MEXICO PLANS A TIGHTER GRIP ON ITS BORDER TO THE SOUTH

Security Effort Targets Flow Of Drugs, Migrants to U.S.

MEXICO CITY, June 17 -- The Mexican government plans to sharply increase
the presence of soldiers, police officers, naval patrols and immigration
checkpoints near its porous southern border. The plan, which has not yet
been made public, is an unprecedented effort to choke off flows of illegal
immigrants, drugs and guns entering the country from Central America.

Most of the illicit human and drug traffic coming into Mexico is heading to
the United States, and Washington has long urged Mexico to control its
750-mile border with Guatemala and Belize more tightly. While much
attention has been placed on Mexico's northern border, officials say many
of the problems there start with the notoriously corrupt and loosely
enforced protection of the southern border.

Hundreds of thousands of undocumented people, many from Guatemala and El
Salvador but increasingly from as far away as China and Iraq, enter Mexico
from the south. When immigration or police officials stop truckloads of
these people, or shipments of cocaine or arms, they frequently wave them
through in exchange for a cash bribe.

Interior Minister Santiago Creel said in an interview that getting Mexico's
southern flank under control was critical to President Vicente Fox's
promise to crack down on corruption, and to Mexico's commitment to
Washington to reduce the flow of U.S.-bound illegal immigrants.

"We have never had the security we want in the south; things were very
loose," said Creel, who is in charge of the South Plan, or Southern Zone
Plan. "This is part of our big challenge to modernize and find new ways of
doing things in Mexico."

"We are very encouraged to hear this," said Johnny N. Williams, western
regional director of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.
"Mexico is used as a transit point" for illegal traffic into the United
States, he said, and what happens on Mexico's southern border is of
"extreme importance to both countries."

Williams said there has been a "revolutionary" change in the way Mexico and
the United States work together on immigration issues. On Friday, the
countries issued a statement outlining new joint rescue and training
operations aimed at preventing more deaths of illegal immigrants crossing
into the Arizona desert. During the hot summer months, the United States
will put more helicopters and personnel in the region and Mexico has added
rescue workers on its side of the border.

Creel said that in return for Mexican efforts to reduce illegal
immigration, the United States should help with immigration issues
important to Mexico. He said he hoped negotiations with Washington would
produce results on increasing guest worker programs and "regularizing" the
legal status of Mexican workers already in the United States. "The U.S. has
to present results, as well as Mexico," he said.

No one knows exactly how many people cross into Mexico illegally via its
southern border. Mexico last year deported more than 150,000 foreigners,
almost all of them trying to reach the United States; most of them had
entered across the southern border. Officials estimate that for every
illegal immigrant caught, three to five more evade authorities.

U.S. officials last year caught 28,000 non-Mexicans who illegally entered
the country across the U.S.-Mexico border. More than 22,000 were from
Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, and most of them are believed to have
arrived in Mexico through its southern border.

Creel said $10 million has been allocated for the National Immigration
Institute, and much of that new money will go to modernizing 13 tumbledown
southern border checkpoints. Four or five new ones also will be built.
Construction is to start next month.

Perhaps the most innovative feature of the plan, whose final details have
not yet been worked out, is the focus of elite groups of soldiers and
police along a critical highway. The Trans-Isthmus Highway crosses Mexico
at a narrow point, connecting the Gulf of Mexico in the north to the
Pacific Ocean 150 miles to the south. It runs from the town of
Coatzacoalcos in Veracruz state to the town of Salina Cruz in Oaxaca state.

All land traffic from the southern border to the rest of Mexico must cross
this relatively short highway. Creel said that guarding this key choke
point would be easier than trying to patrol the entire border. And to catch
those who try to beat the new system by going by sea, the plan calls for
naval ships to sharply increase their patrols in southern waters.

Creel said concentrating manpower in the narrow Isthmus of Tehuantepec
would be less expensive and more efficient than the traditional system of
haphazard checks and patrols. "In the past the policy wasn't effective at
all. . . . There was no plan. Now we are working with clear objectives,"
Creel said.

Another critical element of the new plan is attacking official corruption
and human rights violations. Officials said the new system will not work
unless Mexico can stop bribery of officials and robberies of immigrants.

The immigration service has a new, reform-minded director and many other
officials have been fired, from top management to those who work at remote
border stations.

Creel said the government was conducting undercover sting operations to
detect official corruption. He said that while there has been noticeable
improvement in the effectiveness of immigration operations in the northern
states, "in the south we have not seen even the start of results."