TIGHTER BORDER SECURITY STRANGLES DRUG SMUGGLING

SAN DIEGO - America's war on terrorism appears to be helping the war on
drugs, at least initially, as wary smugglers from Mexico avoid the risk of
shipping their drugs across the border.

Under tight security with many more vehicle searches, the amount of drugs
seized fell 80 percent along the 1,962-mile U.S.-Mexico border in the two
weeks after the terrorist attacks, compared with the same period a year ago.

"The drug dealers, they're not stupid. They realize it would be risky to
ship their stuff right now," said Kevin Bell, a spokesman for the U.S.
Customs Service in Washington.

No one is suggesting drugs have become scarce in the United States. But
authorities have long known that smugglers post spotters near border points
to gauge security. Authorities expect the flow to surge again when the
traffickers spot an opportunity, said Dean Boyd, a Customs official who
analyzed seizure records along the border.

"The traffickers in Mexico don't want to sit on their product too long,"
Boyd said. "They've got to get it to market and pay their people."
Marijuana smugglers may not be able to wait much longer. The end of
September marks their harvest season in Mexico and the dealers will be
eager to move old supplies out of storage to make room for the fresh crop,
said Jim Molesa, a Drug Enforcement Administration official in Phoenix.
"It's getting moldy," Molesa said of the old crop. "They're desperately
going to want to get rid of it."

But the temporary drop after the attacks was significant, officials said.
Inspectors at California's border crossings, seized 4,179 pounds of
marijuana, cocaine and other drugs Sept. 11-23. That was an 86 percent
decline from the same 13-day period last year.

The story was the same to a lesser degree at other crossings: a 73 percent
drop in the border sector that covers Arizona, New Mexico and West Texas
and a 53 percent decline for South Texas.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service reported fewer illegal
immigrants trying to gain entry as well. A typical weekend at the San
Ysidro Port of Entry in San Diego, the world's busiest border crossing,
would result in 500 people turned back or detained. Last weekend, it was
168. The Rev. Luis Kendzierski, a Catholic priest who runs a shelter in
Tijuana, Mexico, where men can stay up to two weeks while waiting to enter
the United States, said would-be immigrants are waiting longer before
risking the crossing. "What I'm hearing is that nobody is making it through
the checkpoints," Kendzierski said.

Within hours of the Sept. 11 attacks, Customs and INS inspectors were
stopping and searching every vehicle and pedestrian that entered the United
States from Mexico. Normally, agents question everyone but only conduct
searches when they are suspicious.

They also added a metal detector at the pedestrian crossing in San Diego
and authorized more overtime to increase the number of roving inspectors to
move through the lines of people and cars with dogs trained to sniff out
drugs. These measures are in addition to an array of high-tech tools
employed throughout the border, including X-ray-like devices that scan
long-haul truck loads, digital license-plate readers and scopes designed to
find contraband inside gas tanks.

Drug smugglers can avoid the ports of entry altogether and try to get their
goods into the United States by alternate routes -- by boat or overland
through the desert wilderness between the border crossings. But these
methods also present challenges. The Coast Guard has been searching all
foreign vessels entering certain U.S. ports, including San Diego, and
Customs surveillance planes have been patrolling the Southwest border. If
the heavy security remains in force, officials believe the smugglers will
begin taking risks. "Eventually they are going to try to get it across
somehow," Boyd said.