NUMBER OF COURT CASES STILL INCREASING

Authorities in El Paso are calling for more courts and more funding because
federal prosecutors are handling more than four times as many criminal
cases as they were six years ago.

Increases in drug and illegal immigrant cases are particularly visible. But
criminal cases have increased across the board, and every agency in the El
Paso division needs more help, from the courts to the the U.S. Attorney's
Office to the U.S. Marshal's Office, said Bill Blagg, U.S. attorney for the
Western District of Texas.

"We need more courts in El Paso. With a caseload like this, everything in
the criminal justice system needs more help. ... It's going to have to
happen or the system is just not going to work," Blagg said.

El Paso accounts for about half the criminal cases prosecuted in the
Western District of Texas, which stretches east to San Antonio.

The district's El Paso division has one of the highest caseloads in the
nation, and prosecutors here handle more cases than in other divisions.

The El Paso division has 23 criminal assistant U.S. attorneys, who handled
1,802 cases in 1999. San Antonio has 22 criminal assistant U.S. attorneys
who handled 416 criminal cases in 1999, Blagg said.

Sam Ponder, assistant U.S. attorney in El Paso, said the cases are moved
through the court system at a steady pace.

"From the time we receive a case to the time a case is over is about six
months on average," Ponder said.

The El Paso division has two federal district judges and three magistrate
judges. Judges from other divisions often come to El Paso to help with the
caseload, according to the U.S. District Clerk's Office.

"The statistics show we need at least two more active judges in El Paso,"
chief U.S. District Judge Harry Lee Hudspeth said. "Our workload is 10 to
20 times that of the rest of the nation."

Statistics from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts in Washington
D.C., said there has been a large increase in caseloads nationwide.

In 1999, criminal cases increased 4 percent nationwide, with much of that
growth along the U.S-Mexican border, statistics show. Numbers for 2000 were
not available.

But Briones does not expect the El Paso division to receive a new judge for
at least a couple of years.

He said if the Western District of Texas receives money for more district
judges, that person will probably be assigned to Del Rio, which has no
resident judges.

"These judges (in El Paso) are lifting heaven and earth to do both criminal
and civil," El Paso attorney Thomas Stanton said.

"I think the federal court system needs to stop taking advantage of El Paso
and give us the resources we need."

Why the increase?

One federal judge attributed at least part of the increase in criminal
prosecutions to the higher number of federal agents in the El Paso area.

"There is more FBI, Border Patrol and (Drug Enforcement Administration)
personnel here, and an increase in enforcement" at the international
bridges, said U.S. District Judge David Briones, who began hearing cases in
El Paso in 1994.

Doug Mosier, spokesman for the El Paso sector of the Border Patrol, agreed
that the number of agents has increased over the years.

In 1993, "when Operation Hold the Line went into place, we had about 600
agents. ... Today we are at approximately 1,020 agents," he said.

In 1994, 379 federal criminal cases were filed in the El Paso division. In
1999, that number increased to 1,802 -- more than a fourfold increase,
according to court records.

As of Nov. 29, 1,962 criminal cases have been filed at the federal courthouse.

"We'll probably end up with another 200 (cases) in December, pushing us
over 2,000 (criminal) cases," said Richard C. Delgado, deputy in charge of
the El Paso U.S. clerks' office.

Drugs, immigration law

Most of the federal criminal cases filed involved drugs or immigrants, with
drugs totaling 65 percent to 70 percent of the cases, Delgado said.

In addition, the number of people arrested for illegal re-entry into the
country, a federal offense, has increased, according to the Immigration and
Naturalization Service. In fiscal year 1999, the INS presented 279 cases to
the federal grand jury, compared with 321 presented in fiscal year 2000.
Calendar-year statistics were not available.

One reason immigration cases might have increased is because of the 1996
Immigration Act, which turned a number of misdemeanors into felonies, said
Frank Lopez, program manager for the Center for Law and Border Studies.

"Right off the bat, it changed the whole dynamics of immigration law,"
Lopez said. "It overlapped immigration law with criminal law."

More prisoners than cells

One agency burdened by the rise in cases is the U.S. Marshals Service. The
increase in cases has caused the prisoner population to explode, with no
place to house them.

"The Western District of Texas El Paso Division saw an increase over the
last five years of an average of 300 prisoners per day to 1,300 prisoners
in custody per day," said Gary Brown, assistant chief for the U.S. Marshals
Service for the Western District of Texas.

Because there are too many prisoners to house in El Paso's county jail,
they are driven to facilities as far away as Odessa until their day in court.

And while the prisoner population has increased in proportion to the
criminal cases filed, the number of field agents for the U.S. Marshals has
remained at just under 50 since 1995, officials said.

Help on the horizon

The high cost and strain of dealing with an overwhelming number of federal
criminal cases is something El Paso County District Attorney Jaime Esparza
knows about.

For years, his office accepted federal drug cases as a favor to federal
prosecutors. But the caseload and the costs associated with it grew so
burdensome that district attorneys along the border, including Esparza,
stopped taking federal drug cases Oct. 1.

That compounded the problem for El Paso's federal prosecutors, who were
already handling 30 percent of all criminal cases filed by the Department
of Justice, Blagg said.

It cost El Paso taxpayers millions of dollars -- estimates range from $2.5
million to $8 million -- to prosecute about 800 federal drug cases a year,
he said. Those cases typically involve fewer than 200 pounds of marijuana.

"The issue isn't whether or not the county will handle some of the work.
The real question is when the federal government will provide adequate
resources or provide this county funds to do some of the work," he said.

That time may have come. Congress passed a final spending bill Friday that
included a $10 million federal reimbursement for handling federal drug
cases, said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

The bill provides the money to reimburse Texas county governments for
detention costs, court costs, courtroom technology, administrative staff,
the construction of holding spaces and the expense of providing lawyers for
indigent defendants. Prosecution costs are not included.

The spending bill is now only needs President Clinton's signature to become
law, and he has indicated that he will sign it.