BORDER COURTS OVERLOADED WITH FEDERAL DRUG BUSTS

Prosecutor Vows To Reject Cases

LAREDO, Texas -- It's a time-honored deal at border crossings.

Federal agents make drug busts and send the big cases to federal court,
while the smaller ones -- drug seizures of less than 50 pounds of pot or
cocaine -- are referred to county courts.

For years, nobody really minded. But an explosion of agents along the
U.S.-Mexico border has sent drug seizures soaring, costing struggling
counties millions of dollars and weeks' worth of court time.

From now on, some Texas prosecutors vow, the U.S. government is on its own.

"As of Monday we won't take any more federal cases," said Hidalgo County
District Attorney Rene Guerra. "The cases are a financial drain, and we
can't do it anymore. We shouldn't have to."

Following threats by Texas counties to stop hearing cases unless emergency
funding was received by Oct. 1, Congress set aside $12 million in July to be
divided evenly among the four border states. But mired in a bureaucratic
dispute, the cash has yet to find its way into county coffers.

Most Texas prosecutors were expected to heed the deadline.

The standoff between the prosecutors and the federal government is a flaring
symptom of a larger crisis: The entire border region is swimming in crime
and lacks the jail space, lawyers and money needed for prosecution.

One quarter of the country's federal criminal cases are filed in the five
U.S. border districts from San Diego to Brownsville. All other federal crime
is shared by 89 districts in the nation's interior.

Most federal judges have about 80 cases pending. The five U.S. border judges
average 500 pending cases each.

"It's changed a lot," said Chris Roll, a prosecutor for Cochise County,
Ariz. He added, as the federal courts "get overloaded, they start turning
loose more and more cases. It all ends up coming to us."

For the time being, Roll will continue to stretch his $3 million budget to
include the federal cases, he said.

"There's a load on our jail, a load on our courts, and we can't get
reimbursed," he said. "There's certainly some people in the county who'd
love to see us stop taking the cases."

The federal government isn't looking forward to that prospect.

"It's going to be difficult, it's going to put a strain on us," said Daryl
Fields, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Antonio. "But
we'll do what we have to do."