Cardenas last year.

But the KC SmartPort internal e-mails indicate otherwise. A Jan. 13 e-mail from David Eaton noted: "The authorities agreed that the [Mexican customs] facility will be BOTH TRUCK AND RAIL from the beginning."

Other internal e-mails reveal a determination by KC SmartPort and KC city officials to control their public relations message.

When an Associated Press report hit the wires Jan. 30 revealing a scandal in Mexico that could affect Kansas City's Mexican customs facility, it prompted a flurry of e-mails within KC SmartPort.

A Jan. 30 e-mail from KC SmartPort President Gutierrez to outside counsel Hoffman noted with apparent alarm: "The Associated Press story has reach 30 markets now. Many of the stories have appeared in the last day."

On Jan. 31, Gutierrez broadcast an e-mail to more than 50 respondents, including Kansas City Council members and a Kansas City Southern railroad spokesman, in which he dismissed the AP article, advising that the scandal was only Mexican "presidential election campaigning with one party stirring up things on the other parties and vice versa."