Pubdate: Sun, 28 Jul 2013
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Copyright: 2013 The Dallas Morning News, Inc.
Contact: http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/send-a-letter/
Website: http://www.dallasnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/117
Authors: Andrew Becker and G.W. Schulz

DRUG BUSTS STRAIN COUNTY BUDGET

Without Financial Backup, Officials Have Stopped Prosecuting Federal Cases

SIERRA BLANCA - As they walk through the front door, visitors to the 
Hudspeth County sheriff 's office in this broke and scruffy 
high-desert town get punched by the overpowering odor of marijuana.

During a recent week, the sheriff stored about 5,000 pounds of pot, 
contraband seized at the nearby U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint from 
the parade of road trippers, occasional celebrities and other 
outsiders ordered to stop there as they buzz through West Texas.

The inspection station stands on a sun-scorched stretch of Interstate 
10, about 85 miles southeast of El Paso below the Quitman Mountains, 
and it has put Sierra Blanca on the map as the "checkpoint to the 
stars." Among those caught have been Willie Nelson, Snoop Lion, Fiona 
Apple and Armie Hammer of The Lone Ranger.

"We'd live in Mayberry if it wasn't for that checkpoint," said Mike 
Doyal, the county judge and a former chief deputy of the sheriff 's 
office. "We'd just wait for the town drunk to show up once in a while."

In recent years, the busy immigration inspection station has put a 
severe financial strain on the county and, in the process, revealed 
the tough monetary consequences of America's massive expansion of 
border security and the government's strategy for curbing the 
nation's supply of drugs and illegal immigration.

Despite its remoteness, the Border Patrol's Big Bend sector, where 
Sierra Blanca sits, has seen small-time drug busts skyrocket in 
recent years. An influx of agents tripled the local sector's 
manpower, making the agency by far the biggest law enforcement presence around.

Big numbers

In 2011, agents in the Big Bend sector caught 2,102 people with 
drugs, the second-highest number of any sector nationwide and up more 
than 300 percent from 2009, according to an analysis of government 
data by the Center for Investigative Reporting. The Big Bend sector 
managed this with the fewest agents assigned to the southern U.S. border.

The Sierra Blanca station essentially has become an immigration 
checkpoint in name only, as the bulked-up Border Patrol has ensnared 
mostly Americans there - thousands of them.

Yet the U.S. Justice Department generally declines to prosecute these 
low-level cases and has largely walked away from paying local 
authorities to pick up the slack.

Hudspeth County, population 3,337, is dependent on the federal 
dollars it receives to jail and prosecute the steady stream of busted 
motorists. The travelers and their contraband are turned over to the 
sheriff in Sierra Blanca, who has assigned two deputies to make daily 
runs to the checkpoint to pick them up.

But to county officials, it's a losing proposition. They estimate 
that for every dollar that comes to the county from handling federal 
border crimes and seized assets, it costs $2 to detain, prosecute and 
process offenders.

Local officials say they don't want their county, which has 98 miles 
that front the Mexican border, to be known as a place where crimes go 
unpunished. But their relationship with the federal government has 
become too expensive. As a result, the sheriff here recently decided 
to kick the habit of prosecuting federal drug cases that have drained 
Hudspeth's paltry fortunes.

"We're arresting people for the federal government at my local 
taxpayers' cost, and that ain't right for them to burden this cost," 
said Sheriff Arvin West, who oversees about a dozen full-time 
deputies. "They're not going to pay. We're not going to play."

Difficult decision

In South Texas, Brooks County a few years ago stopped taking cases 
from the Falfurrias checkpoint. Neighboring Kleberg County 
commissioners recently voted to end their agreement to handle cases 
from the nearby Sarita checkpoint in Kenedy County.

Kleberg County Judge Juan M. Escobar, a former Border Patrol agent 
who once oversaw the Sarita checkpoint, said the county has lost 
about $2.1 million to handle federal cases in the last five years. 
The difficult decision came down to money for Kleberg, where county 
employees haven't received a raise in three years.

"Is it fair for us to continue to pay for this issue that the federal 
government is neglecting?" he said.

But that still doesn't sit right with local law enforcement, said 
John Hubert, the district attorney for Kenedy and Kleberg counties.

"We're going to give up 300 miles of Texas to anyone who wants to 
transport less than 200 pounds of marijuana into the United States," he said.

Officials from the Department of Homeland Security declined interview 
requests. U.S. Justice Department spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle said in a 
written statement that officials have had to make difficult funding 
decisions because of tight federal budgets. He said local authorities 
have discretion to spend other federal grant money to support such 
prosecutions.

"Through increased coordinated investigations, information and 
technology sharing, and training, we are assisting our law 
enforcement partners, including the Department of Homeland Security 
and Mexican counterparts to eliminate the threat posed by drug 
cartels and other organized crime efforts along the Southwest 
border," Hornbuckle wrote.

At the Sierra Blanca checkpoint, which stands roughly 15 miles from 
Mexico and has been in operation since the early 1970s, 
drug-detecting dogs regularly sniff the 15,000 to 20,000 trucks, cars 
and motorcycles that pass through on a typical weekday.

Along with a national hiring surge that began in 2006, the Border 
Patrol has nearly doubled the number of canines at its network of 33 
permanent checkpoints that stretch from Southern California to southern Texas.

Line agents don't care if they're busting people for small amounts of 
marijuana or 1,000-pound smuggling loads, said Lee Smith, local 
president of the National Border Patrol Council, a union that 
represents border agents.

"If it's out there, we want to catch it," he said.

Like other border counties, Hudspeth County for years has ridden the 
highs and lows of U.S. Justice Department dollars paid to take its 
undesired cases.

Since 2002, the Justice Department has reimbursed the four states 
bordering Mexico roughly $300 million to handle cases that originate 
from federal law enforcement through a program called the Southwest 
Border Prosecution Initiative.

The program started after frustrated district attorneys, led by 
Hudspeth's top prosecutor, Jaime Esparza, complained to Congress that 
the Justice Department pushed more cases on them than they could afford.

Fed up

More than a decade later, prosecutors are fed up with the Justice 
Department, which diluted the program and then slashed reimbursement 
payments, said Esparza, whose district includes neighboring El Paso 
and Culberson counties.

The four border states will receive less than $5 million in 2013 as 
reimbursement for handling the federal cases - down from $31 million 
in 2010. And the department didn't request such funding from Congress for 2014.

"They can't expect local counties along the southern border to carry 
their water for them," Esparza said. "They're going to have to fight 
this fight on their own."

In May, Hudspeth County and other border counties learned the Justice 
Department would reimburse local authorities only for prosecution of 
cases, but not the detention costs. That was a dealbreaker for county 
officials - the biggest chunk of Hudspeth County's budget goes to the jail.

"It's devastating for us," said County Auditor Yolanda Esparza, who 
is not related to prosecutor Jaime Esparza.

'We're broke'

It might end up being too hard for Hudspeth County to walk away, 
however. With more square miles - about 4,500 - than residents, the 
county doesn't generate enough tax dollars to keep all of its 
government buildings lit or even pay some employees without the fines 
and court fees the checkpoint brings.

Treasa Brown, the deputy county clerk, has advice for travelers: 
Leave your drugs at home. Buy more when you get there. But if you 
can't do without, come on through.

"We're broke," she said. "We need your money, and when you come to 
court, bring lots of it, and I' ll take every penny you have."

Charles Vital Jr., 35, of Hayward, Calif., learned that when he 
traveled with his girlfriend toward Louisiana before Thanksgiving 
2011. Vital reviewed and rated their experience of getting busted on 
Yelp, a website usually known for customer reviews of restaurants and 
other businesses.

"Our California plate got us pulled over at the border. it also 
coulda been the fact that the drug dog started whimpering when he got 
next to our car," wrote Vital, who gave the checkpoint two stars.

A cottage industry of defense attorneys has built up around the 
checkpoint, one of two in Hudspeth County, to handle the spike in 
out-of-state offenders. Most are charged with a misdemeanor and sent 
on their way to avoid overwhelming the county with a backlog of cases.

County's costs

But fines and fees from those cases still aren't enough to cover the 
county's costs. Rarely has the federal government fully reimbursed 
its court or detention expenses. When the county complained that the 
funds weren't enough or timely, officials say, the Justice 
Department's inspector general responded with an audit.

The watchdog office, which declined a request for comment, found in a 
2010 report that the county wasn't totally fault-free. Hudspeth 
County received too much money - about $480,000 - because of improper 
claims for reimbursement between 2002 and the first half of 2008, out 
of nearly $6.2 million it received over those years.

County officials said the Office of Justice Programs changed its 
reimbursement guidelines, which weren't clear in the first place. The 
county reached a settlement in which the amount owed was reduced, 
some money was credited and the county paid back a small figure.

West, the sheriff, said the time has come for the country to make up 
its mind on marijuana policy.

"For 40-something years, we have lost our butts on this [war on 
drugs]," he said. "Quit playing these damn political games - either 
legalize marijuana or do something about it."

Agustin Armendariz, Michael Corey and Tia Ghose contributed to this 
report. This story was edited by Robert Salladay and copy edited by 
Nikki Frick and Christine Lee. This story was produced by the 
nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom