page_title: Naval Infantry Corps
section_title: Mexican Drug War
hierarchical_section_title: Naval Infantry Corps / History / Mexican Drug War
caption_attribution_description: English: U.S. Navy sailors from the amphibious assault ship USS Bataan (LHD 5) and Mexican Marines carry a log as they remove Hurricane Katrina debris at the D'iberville Elementary School in D'iberville, Miss., on Sept. 9, 2005. Once the debris has been cleared the school will be used to provide food and medicine for evacuees. Department of Defense units are mobilized as part of Joint Task Force Katrina to support the Federal Emergency Management Agency's disaster relief efforts in the Gulf Coast areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
context_page_description: The Naval Infantry Corps are the marine corps and amphibious infantry force of the Mexican Navy. The main task of the Infantería de Marina is to guarantee the maritime security of the country's ports and external and internal defense of the country. To accomplish these responsibilities, the corps is trained and equipped to take on any type of operations from Sea, Air and Land.
  The Naval Infantry Corps was reorganized in 2007–2009 into 30 Naval Infantry Battalions, a paratroop battalion, a battalion attached to the Presidential Guard Brigade, two Fast Reaction Forces with six battalions each, and three Special Forces groups. The Naval Infantry are responsible for port security, protection of the ten-kilometer coastal fringe, and patrolling major waterways.
context_section_description: Since the start of President Felipe Calderón's war on the drug cartels, the Infantería de Marina's role has grown from maritime and port security to land based operations in combating organized crime, drug trafficking, extermination of marijuana fields, drug interdictions at sea, and also participating in arrest of cartel suspects. 
  The navy has carried out permanent intense anti-narcotic operations. Such tasks as the extermination of marijuana fields which mostly takes place in the north-western part of the country is done by first locating the fields by satellite or simply by air reconnaissance, then sending a team of marines to eradicate the cannabis plants. One of its big seizures was in late October 2007, when navy personnel in a joint operation with other agencies seized 23 tons of cocaine in the port city of Manzanillo, Colima. Due to its actions, the navy and in kind the Naval Infantry Force has risen in stature in the United States.
caption: Mexican marines and U.S. Navy sailors from amphibious assault ship USS Bataan cleaning up debris following the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in D'Iberville, Mississippi in 2005
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