DRUG ARRESTS SOAR AT BORDER

Security: Mexican Smugglers Are Testing The Beefed-Up, Post-Sept. 11 U.S.
Law Enforcement Presence. Customs Officials Report Seizures Have Since Jumped.

WASHINGTON -- Seizures of illegal drugs along the nation's southwest border
have skyrocketed in recent months, as Mexican smugglers run up against the
concentrated effort of U.S. law enforcement officials to police the region
after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Drug seizures from South Texas to Southern 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 well over 50%.
Officials said it may portend a dramatic clash between increasingly
emboldened smugglers and shored-up police and military 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 Service
agents has doubled since Sept. 11, compared with the same period a year
earlier, while the amount of heroin seized has increased twentyfold.

Nationwide, customs officials report that heroin seizures since Sept. 11
have jumped more than 135% compared with a year earlier. Cocaine is up
nearly 60% and marijuana nearly 19%. The amount of illegal pills such as
Ecstasy and steroids that has been seized is up more than 955%.

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

The decline in arrests of undocumented workers, for instance, is 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 now back
in full swing, even as the Bush administration plans to further strengthen
the police presence along the 2,000-mile-long border with National Guard
and U.S. military troops.

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.

Dean Boyd, a spokesman at Customs Service headquarters in Washington, 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 increasingly
long hours and a lot of overtime."

Federal officials say they have received numerous reports of drug smugglers
who stockpiled their inventories on the Mexico side of the border, then
became increasingly anxious when the beefed-up police patrols did not leave
the border towns in the weeks after Sept. 11.

By October, the smugglers were slowly beginning to once again move their
drugs across the line. The pace continues to accelerate.

"At first, they saw our enhanced security and decided to wait and see if
things settled down, or they chose some alternate routes," Boyd said.

Marijuana smuggling is a prime example.

The increase in seizures occurred "during the middle of the marijuana
harvest season in Mexico last fall," he said. "Huge quantities normally
come up from central to northern Mexico and, after a while, if that
marijuana piles up just south of the border, it becomes a hazard for a
trafficker.

"If I have tons and tons waiting at the border, I'm at a huge risk. My dope
might get stolen by rival factions. The Mexican police might find me. The
marijuana might rot," Boyd said. "And I have a payroll to meet. I've got to
get my product to market."

Since Sept. 11, waiting periods to enter the U.S. have stretched to as long
as three hours, because "every vehicle, car, truck and motorcycle gets
inspected," said Maier, the El Paso customs official. "Drivers are getting
out of their cars to open the trunk, to open the hood."

Life on the border has been transformed, and the smugglers from Mexico
could not help but notice.

"We operate kind of in a fishbowl down here. A lot of what we do is very
visible to the traveling public and the smugglers," Maier said. "They watch
what we do and try to circumvent what we do. That's their job, to move
drugs, and they study us as closely as they can."

Jayson Ahern, customs' director of field operations in San Diego, said the
"level one alert status" is on indefinitely. "Anti-terrorism remains our
top priority, but this increased scrutiny will continue to hamper smugglers."

Tom Lindenmuth, a federal public defender in McAllen, Texas, said he is
seeing a rash of cases involving smaller amounts of drugs. "We are getting
more marijuana. Not big amounts, generally under 50 kilos. It's back to
coming in like crazy. And now we're [arresting] a lot of women for
smuggling drugs."

U.S. District Judge Filemon Vela in Brownsville, Texas, said that in South
Texas the situation is the same as before Sept. 11.

"They just caught a guy a few blocks away from where I am with many
hundreds of pounds of cocaine," he said, noting that the terrorist attacks
apparently have not dampened America's hunger for drugs.

"We're still the champion consumer of the world," he said.