RECORD MARIJUANA HAULS, TRICKS EXPECTED

In the peak of harvest season for marijuana, federal agents along the
Arizona-Mexico border are predicting another record year for pot seizures,
which have skyrocketed more than 440 percent during the past decade.

Agents patrolling Arizona's border and inspecting cargo at the six ports of
entry have intercepted more than 168,000 pounds of marijuana since Oct. 1,
the start of the federal fiscal year. Last year, agents in southern Arizona
confiscated a record amount of pot: more than 400 tons all told.

That's greater than the weight of the Statue of Liberty.

For decades, smugglers have used southern Arizona's canyons and deserts to
import drugs stealthily, but never in the state's history has such a large
volume of drugs flowed north, authorities said. Funneled into Arizona by
federal crackdowns in Texas and California, smugglers are running into a
record number of law enforcement officers and are growing increasingly
violent and creative, officials said.

"We all have bounties on our heads," Jim Hawkins, a senior U.S. Border
Patrol agent, said as he searched for marijuana smugglers on a chilly night
in Sycamore Canyon, outside Nogales.

Hawkins walked up and down steep, rocky hills near the border, toting a
rifle and wearing a bulletproof vest. "It's all part of the game," he said.

The violence associated with smuggling often heads north from the border,
with 1 in 5 homicides in Phoenix in 2003 linked to smuggling drugs or
people. Killings related to the pot trade are also commonplace in Tucson.

Agents know they are outnumbered.

Smuggling is a multibillion-dollar business, although no agency gives a
concrete estimate for exactly how much money is involved in Arizona.

Tony Ryan, a Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman, said officials have
identified scores of drug-trafficking organizations in Sonora and Arizona,
which share roughly 350 miles of border. Two major trafficking
organizations dominate: the Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada-Garcia cartel and a
cell of the infamous Arellano-Felix group, which has possibly the bloodiest
history of all Mexican drug-smuggling organizations.

Mexican officials have identified the Zambada-Garcia organization in
connection with killings in Sonora, including the murder of an Agua Prieta
man indicted on U.S. drug-smuggling charges and slain in May at a
restaurant, along with two family members and a waiter.

In July, the U.S. government announced drug-related indictments against
Zambada-Garcia and 240 trafficking suspects in Mexico and the United
States, including Phoenix and Nogales. The DEA said the cartel continues to
be a major player along the Sonoran border.

The smugglers are known for their innovation when it comes to moving drugs,
officials said. Although much of the marijuana is carried into the state by
backpackers, dubbed mules, hauling bundles of 30 to 50 pounds, smugglers
also vary tactics. They use vehicles with high-tech equipment to run
through the border or try to sneak loads past inspectors at ports, stashing
pot in loads of produce or merchandise.

The smuggling organizations in Mexico often post lookouts or armed
smugglers along the border to protect shipments, federal officials said,
increasing danger for agents. Hawkins said the lookouts cover the escape
routes for vehicles that drop loads of drugs in the United States.

"They'll have a guy with a gun waiting on the other side," he said. "They
open up on us."

The drugs arrive at stash houses in Tucson and Phoenix, then are moved to
destinations around the United States, sometimes in elaborate camouflage.

In November, DEA agents arrested two Tucson men accused of shipping 700
pounds of pot from Arizona to Massachusetts in acetylene tanks commonly
found in welding shops. In December, Oklahoma officials stopped a
tractor-trailer from Tucson that contained four coffins packed with pot.

"The smugglers are as creative as ever," Johansson said. "They try to
exploit whatever weaknesses they see along the border, and those fluctuate
almost daily. We try to stay one step ahead of the game, and it's very
difficult, human nature being what it is. The bad guys will always come up
with something different."