SEIZURES OF DRUGS SKYROCKET AT BORDER

WASHINGTON - Seizures of illegal drugs along the nation's Southwestern
border have skyrocketed in recent months, a sign that Mexican drug
smugglers no longer are intimidated by the concentrated effort of U.S. law
enforcement officials to police the region after the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks.

Drug seizures from Texas to California have climbed beyond pre-Sept. 11
levels, rebounding from the sharp decline seen in the weeks immediately
after the assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, officials said.

That development comes as arrests of undocumented workers have fallen
dramatically and continue to decline, in some areas far more than 50
percent. Officials said it might portend a dramatic clash between
increasingly emboldened smugglers and shored-up border forces.

"The smugglers probably believed the high security would be short-lived,"
said Roger Maier, a U.S. Customs Service official in El Paso.

"And when that didn't happen, they still had to move their product. And for
us, the more we looked, the more we were going to find. And we're looking
harder than we ever have. Now we have started catching them."

In Southern California, the amount of cocaine seized by customs agents has
doubled since Sept. 11 compared with the year-earlier period, while the
amount of heroin seized has increased twentyfold.

Nationwide, customs officials report that heroin seizures since Sept. 11
have jumped more than 135 percent compared with a year earlier.

Cocaine seizures are up nearly 60 percent and marijuana nearly 19 percent.
The amount of pills such as Ecstasy and steroids that have been seized is
up more than 955 percent.

Along the Southwestern border, where the most aggressive effort has been
under way to turn back illegal drug smuggling and other activities since
Sept. 11, the effort has had some surprising results.

Arrests of undocumented workers, for instance, have fallen sharply and
continue to decline, in some areas well more than 50 percent, a phenomenon
that officials attribute to Mexican migrants becoming increasingly wary of
entering the United States after the terrorist attacks and the roundup of
illegal immigrants.

By contrast, smuggling of illegal drugs, which fell initially, is back in
full swing, even as the Bush administration plans to further strengthen the
police presence with National Guard and troops along the 2,000-mile-long
border.

The main thrust of the heightened police presence has been to make sure no
terrorists get through, with the side benefit of interdicting other
criminals, such as drug dealers.

Now, however, a dramatic clash appears to be shaping up as the smugglers
increasingly become emboldened and the police and military shore up their
defenses.

Dean Boyd, a spokesman at the Customs Service headquarters in Washington,
D.C., said Friday that law enforcement officials are amazed that drug
dealers keep trying to push their way into the United States in the face of
such a daunting police barricade.

"We're still at the highest level of alert and we will continue to be so
for the foreseeable future," he said. "Our people are working . . . long
hours and a lot of overtime."

Maier, the El Paso customs official, said the enhanced security calls for
inspections of every vehicle seeking entry.

He said X-ray machines are being employed to scan trucks "and look for
anomalies consistent with drug smuggling."

"Wait times at the border . . . went up to 2 1/2 to three hours," Maier added.

"We operate . . . in a fishbowl down here. A lot of what we do is very
visible to the traveling public and the smugglers. They watch what we do
and try to circumvent what we do. They study us as closely as they can."