CARTELS OUTRUN, OUTGUN THE LAW AT ARIZ. BORDER

Fed Report Details Thriving Business Behind Violent International Industry

MARANA - Maj. George Harris watches from a front-row seat the
increasingly sophisticated world of Mexican drug cartels as he skims
his National Guard helicopter 200 feet above the southern Arizona desert.

Harris commands an aviation unit for Operation Jump Start, a two-year
mission that sent National Guard troops to help secure the
U.S-Mexican border. Although stopping illegal immigration grabs most
of the public attention, slowing the flow of illicit drugs is a
critical part of the job.

Hovering above the Tohono-O'odham Reservation recently, Harris
pointed to a volcanic hill riddled with campsites where cartel
"spotters" take up key lookout positions to alert smugglers of nearby patrols.

Such hideouts dot just about every hill Harris scouts in the 90 miles
between Marana and Why in Pima County. There are more than 100
well-armed Mexican spotters operating in Arizona at any time, Harris
and federal agents estimate.

The camps show how pervasive the Mexican drug-smuggling operation has
become and why congressional investigators said last week that
cartels "operate with relative impunity along the U.S. border."

Mexican smuggling rings, now allied with Colombian cartels, outspend,
outgun and frequently outmaneuver government agents from both sides
of the border because of enormous revenues and cunning operations.

The drug war is a mismatch in both countries. At best, government
statistics show, one load in 10 is seized at the border, where
Arizona has become the busiest marijuana-smuggling route.

Billion-Dollar Business

The Government Accountability Office estimated last week that Mexican
cartels earned $8 billion to $23 billion from U.S. drug sales in
2005. The drug syndicate runs street distribution gangs in "almost
every region of the United States," investigators reported.

The U.S. government estimates that 90 percent of Colombian cocaine
entering the United States comes through Mexico. That's up from five
years ago, when two-thirds crossed the Mexico border.

With $23 billion in earnings, the Mexican cartels would be nearly the
size of Arizona's two biggest companies combined: Avnet and Phelps
Dodge. They would rank 97th on the Fortune 500 list, four spots below
the Coca-Cola Co.

The money allows cartels to buy equipment, expertise and weapons;
bribe police; or hire well-trained army deserters. The Mexican
government fired or suspended nearly 1,900 federal employees last
year on corruption allegations.

"The only thing that holds the cartels back is their imagination,"
said Ramona Sanchez, special agent for the Drug Enforcement
Administration in Phoenix.

'Like a Military Operation'

In recent years, officials have arrested drug smugglers in Arizona
carrying shoulder-fired rocket launchers. They routinely find assault rifles.

"It's like a military operation," said William Newel, head of the
Phoenix office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives. "If they can lay down suppressing fire to let smugglers
get away with their loads, they'll do it. So they want high-capacity,
high-power weapons."

Smugglers used such weapons five years ago to gun down Kris Eggle, a
park ranger at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and a friend of
Harris, the helicopter pilot.

"It's always the good guys that get it," Harris said as he flew
through a park canyon crisscrossed with smugglers' tracks.

There are so many tracks in the park that Harris won't let his family visit.

Technology, Expertise

The cartels' money also buys technology as well as expertise.

When the National Guard built steel vehicle barriers on the
Tohono-O'odham Reservation, smugglers engineered a ramp to drive over them.

The Guard finished a triple fence at San Luis early this year, and
once-rampant illegal immigration there almost halted. But last month,
work crews discovered a tunnel 30 feet deep that ran under the fence
foundations and the water system. Authorities found 45 drug-smuggling
tunnels, some with lights and air-supply systems, under the border
from 2000 to 2006. The rate is escalating.

Spotters can camp out for weeks in one spot, with smugglers
replenishing their provisions. The spotters use GPS equipment,
encrypted satellite radios and night-vision goggles to keep smuggling
routes open.

The canyons north of Menagers Lake are a popular spot. As Harris flew
over the area, he called it the "worst place on the whole border, a
nasty little joint," because of all the smuggling violence. Just
across the barrier at the border, the driver of a blue
four-wheel-drive vehicle watched Harris' helicopter glide by and then
disappeared in a cloud of dust.

Flying north, Harris encountered a dozen abandoned smuggling trucks
in the first three miles. National Guard troops familiar with the
region say there are hundreds of abandoned trucks.

Harris' Task Force Raven has seized 108 trucks in the act of
smuggling since July 2006.

Drug War Marches On

The U.S. government has spent $397 million since 2000, helping Mexico
fight its drug war. The money has gone toward DEA offices,
law-enforcement training, border-security grants and helicopters.

"Smugglers hate helicopters," Harris said.

Cartel spotters are invisible from the desert floor. But from the
air, their hideouts are betrayed by arranged rock walls and cut brush
used for camouflage. As a National Guard officer, Harris does not
have the authority to arrest smugglers, so he catalogs the hideouts
and tells the Border Patrol.

"I try and get up in the hills and harass the scouts as often as
possible," Harris said. "It takes away the smugglers' eyes."