TEXAS BORDER DAS TO SLAM THE DOOR ON FEDERAL CASES

LAREDO, Texas -- They're done begging, through threatening, sick of talking.

Broke and bogged down, some county prosecutors along the U.S.-Mexico border
vowed to ban federal drug cases from their courts starting Monday. Their
decision promises to drop even more cases into the swamped federal courts on
the nation's southern edge.

But prosecutors say they have no choice: Struggling counties lose millions
of dollars and weeks' worth of court time prosecuting federal drug cases.
From now on, they say, the U.S. government is on its own.

"As of Monday we won't take any more federal cases," said Hidalgo County
District Attorney Rene Guerra. "The cases are a financial drain, and we
can't do it anymore. We shouldn't have to."

It's a time-honored deal at international bridges and roadblocks: Agents
send large drug busts to federal court. Small drug seizures -- less than 50
pounds of pot, or minor cocaine caches -- are kicked down to county courts.

For years, nobody really minded. But an explosion of agents along the border
has sent drug seizures soaring -- and what was once a rare hassle is now a
steady stream of costly cases.

"It's changed a lot," Cochise County, Ariz., prosecutor Chris Roll said. "As
the (federal courts) get overloaded, they start turning loose more and more
cases. It all ends up coming to us."

For the time being, Roll will continue to stretch his $3 million budget to
include the federal cases, he said. The hand-me-down busts make up about a
quarter of his total docket.

"There's a load on our jail, a load on our courts, and we can't get
reimbursed," he said. "There's certainly some people in the county who'd
love to see us stop taking the cases."

Most Texas prosecutors were expected to stick to the Oct. 1 deadline. That
was the date agreed on earlier this year, when the Lone Star counties led a
vociferous demand for emergency money.

In July, they appeared to have triumphed: Congress set aside $12 million to
be divided evenly among the four border states. But the cash got mired in a
bureaucratic quarrel, and still hasn't made its way into county coffers.

"If they can't do it, then they can't do it," Cameron County District
Attorney Yolanda De Leon said. "But taking on these cases is something we
just can't do. It doesn't make us happy, but we're in a bind."

The standoff between the district attorneys and the federal government is a
flaring symptom of a larger crisis: The entire border region is swimming in
crime and lacks the jail space, lawyers and money needed for prosecution.

One quarter of the country's federal criminal cases are filed in the five
U.S. border districts from San Diego to Brownsville. All other federal crime
is shared by 89 districts in the nation's interior.

Most federal judges have about 80 cases pending. The five U.S. border judges
average 500 pending cases each.

In other words, Monday's ban is bad news for harried federal prosecutors.

"It's going to be difficult, it's going to put a strain on us," said Daryl
Fields, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorneys office in San Antonio. "But we'll
do what we have to do."

Distributed by The Associated Press (AP)