Pubdate: Sun, 10 Apr 2011
Source: San Diego Union Tribune (CA)
Copyright: 2011 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.signonsandiego.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/386
Note: Seldom prints LTEs from outside it's circulation area.

BORDER HAS BECOME MAIN BATTLEGROUND IN DRUG WAR

Despite Enforcement Efforts, Tremendous Amount of U.S. Use Drives 
Trafficking Trade

The US port of entry at San Ysidro is the world's busiest land border 
crossing, processing millions of people a year through 24 car lanes 
and a pedestrian processing area. Previously

Is U.S.-Mexico border secure enough?

The southwest border has become the nucleus of the U.S. and Mexican 
war on drugs.

Thousands of law-enforcement agents, from nearly every three-letter 
acronym agency, are focused on drug traffickers' northward push of 
narcotics and the southbound flow of American guns and cash intended 
to fund and arm organized crime.

Despite sophisticated intelligence efforts, unprecedented cooperation 
between the United States and Mexico and billions of U.S. dollars to 
pay for law-enforcement operations along the border and within 
Mexico, leaders of both countries are bedeviled by one other part of 
the equation.

Tremendous U.S. drug use is the fuel that drives the trafficking 
trade -- and with it the murders of more than 35,000 Mexicans since 
2007, authorities and researchers said. These experts agree the cycle 
of crime and violence will continue as long as high consumption persists.

"The U.S. government is acknowledging that the demand for drugs in 
the U.S. is driving instability and violence in Mexico," said Rafael 
Lemaitre, spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug 
Control Policy. "While you are enforcing the law and taking down 
violent drug organizations, at the same time you also have to educate 
every new generation of young people that drug use is harmful."

Post-9/11 Buildup

The enforcement buildup against drug trafficking has increased 
significantly since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, especially after late 
2006, when Mexican President Felipe Calderon declared war on drug 
cartels and pressed the U.S. to go after guns and money bound for 
those organizations. The focus includes cartels in Central America 
and Colombia that use Mexico as a transit highway to the U.S.

The Department of Homeland Security expanded Customs and Border 
Protection in the past decade through added staffing, technology and 
infrastructure. In addition, the agency began screening southbound 
rail and vehicle traffic for weapons and cash.

Across the nearly 2,000-mile southwest boundary, Customs and Border 
Protection, Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement are 
joined by the Drug Enforcement Administration; Federal Bureau of 
Investigation; U.S. Coast Guard; U.S. Marshals; Bureau of Alcohol, 
Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and dozens of state and local 
agencies. Many of the agencies already had a presence along the 
border, but their activities intensified after 2006.

Interagency efforts and the shared approach by Calderon and President 
Barack Obama to address drug traffic and the flow of cash and weapons 
have led to more seizures, arrests and intelligence sharing, said 
Alan Bersin, commissioner for Customs and Border Protection.

"This is not to say the work is done. It will never be done until we 
have a regularized border management that involves immigration reform 
and involves far less drug consumption in this country and far less 
gang corruption in Mexico," Bersin said. No centralization

The campaign involves a lengthy list of task forces, operations and 
initiatives, with names such as The Alliance to Combat Transnational 
Threats and The Southwest Border Counter Narcotics Strategy.

"We are involving all of the stakeholders, state and local partners 
are taking a role and some of our foreign law-enforcement 
counterparts are as well," said Steve Andres, unit chief for ICE's 
Border Enforcement Security Taskforce. "That has been a cornerstone 
of our success -- having people sitting next to each other."

These operations account for thousands of arrests, hundreds of 
thousand of pounds of narcotics found, billions of dollars 
confiscated and massive loads of firearms seized. The total counts 
are hard to come by because each agency records its statistics 
differently, with occasional overlaps.

No agency keeps a comprehensive tally of all the task forces, 
strategies and projects.

The binational enforcement efforts have not been particularly 
effective at significantly curbing the flow of contraband, said Ted 
Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy 
studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C.

Recent missteps have not helped, including the ATF agency's practice 
of tracking specific guns heading into Mexico but not confiscating them.

"As long as the great demand exists, as long as you have the huge 
black market premium, the cartels are going to be fully in business," 
Carpenter said. "They are going to fight for turf and the most 
lucrative routes."

Last year, the National Drug Intelligence Center gave a similar 
assessment in its National Drug Threat Assessment report. The group 
found that the availability of illicit drugs was on the rise in the 
U.S. Contrasting approaches

But William Sherman, acting special agent in charge of the DEA in San 
Diego, said the collaborative enforcement push has succeeded by 
eliminating cartel leaders, fragmenting drug organizations and 
causing traffickers to change their distribution patterns.

Increased tunneling and maritime activity -- which are harder ways of 
transporting drugs into the U.S. -- prove it, Sherman said.

Across the southwest, 149 such tunnels have been shut down since 
1990, 55 of them in or intended for California, said Joe Garcia, 
deputy special agent in charge of ICE Homeland Security Investigations.

Tunnels vary from rudimentary holes under fences to sophisticated 
passages complete with rail lines and ventilation. Garcia oversees 
the seven-member San Diego Tunnel Task Force, created in 2003 to 
respond to the escalation. Similarly, marine task forces have grown 
in recent years as drug smugglers took to the high seas.

"All the parts work together," Garcia said. "There is no stand-alone 
panacea to the problem."

Each agency and task force attacks parts of the total problem, with 
some overlap and a lot of cooperation, said Keith Slotter, special 
agent in charge of the San Diego FBI.

His office dedicates about half of its criminal-division activities 
to border issues, going after traffickers and looking for corrupt 
border officers.

"Our goal is to cut the head off the beast and not just clip his 
toenails," Slotter said. "Dismantling the organizations and putting 
the leadership in jail is the best scenario."

The problem with the "mega security" model is the U.S. will never be 
drug-free, especially in light of domestic production of drugs in the 
U.S., said David Mares, professor of political science and 
international relations at the University of California San Diego.

"It's not the Colombians' fault or the Mexicans' fault that this 
country uses drugs," said Mares, author of "Drug Wars and 
Coffeehouses: The Political Economy of the International Drug Trade."

"As a society, we should be examining these issues rather than 
focusing on an impossible project -- to seal the border." 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake