Thread: TX: Border Patrol seizures up with help of mapping device

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/state/16449021.htm

Posted on Fri, Jan. 12, 2007



Border Patrol seizures up with help of mapping device

LYNN BREZOSKY
Associated Press

EDINBURG, Texas - In a windowless room in an ultra-secure wing of the Rio Grande Valley's Border Patrol sector headquarters, a huge map erupts into a telling pattern of red dots.

It's a real-time picture of hundreds of agents making apprehensions, data that streams into the "Border Intelligence Center" through global positioning systems, tripped sensors, and reports called in from agents in the field and on the Rio Grande.

It's a user-friendly mapping system that, in the year since beginning operations, has helped the Border Patrol uncover smuggling routes and find drugs, officials said. In December, for example, drug seizures were up 181 percent over the same time in 2005, sector chief Lynne Underdown said.

"The great thing for us is we've always dealt with statistics and numbers," said Jaime Salazar, a supervisory agent. "Now we can actually get a visual out to the agents."

The mapping system is now used all along the country's northern and southern borders, and in the Rio Grande sector officials plan to eventually load the software into vehicles so agents can see the patterns from the field.

Kim Rossmo, a professor who runs the Center for Geospatial Intelligence and Investigation at Texas State University, which has worked with the Border Patrol, said the technology is helping patrol 2,000 miles of U.S.-Mexico border.

But Bruce Bagley of the University of Miami said the technology won't help stem the flow of drugs, which will continue to slip in from the Mexican cities of Tijuana and Nuevo Laredo simply because the two land ports were so busy. He also noted that as soon as a data reached the map it was old news.

"They will be recording historic activity, not actual or future routes," he said. "There's an incentive among smugglers to be constantly innovative. They stay one, two, three steps ahead."

Nevertheless, agents say the maps - which are monitored at the intelligence center around the clock - have helped agents find immigrant groups or narcotic smugglers almost daily.

The dots are thickest along the banks of the Rio Grande marking the U.S.-Mexico border and the two highways that head north out of the Valley.

The map shows a congestion at the Border Patrol highway checkpoint at Falfurrias, where agents have had a spree of marijuana and cocaine seizures, including 10 tons over three days in December.

Underdown has said those seizures signaled desperation among smugglers. With agents using the maps to find smugglers' favorite back roads and riverbank spots, they try ever-innovative ways to conceal the drugs in rigs passing through the checkpoint.

A year ago, Salazar said, the dots would have massed at the checkpoint on the other highway north, U.S. Highway 77 - an indication smugglers have shifted.

The first Border Patrol sector to use such mapping technology was San Diego, in the late 1990s. The Rio Grande Valley sector was second, opening about a year ago.

The government is one of the biggest buyers for mapping technology firms including ESRI, Leica Geosystems, MapInfo Corp., and Visual Learning Systems.

"We have a whole federal team that covers virtually every federal government agency you can think of," said Wayne Sweeney, ESRI's account manager for the Department of Justice and Customs and Border Protection. "Your state, local, and tribal government is also a huge user."

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