154 TONS OF DRUGS SEIZED AT BORDER

LAS CRUCES - U.S. Customs agents along the West Texas and southern New
Mexico sections of the Mexican border seized record amounts of drugs last
fiscal year - nearly 309,000 pounds.

Most of the seizures were of marijuana. Confiscated amounts of other drugs
were at their lowest in years.

Border Patrol agents in the same area also scored successes, catching more
marijuana, 176,677 pounds, than at any time in the previous decade.

"It was the hard and dedicated work by hundreds of area Customs officers
that resulted in this record-setting year of enforcement activity," said
Gurdit Dhillon, the El Paso-based director of Customs Service field
operations in West Texas and New Mexico.

The Customs Service drug haul for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, a
total of 308,952 pounds of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana,
represented a 15 percent increase over the previous fiscal year's drug
seizures.

As usual, Customs' seizures of heroin and cocaine fluctuated from previous
years. The 26 pounds of heroin captured last fiscal year was the lowest
amount since fiscal year 1994, while the cocaine catch - 3,123 pounds -
fell 58 percent from the 1999 fiscal year total.

The Border Patrol's haul of 5 pounds of heroin was the lowest total in the
past five years, and the agency's catch of 500 pounds of cocaine last
fiscal year was a far cry from the nearly 4,000 pounds captured in 1999.

"Smugglers' routes are always changing, so there's no rhyme or reason from
one year to the next," said Border Patrol spokesman Doug Mosier of cocaine
and heroin seizures.

But for Customs and the Border Patrol, marijuana seizures, making up 99
percent of all drugs caught by weight, continued a decade-long swell.

Customs agents working ports of entry along the El Paso area and New
Mexico's border with Mexico snared 305,793 pounds of marijuana last fiscal
year, about eight times what the agency captured in 1991.

Border Patrol agents rounded up 176,677 pounds of marijuana last fiscal
year, more than double what agents caught in 1996.

What is unknown, however, is the quantity of drugs smugglers sneak across
the border and how effective federal agents are in stemming the northbound
flow of illegal drugs.

"All we know is what we catch, and we do catch quite a lot, but the
universe of all the drugs out there is an unknown," said Roger Maier, a
Customs Service spokesman.

Maier attributed much of Customs' success to the growing expertise of
agents in detecting smugglers, especially using sophisticated technology
such as permanent and mobile X-ray machines that are able to quickly scan
the loads hauled by truckers.

Customs also has beefed up its personnel in the sector, starting in the
mid-1990s when the federal government added about 100 new staff members in
what was billed as Operation Hard Line.

"Every year we have a lot of success, it seems to feed upon itself," Maier
said.

Since the Border Patrol launched its Operation Hold the Line in 1993, a
strategy in which agents were stationed like a picket fence along the
Mexican border in El Paso, the Border Patrol's staffing in the sector has
risen from about 600 agents to 1,029, Mosier said.