Thread: DRUG SEIZURES SHOW TRAFFICKERS TRYING DESERT ROUTES

Drug seizures show traffickers trying desert routes

By JULIA GLICK
The Press-Enterprise

CALEXICO - U.S. Border Patrol agents in inland California are catching more and more drugs welded into gas tanks, secreted under upholstery or stacked brazenly in car trunks and driven across the desert.

The Border Patrol's El Centro Sector, which includes 72 miles of California's inland stretch of the border and areas north -- including sections of Riverside and San Bernardino counties -- has seized hundreds of more pounds of cocaine and thousands of more pounds of marijuana than neighboring sectors have since the current fiscal year began in October.

Border Patrol and other law enforcement officials say the federal government's unprecedented buildup of agents along the border, a greater focus on border enforcement in San Diego and Arizona, and grisly cartel wars in Mexico may all be driving the sector's exponential increase in confiscated drugs over the past few years. The trend may indicate a shift in international drug trafficking toward the inland region or just a larger dent in the vast amounts of undetected drugs flowing up from Mexico along inland routes.


Two people carrying their possessions try to cross the New River, flowing north from Mexicali, Mexico, at Calexico. Once they realize Border Patrol agents see them, they turn back. Signs in English and Spanish warn people to keep out of the river because it is polluted.

"It is clear that your numbers of seizures of at least marijuana and cocaine are up, way up, but the problem is trying to explain that," said Scott Stewart, a senior terrorism and security expert with Strategic Forecasting. The Texas-based firm, known by the nickname Stratfor, provides geopolitical analysis to international companies.

Border Patrol agents say drugs that cross the border in El Centro Sector usually move at least partly through Riverside County as they head to distribution points in the Inland Empire and around the country. Agents catch traffickers driving north along one of two roads around the Salton Sea, on Highway S2 or off-roading over desert dunes.

The same factors for drug seizures may also be fueling a rise in violence along the inland border, with smugglers hurling rocks and Molotov cocktails at agents from across the fences, canals, river and sands that separate inland California from Mexico.

In March, an agent fatally shot a suspected immigrant smuggler in a scuffle near Calexico, and another suspected smuggler was killed struggling with a Border Patrol agent near Escondido in northern San Diego County in May. The growing violence and increase in drug stops could potentially create new risks for inland communities along drug-trafficking routes.

A Sharp Increase

In the first half of the current fiscal year, October through March, El Centro Sector snagged more than 800 pounds of cocaine. That's more than double the amount seized in all of the previous fiscal year and more than three times the amount found in fiscal year 2005, according to sector statistics.

Marijuana seizures also rose in the first half of this fiscal year. At 36,771 pounds, the combined haul almost equals what was seized in all of the preceding fiscal year.

Most of California's border with Mexico is the responsibility of two Border Patrol sectors, San Diego and El Centro. A sliver of eastern California falls in the Yuma Sector.

El Centro Sector's territory begins at the eastern edge of the Anza Borrego Desert and stretches eastward to the Imperial Sand Dunes near the Colorado River. It sprawls across 100,000 square miles of eastern California that extend northward to the Oregon state line.

San Diego Sector covers the 66 miles of the border that lie to the west as well as the state's more developed coastal area.

While El Centro Sector agents have been seizing more cocaine and marijuana, their counterparts in San Diego Sector have been taking in less of both drugs.

San Diego Sector agents seized less than a pound of cocaine in the first half of this fiscal year, down from about 167 pounds of the drug taken in during the same period of the preceding fiscal year. Marijuana seizures for the same six months were also down, about half what they were for the same period of the previous fiscal year.

Yuma Sector, which covers a swath of western Arizona as well as the sliver of eastern California, saw a slight bump in cocaine seizures and a small decrease in marijuana seizures in the first half of this fiscal year, statistics show.

"Smugglers will look for alternate routes, and they look for the routes where they think they are going to make it," said Senior Patrol Agent Enrique Lozano of El Centro Sector. "Some of the traffickers that go through San Diego and Yuma, they could be shifting here."

More Agents, New Tools

On a recent day, Lozano stood at the Highway 86 checkpoint about 40 minutes south of Indio in the desert scrubland beside the Salton Sea. Agents working here and at the Highway 111 checkpoint on the other side of the saltwater lake use careful questioning, dogs and some new tools to catch drug traffickers and immigrant smugglers.

A team of National Guardsmen helped operate a machine called the Mobile Vehicle and Cargo Inspection System, used to scan cars and trucks much the way luggage is X-rayed at an airport. Part of the federal government's recent push to bring more technology and manpower to the border, the machine and its operators locate irregularities in vehicles -- possible secret compartments in which people or drugs could be hidden.

The machine's negative imaging capabilities can also reveal human shapes. Agents have found people hiding in hollowed-out stacks of baled hay, surrounded by crates of lemons and hidden in the bodies of trucks.

Along the border, sensors, night-vision cameras and floodlights illuminate some of the most remote areas. Guardsmen monitor the technology and tip off the field agents, who then chase down illegal border crossers and potential traffickers.

El Centro Sector has grown by about 110 agents and about 300 guardsmen in less than two years, a significant increase but not as large as those in neighboring sectors, according to Border Patrol and California National Guard numbers. It now has about 800 agents.

About 900 guardsmen have been deployed to San Diego Sector, although many are administrators in the National Guard operation's state headquarters there or part of the helicopter units that are based there but patrol the San Diego and El Centro sectors, said Master Sgt. Michael Drake, a National Guard spokesman.

The sector also added almost 280 new agents in less than two years, bringing its staffing to about 1,840 in late May, according to Border Patrol figures.

Yuma has also seen a much larger increase in staffing than El Centro.

Sectors such as San Diego and Tucson in Arizona have received more manpower and upgraded technology and equipment, said Ramon Rivera, a national Border Patrol spokesman. Until very recently, officials considered San Diego a focus area, based on analysis of intelligence, a high number of illegal-immigrant apprehensions and other factors, Rivera said.

While El Centro Sector has seen a sharp rise in drug seizures, the overall volume of drugs seized is certainly higher in Texas' Rio Grande Valley Sector, another focus sector, and Tucson Sector consistently catches far more marijuana, he said.

"El Centro is not a focus sector so I would imagine the smugglers know this information, just like everyone else does," he said. "They know we are enforcing in the focus sectors so they might go to an area that is not being as heavily enforced."

Violence and Frustration

With the rise in border enforcement, illegal immigrants rely increasingly on organized networks of smugglers, who often use routes controlled by drug traffickers, said Stratfor's Stewart. These smugglers may pay off or work with drug cartels, even acting as decoys to distract agents from drug shipments elsewhere, he added.

While El Centro Sector has not beefed up as much as other sectors, Lozano said it's clear that heavier enforcement and new technology are hurting both drug and human smugglers. The growing violence against agents is evidence of that, he said.

Apprehensions of illegal immigrants appear to be declining in El Centro Sector just as they have nationwide within the past year or so, and Lozano said he also sees immigrants and smugglers fleeing back to Mexico when they note a heavy presence of agents and guardsmen. They flee, or sometimes they fight.

"They throw rocks, Molotov cocktails, anything they can get, to hurt the agents," Stewart said.

"The violence is increasing because of the smugglers' frustration at not being able to continue their activities," he added. "We are putting a big dent in their operations so they are resorting to this."

One of the sector's most dangerous spots is a tow lot and junkyard west of downtown Calexico.

Immigrant smugglers have been known to attack agents there in order to give their clients an opportunity to run or to hide in junked cars. During a violent skirmish with illegal border crossers there in March, an agent shot and killed a man, authorities said.

In the first half of this fiscal year, about 132 assaults were committed against El Centro Sector's agents, significantly more than the 79 the sector recorded for all of fiscal year 2006, let alone the 35 in fiscal 2005.

Almost all of the attacks on agents have occurred at the border, Rivera said. Still, there is always the danger that the flow of drug shipments and smuggled people along roads in Riverside County or other points north could explode into violence as they have in other busy sectors, Lozano said.

In May, San Diego Sector agents fatally shot a Sun City man, who they suspect was an immigrant smuggler, in a park-and-ride lot just off Interstate 15 near Escondido, about 50 miles north of the border. Agents said the man fled authorities and then fought them, reaching for an agent's gun.

"Every time there is illegal activity passing through a town, it is going to do damage," Lozano said. "The drugs can stay in those towns, be distributed in those towns. And there's the risk of having those people there. They can flee authorities and put the community at risk as well as bringing in drugs."

Power Struggle in Mexico

Some experts believe increasingly violent cartel wars in Mexico may be prompting traffickers to shift their routes through the Mexicali area, a calm spot compared with the brutality on disputed turf to the east and the west.

"When you have violence, even traffickers themselves take note, and the traffickers may say, 'I don't need to battle law enforcement and every other trafficker in Tijuana so maybe I'll just move east,' " said U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman Dan Simmons.

Traffickers south of Tijuana have been fighting to fill the power vacuum left after Mexican and U.S. authorities decimated the Arellano Felix cartel, which had once dominated the drug trade in Tijuana and Mexicali, he said.

East of Mexicali, two powerful drug-trafficking organizations, the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels, are battling each other, and the Mexican government has stepped up its campaign against them, said Stratfor's Stewart.

Bloody turf wars and conflicts with Mexican law enforcement have flared up in Nuevo Laredo and Juarez, across the Rio Grande from Texas, and also in areas south of Arizona, including the mining town of Cananea, where a kidnapping-turned-shootout killed 23 people in May, he said.

Mexicali and the border with inland California may be relatively peaceful, because they are under the control of a "gatekeeper," a dominant drug lord who takes a cut of most everything smuggled across the border, Stewart said.

"One thing is, if you have a dominant cartel, it puts the lid on the violence," he said. "The drugs will keep flowing, the corruption will keep simmering in Mexico, but the violence will abate."

A federal grand jury in San Diego issued an indictment made public this year that named the man who may be the gatekeeper, Victor Emilio Cazares-Gastellum, suspected of being the head of a vast multinational cocaine-trafficking organization affiliated with the Sinaloa Cartel, according to federal court documents.

In February, the DEA announced the results of its more than 20-month Operation Imperial Emperor. The investigation of Cazares' organization netted more than 400 arrests across the United States as well as more than $45 million in cash, nearly 5 tons of cocaine, well over 13 tons of marijuana, caches of weapons, cars and other assets, including a home in El Centro, according to the DEA.

In June, President Bush named Cazares as one of six international "drug kingpins" that will be the target of financial sanctions intended to cut him off from the U.S. financial system and all trade with American companies. U.S. Justice Department spokeswomen declined to comment on whether the United States is seeking his extradition from Mexico.

Cazares' organization is accused of transporting multiple-ton shipments of cocaine and other drugs flown and driven in from Colombia and Venezuela. His lieutenants, tough men with ill-fitting nicknames, such as "Mickey Mouse," Shrek" and "Casper," then smuggled the shipments from Mexicali into the United States, according to the federal indictment.

The Border Patrol doesn't count big seizures coordinated by other agencies, such as Operation Imperial Emperor, in its statistics, Lozano said. Its figures reflect mainly piecemeal seizures that agents make when they catch illegal border crossers or smugglers at and around checkpoints, he said.

If the federal government succeeds in completely dissolving the Cazares-Gastellum cartel operating in Mexicali, that could cause more violence as smuggling honchos struggle for supremacy, Stewart said.

For John Carnevale, a top strategist and budget official under four drug czars and three presidents, fighting traffickers and bringing down drug kingpins is not enough to achieve lasting success in the war on drugs. Carnevale, who served in the Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations, now runs a public policy firm in Maryland.

The Bush administration should not let its focus on sealing borders and battling the drug traffickers eclipse prevention programs, Carnevale said. Programs to discourage and treat substance abuse in the United States deserve equal funding and attention, he said.

"The heart of the problem is demand," Carnevale said. "As long as there is demand, there will always be supply."

Reach Julia Glick at 760-837-4418 or jglick@ PE.com

http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stor ... 91aeb.html

"The heart of the problem is demand," Carnevale said. "As long as there is demand, there will always be supply."

Who is this guy trying to fool? Everyone knows that fighting the war on drugs has to start with the source, not the demand. If the demand end is dealt with, this country will go broke trying to jail and support the users. The cartels must be dealt with first. Bring some of our troops home now and put them on the border.