MARIJUANA SMUGGLING HASN'T SLOWED

Traffickers Bring Drugs Into State On Foot

In the rugged desert of the Tohono O'odham Reservation west of Tucson,
there are fields littered with empty burlap sacks, the discarded makeshift
backpacks used to carry marijuana across the desert from Mexico.

Between Oct. 1 and June 30, Customs officers seized 185,771 pounds of pot,
nearly 50,000 pounds more than the same period the previous year, said
Roger Maier, a U.S. Customs Service spokesman.

That's more than all of last year's 174,843 pounds.

"We've already shattered last year's total with three months to go (in the
fiscal year)," Maier said.

"We're working hard. I think there's overall more of a law enforcement
presence out there. We're making it riskier for smugglers, so they are
taking routes they haven't taken before, and that exposes them to risk."

For the Border Patrol's Tucson sector, marijuana seizures are below the
levels of a year ago, spokesman Rob Daniels says. But there are plenty of
law enforcement agencies out there watching for drugs that come across the
border, including local, state, federal and Native American agencies.

This fiscal year, the Border Patrol's Tucson sector has seized 197,714
pounds, compared with 210,159 pounds during the same time last year.

But things are heating up.

"This month, we're off to a blazing start," Daniels said.

More than 5,000 pounds of pot worth more than $4 million were seized this
week, including 877 pounds and 1,954 pounds seized Wednesday and Thursday
on the Tohono O'odham Reservation.

While historically more marijuana was brought in from Mexico during the
harvest months in the fall and winter, growers are using high- tech
processes such as hydroponics and grow lights to make smuggling a
year-around phenomenon, Daniels said.

But if high tech is in for growing pot, many distributors still rely on
old-fashioned legwork to smuggle it.

Smugglers fashion straps and packs from burlap and walk about 25 to 60
pounds of marijuana across the desert and mountains to fields where they
unload the drugs from the burlap into waiting vehicles, Border Patrol
Agents Abel Melendez, 30, and David Howard, 32, explained.

"They will lay up here until a certain time, and they use cellphones, they
use radios, and when a car gets close by, they'll move everything up to the
road," Melendez said.

The smugglers often send decoy cars out onto the road, hoping to draw out
any law enforcement presence, he said.