Pubdate: Mon, 16 Jun 2014 Source: USA Today (US) Copyright: 2014 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/625HdBMl Website: http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/index.htm Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/466 Author: Paul Giblin, The Arizona Republic Page: 1A HEROIN'S HIDDEN JOURNEY TO MIDWEST Border Drug Seizures Rise, but About 90% of It Slips Through Net "When we arrest one, it's hard for us to get the entire picture, because everybody has a role in the organization, but nobody knows what the others' roles are." Douglas Coleman, DEA NOGALES, ARIZ . The driver of a blue Dodge Durango appeared unusually nervous to a Customs and Border Protection officer working the eight-lane entrance into the USA from Mexico. He directed the mud-streaked SUV with Arizona plates to an inspection area. Nearly all the heroin fueling a U.S. resurgence enters the country over the 1,933-mile Mexico border, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. DEA records show border agents stopped 2.3 tons of heroin from crossing last year three times as much as in 2008. The authorities estimate they've intercepted only 5%-10% of the heroin smuggled in by sophisticated networks run by a pair of Mexican cartels. Typically, the cartels' operatives don't work Easter week. So the Monday after, officers were wary of smugglers ramping up, said Joe Agosttini, assistant port director in Nogales. An officer led the Durango's driver and three passengers into a holding area. A drug-sniffing dog named Ralph smelled the engine compartment, bumpers, door handles and tires. He found nothing. Officers popped the tailgate and opened the doors, glove compartment and tire-jack compartment. Ralph sniffed door panels, seats, air-conditioning vents. Nothing. Officers pulled three suitcases from the back. The dog smelled nothing. Three officers reinspected the vehicle, using flashlights and mirrors on long handles, a heavy pole to thump surfaces and a handheld electronic device to measure the density of hidden areas. Still nothing. Finally convinced there were no hidden drugs, officers let the young woman and three elementary-school-age kids rejoin the line of vehicles entering the USA. Every vehicle and every person crossing is suspect, Agosttini said. "We're catching people who are 82 years old ... bringing narcotics to the U.S.," he said, "juveniles, young kids that are in middle school or high school." NARCOTICS AT NOGALES At Nogales, customs officers seized more heroin in the first six months of fiscal 2014 than each of the past three full years, Agosttini said. Most of the drugs are hidden in vehicles crossing through ports of entry such as the bustling Nogales gate. Smaller amounts are carried into the USA on foot by men dubbed "mules," hiking established desert smuggling routes. Some narcotics are ferried in by plane or boat. Most of the heroin is taken to stash houses in cities near the international line - San Diego and Los Angeles, Tucson and Phoenix, and El Paso, Laredo, McAllen and Brownsville in Texas. >From there, operatives drive loads along interstate freeways to destinations across the country. The operations are highly compartmentalized, said Douglas Coleman, special agent in charge of the Phoenix Division of the DEA. "Nobody knows each other. Nobody knows anything. The transporters, they only know they're supposed to go to Detroit and when they get to Detroit, they're supposed to call a phone number and await instructions," he said. Often payments are handled by other operatives. DEA officials concentrate on identifying and apprehending top-level cartel commanders, but the smuggling networks are specifically engineered to thwart law enforcement. "When we arrest one, it's hard for us to get the entire picture, because everybody has a role in the organization, but nobody knows what the others' roles are," Coleman said. "When we catch a guy, he doesn't have anything to tell us. All he has is a number." Drug traffic across the border is controlled by two Mexican crime organizations that have been fighting for years for trafficking routes and the drug trade, leaving more than 100,000 people dead in Mexico, Coleman said. The Sinaloa Cartel largely controls smuggling across the border into California, Arizona and New Mexico. The Juarez Cartel generally manages the trade through Texas. Most heroin is packed in secret compartments built into private vehicles' door panels, seats, bumpers, drive shafts or tires. Heroin is even hidden in spaces built inside gas tanks. Smugglers also conceal it in a variety of intricately altered objects: coolers, hollowed out firewood, baby strollers, soda cans, fire extinguishers. Last year, authorities found 117 pounds of heroin hidden in plastic irrigation pipes brought across the border with a load of construction materials. Sometimes drivers, passengers or even pedestrians who walk across the border carry heroin on their bodies. "People can tape packages to their legs, their thighs, their buttocks, to different parts of their bodies," Agosttini said. "They're doing that in a way that they're shaping up the packages to the shape of their bodies. For instance, if it's on the upper torso, it's shaped like it's their chest," he said. One morning this spring, Pinal County Sheriff 's Lt. Matt Thomas pulled off Interstate 8 at the Sonoran Desert National Monument, a stretch of rocky mountains and valleys about 70 miles north of the international boundary in Arizona. The 487,000-acre preserve is promoted as a prime location for backpacking, stargazing, hunting and horseback riding. It's also a drug-smuggling corridor. Cartel operatives backpack loads of drugs from the border through the desert to I-8, which whisks motorists between California and Arizona. "When you just look at this desert area, and people may even be driving by on I-8 headed to San Diego or wherever, when they look at this area, they just see open desert," Thomas said. "When I drive up, all I see are smuggling routes." MOUNTAIN LOOKOUTS Cartel scouts hide in mountains overlooking smuggling routes and desert roads, coordinating movements of mules and the transport crews who pick them up along the freeway. Scouts watch for Border Patrol agents and other authorities, telling mules when to proceed and when to hide. Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu estimates cartel operatives have 75 to 100 mountain lookout posts in Pinal County, which is roughly the size of Connecticut. Support personnel ferry supplies to scouts, replenishing water, food, batteries and other necessaries, allowing the workers to shelter among the rocks for days or weeks at a time. A few miles away along I-8, Thomas stopped at a reflective roadside mile marker. Smugglers often use the markers for rendezvous points. He climbed over a barbed-wire fence and stepped past a rattlesnake to a gully shrouded by mesquite trees providing a bit of shade. He found several discarded homemade burlap backpacks and smaller store-bought knapsacks. Smugglers use them to carry heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine. Carriers also had abandoned blankets, a sleeping bag, empty plastic water bottles and candy wrappers. The smell of human waste wafted in the hot air. Smugglers were nowhere to be seen. Transport vehicles probably had picked them up and driven them and their dope to a Phoenix stash house. In February, deputies arrested a Mexican man driving a cargo van south of Casa Grande, Ariz. Inside the van were 600 pounds of food bundled in trash bags, cases of bottled water, a stockpile of 5-gallon jugs of water and nearly a dozen cans of diesel fuel. The man told deputies cartel figures paid him $4,000 to drive the van from Phoenix, deliver supplies to scouts and pick up a load of marijuana to shuttle to a location his employers hadn't yet identified to him. Marijuana remains the top drug smuggled through the region, but heroin is increasing and fast, Thomas said. "A couple of years back, if you would find a pound of heroin, that would be a big load," he said. "Nowadays, it's common to interdict 50 or 60 pounds, up to 100 pounds, of heroin." - --- MAP posted-by: Matt