COMMITTEE TOLD ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS ARE SOURCE OF MOST METH IN MIDWEST

SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) -- Illegal immigrants are responsible for the
majority of methamphetamine causing an epidemic in the Midwest, police
officers told a congressional committee Monday.

" One of the biggest problems I see is we have more than one million
people coming into this country a year illegally, " Sioux City Police
Chief Joseph Frisbie said at the hearing. " Something has to be done
about the influx of people in this country illegally."

Frisbie said those illegal immigrants make methamphetamine in
California and other southwestern states and move it to the Midwest.
He said 85 percent of the meth in Iowa comes in that way. The
remaining 15 percent is made in small labs around the state.

Frisbie was testifying before Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., chairman of the
subcommittee on criminal justice, drug policy and human resources.
Rep. Tom Latham, R-Iowa, and Rep. John Thune, R-S.D., were assisting
with the hearing.

" Growing up in rural America used to be a shield against the seedier
side of America's urban culture including illegal drugs, " Mica said.
" Unfortunately, all that has changed. The National Center for
Addiction and Substance Abuse recently announced that the rate of drug
use among teens in rural America is now higher than in the nation' s
large urban centers."

Sgt. Marti J. Reilly of the Sioux City Police Department leads the
Tri-State Drug Task Force, including officers from Iowa, Nebraska and
South Dakota. He said that Sioux City appears to be a hub city for
importing meth from the Southwest into the Midwest.

He said that some area businesses are apparently there to launder drug
money.

Reilly said a local auto parts company apparently cooperated with a
similar company in California. Officers were tipped that a meth
shipment was coming from the California company and a woman it was
addressed to was approached. She agreed to allow police to examine the
auto part when it was picked up at a local shippers. Officers x-rayed
the package and found the part had seven pounds of meth packed inside.

" When we started to work that company, they disappeared, " he said,
as did the workers at the California company.

" They were back in Mexico in 10 days, " he said.

Frisbie said between 50 percent and 60 percent of the people arrested
in the country on drug charges are Hispanic and are in the country
illegally. And he said there is no place to put illegal immigrants
when they are arrested.

" We have an illegal re-entry problem, " Reilly agreed. " That is,
they have to be convicted of a felony before deportation takes place."

Latham said the illegal immigrants use Hispanics that are in the
country legally to shield themselves from scrutiny.

" There' s this element that hides out in a certain group in our
community, " Latham said.

He said a Mexican cartel pinpointed the Midwest several years ago as a
meth market, since other areas of the country had been taken.

" It' s no accident, " he said. " There' s a marketing plan in place
to kill our kids."

State Public Safety Commissioner Penny Westfall said the laboratories
that produce small amounts of meth have increased a lot in the past
few years, and officers are learning to locate and shut them down.

She said the state busted four of those labs in 1993 and that
increased to 502 last year. Local police busted another 300 last year.

She said the state needs money to clean up those sites.

With federal funding, the Sioux City police have trained local police
in Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and parts of Minnesota to deal with
meth labs over the past three years. Frisbie said many departments
have benefited from the training but small police departments have not
been taking the training.

" We' re still finding it extremely hard to get small departments to
attend, " he said. " They have to have someone watch the community
while they' re gone."

Mica said that because of drug problems in the Midwest, the states of
Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, North Dakota and South Dakota have
been designated by the Office of National Drug Control Policy as a
High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. He said his subcommittee is
responsible for authorizing and overseeing that program and 30 similar
ones.