Pubdate: Thu, 22 Dec 2005
Source: Christian Science Monitor (US)
Copyright: 2005 The Christian Science Publishing Society
Contact: http://www.csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/contactus.pl
Website: http://www.csmonitor.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/83
Author: Faye Bowers, Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?203 (Terrorism)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)

SURPRISE - TERROR WAR AIDS DRUG WAR

One Arizona Border Unit Sees Marijuana Haul Triple.

PHOENIX -- As Congress and President Bush wrangle over the USA 
Patriot Act, the Border Security bill, and other tools of the war on 
terror, they may want to keep another law-enforcement group in mind - 
the nation's drug-fighters.

That's because the war on terror is proving to be a boon to the war 
on drugs. Drug seizures are up all along the US-Mexico border. 
Nowhere is the trend clearer than along a desolate 118-mile patch of 
Arizona desert across the border from the Mexican state of Sonora.

In what is rapidly becoming one of the highest drug-trafficking and 
people-smuggling sectors along the border, US Customs and Border 
Protection (CBP) officers there have seized 13,000 pounds of 
marijuana since Oct. 1, triple the amount captured in the same period 
last year. That year, fiscal 2005, also set a record. The reasons for 
the success? Better intelligence-sharing, increased manpower, and 
improved technology that border officials have received in the 
aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks.

The primary aim for upgrading America's border defenses was to 
prevent potential terrorists from crossing into the US, either 
individually or hidden among professional smuggling groups. But a 
side benefit has been progress for the nation's war on drugs. As the 
CBP has apprehended greater numbers of people at the nation's 
southern border, it has also seized larger and larger quantities of drugs.

Arizona accounts for more than half the marijuana seizures in the 
United States.

"There's a nexus to human smuggling and drug smuggling," says 
Salvador Zamora, spokesman for the CBP in Washington. "The terrain on 
the Mexican side is pretty much controlled by one or two 
organizations, and the human smugglers either smuggle drugs too or 
pay the drug operators who control that area."

Agencies Cooperate on Border Watch

It's crucial for members of various government agencies - from the 
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), FBI, CBP, as well as state 
agencies - to cooperate closely on the overlapping border issues, 
government officials say. That's why there is a Joint Terrorism Task 
Force, led by the FBI, that pulls them together here in Phoenix.

"We're working with the JTTF in Phoenix," says Steve Robertson, a DEA 
special agent who once worked the southwest border and is now in 
Washington. "The DEA has historically been involved in that area for 
a long while and has built up a network of informants who provide 
good intelligence."

But at the same time as the US government has built this task force, 
added border agents and canine teams, and beefed up the 
infrastructure and technology, drug traffickers are being more 
innovative. For instance, they've sent groups of illegal immigrants 
across the border into the US to divert the CBP's attention from a 
drug shipment, officials say.

Moreover, a violent drug war has erupted between the Gulf and the 
Sinaloa cartels - the Mexican drug organizations that US officials 
say are responsible for most of the cross-border smuggling. In fact, 
officials accuse those cartels of shooting and wounding two border 
agents this past June on the Arizona-Mexico border.

The two cartels are warring over turf, mainly in the Nuevo Laredo, 
Texas, area, but their battles are spilling over into Arizona, as are 
their related criminal activities.

Smugglers Turn to Army Pros

That complicates the fight against drug trafficking, according to Al 
Ortiz, acting chief of the FBI's Americas Criminal Enterprise Section 
in Washington. "They've hired [Mexican] army deserters, but not just 
any army deserters. They were members of specially trained elite 
forces .. equivalent to somebody hiring our Delta Force."

Because of that drug smuggling and related criminal activity spilling 
into this area, Arizona and the Mexican state that borders it, 
Sonora, started a cross-border cooperation program in June. They have 
agreed to share intelligence and cooperate more closely in four 
areas: auto theft, people smuggling, illegal money transfers, and 
fraudulent or false identification.

"The same networks that have been set up to bring drugs into the 
country are the ones used for people smuggling and other criminal 
activity," says Marco Lopez, adviser on Mexico and Latin America to 
Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano. "We wanted to preempt that activity 
and create a safe environment for business to grow along our border."

Since June, for example, Mexican agents, through law-enforcement 
officers in Arizona, have had real-time access to the US terrorist 
watch list. Mexico has set up three checkpoints, and plans to set up 
two others, on its side of the border adjacent to the Yuma sector. 
Since the three checkpoints have been set up, some 700 people, other 
than Mexicans, have been detained on the Sonora side, according to 
Mexican government figures. (Mexico can't legally detain its own citizens.)

"Additional agents and enhanced technology are going to net more 
arrests," says Gary Grossman, faculty chair of global technology and 
development at Arizona State University in Tempe. "But that doesn't 
necessarily mean more prosecutable crimes. We still have the ban on 
illegal search and seizure in this country."

While drug arrests are up somewhat in Arizona, according to the Drug 
Enforcement Administration, it's drug interdictions that have gone up 
dramatically.

For the CBP's Yuma, Ariz., sector, which encompasses the 118-mile 
stretch of western Arizona desert, the pounds of marijuana seized has 
more than tripled since 2002. For the entire 370-mile border, the 
totals are up 66 percent during the same period (see chart).

Antismuggler Tactic: Take Their Wheels

Another focus of the joint US-Mexico effort is stolen cars and 
trucks. Arizona's Department of Public Safety and Sonora now share 
information on vehicles in real time. Law enforcement officers in 
Sonora work with law enforcement officers in Arizona and vice versa 
to obtain the needed intelligence.

As a result of these measures, Lopez says, 38 stolen vehicles have 
been seized on the Sonora side of the border, and 22 on the Arizona 
side that could have been used to transport people or drugs across 
the border. Some 147 people have been arrested for carrying 
fraudulent identifications on the Arizona side of the border, 
documents that could have helped these individuals get driver's 
licenses, set up bank accounts, and engage in other illicit activities here.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake