LAREDO PATROL WELCOMES MILITARY, BUT SOME RESIDENTS SAY IT'S TOO MUCH

Soldiers On The Border

LAREDO -- The camouflaged Army helicopters lifted off with a dust-
churning roar from the abandoned airstrip and gently swung toward the
west.

The only light came from the iridescent glow of the cockpit controls.

The OH-58D Kiowa Warriors quickly picked up speed and split up -- half
moving out of the area for training and the rest racing toward the
border to conduct surveillance missions.

The nine Kiowa Warriors, plus an additional medevac Blackhawk
helicopter, were from the Echo Troop "Renegades" of the 1st Squadron,
10th Cavalry Regiment.

Their destination that late August night wasn't a troubled region in
the Balkans or the Middle East. The Renegades were heading for Laredo.

Some lawmakers and activists predicted that the May 1997 shooting death
of an 18-year-old West Texas goatherder by a Marine Corps surveillance
team would end the military's role in the drug war, especially along
the U.S. border with Mexico.

That has not been the case.

While there was heated, vocal opposition to the policy immediately
after Esequiel Hernandez Jr. was shot to death by a camouflaged Marine
corporal looking for drug smugglers, the public uproar faded quickly.

Armed infantry patrols that were suspended after the shooting are an
option again, although no patrol has been dispatched since Hernandez's
death.

Still, the Defense Department continues to mount a vigorous program to
support the government's war on narcotics trafficking.

"At any one time, we have up to 90 missions going on throughout the
country," said Armando Carrasco, a spokesman for Joint Task Force-6.
That is the El Paso-based command that continues to coordinate military
support for anti-drug operations. "Missions can vary from a couple of
weeks up to 179 days. One of the factors is the availability of the
units."

The wide variety of military assistance still being provided to local,
state and federal law-enforcement agencies includes road- and fence-
building along the southern border, anti-drug intelligence analysis and
Special Forces training teams. The Special Forces instruct police in
topics ranging from marksmanship to interview and interrogation
techniques.

JTF-6 also offers aerial observation and reconnaissance support for law-
enforcement agencies.

Laredo Border Patrol officials took the military up on that offer,
which brought the Renegades from their home base at Fort Hood in
Central Texas to the strip of concrete on a ranch about 30 miles east
of the city.

Capt. Chad Smith, commander of the Echo Troop aviators, had been on
four other drug surveillance missions. He said the operations are
conducted as if his soldiers were heading into combat.

"When we go out and fly our missions, they are going to do a full
battle drill," said Smith, 30. "We do everything but weapons
engagement."

While the Kiowa Warriors are capable of firing missiles, rockets and
machine guns, the Echo Troop aviators left their weapons at Fort Hood.

The Border Patrol was more interested in the array of sophisticated
electronics the helicopters carry in their role as reconnaissance
aircraft.

With its infrared thermal imaging capability and accurate navigation
system, the Kiowa Warrior can give precise target locations to both a
military commander in combat and a law-enforcement agency that wants
help.

"It's all kind of green. You can make out individuals on occasion,"
said Chief Warrant Officer Luis Correa, 33, describing how targets
appear with the night-vision equipment. "You can tell if their vehicle
was driven recently, because the engine would be hot."

As a fuel tanker rolled up to top off his helicopter prior to the
night's mission, Correa said the aviators were told to restrict their
patrol locations to areas along the Rio Grande known as drug pipelines
into the United States.

"We're looking for individuals moving around and being where they
should or shouldn't be. We give them (Border Patrol agents) the
information, and we move on," Correa said. "The law is very specific on
what we can do and not do. We can't be chasing around American
citizens."

The Army troops, who returned to their Fort Hood base four days later,
on Aug. 26, spent about three weeks in the Laredo sector. JTF-6
officials declined to be specific about the length of the assignment,
citing security concerns.

The largest single drug seizure during their time on the border
occurred on the Aug. 22 mission. One of the Kiowa Warriors went to
Zapata, about 50 miles south of Laredo, after a Border Patrol agent
came across 5,000 pounds of marijuana with an estimated street value of
more than $4 million. The unarmed helicopter crew hovered in the area,
with its lights turned on, to ward off any smugglers who might be
nearby.

Pentagon involvement in the drug war began several years before the
Hernandez shooting, when the posse comitatus law, which forbids
military involvement in law enforcement, was loosened in 1989.

Civilian law-enforcement powers are not conferred on soldiers assigned
to JTF-6 missions, unit spokesman Carrasco said.

"Our personnel do not detain, search, seize or arrest. All they are
doing is identifying an illegal activity for the Border Patrol," he
said. "The Border Patrol is making the judgment based on their
expertise. The military is not involved in that decision process."

Military operations coordinated by JTF-6 must focus on stopping the
drug trade. Opponents of the military's role contend, however, that the
Fort Hood aviators -- and other units assigned to the border -- aren't
able to distinguish between drug smugglers and undocumented workers.

"There's no way you can line up hundreds of military personnel along
the border and not get involved in immigration. It's a no-brainer,"
said Roberto Martinez of the American Friends Service Committee, a
human rights group.

Officials deny that troops are being used in rounding up illegal
immigrants. Anyone inadvertently identified by the helicopters,
however, will be taken into custody, said the second-in-command of
Laredo's Border Patrol sector.

"We have no way of telling what their immigration status is before they
get into that river, while they are in that river or when they get on
the other side of the river," said George A. Gunnoe, assistant chief
patrol agent. "If we happen to catch them, we have no way of telling.
Immigration is not the question here, not in our minds."

The Border Patrol has the primary responsibility for intercepting drugs
coming across the 2,000-mile border from Brownsville to San Diego.

While the number of agents in the Laredo sector has grown in recent
years, some admit privately that there aren't enough officers to do the
job. They welcomed the Renegade aviators and the military engineers who
built a road they use near the border fence line.

"When they come out here, it is great," Border Patrol Supervisory Agent
Robert P. Swathwood Jr. said, gunning his truck up Mines Road, a lonely
stretch of blacktop along the border that drug smugglers often use.

Agent J.W. Marshall, a four-year veteran of the Border Patrol, said he
would rather have military personnel fighting drug traffickers along
the Rio Grande than going on missions halfway around the world.

"What better way to pay back the community than show their tax dollars
at work?" he said. "Let's take care of home first."

The former Army officer's job was coordinating with the helicopter
troops on the night's mission.

"I've worked a lot of operations with the aerial guys. I can speak
their language," he said. "I think they are very productive. If the
wind is in their favor, those aircraft can be stealthy."

Antagonism to the use of military forces to combat drug trafficking may
have dropped off in the years since Hernandez, a high school student
with no criminal history, was killed while tending his family's goats
on a bluff near Big Bend National Park on the Rio Grande.

A four-man undercover team had trailed him for 20 minutes before
Hernandez fired his .22-caliber rifle twice. It was not clear whether
he knew what he was firing at.

A grand jury declined to indict the Marine who fired the lethal shot,
but the U.S. government agreed to a $1.9 million wrongful-death
settlement with the family.

Pockets of opposition to the military's anti-drug role can still be
found in places like Laredo, where the Border Patrol's green-and-white
trucks are a familiar sight.

Even if it is not violating the letter of posse comitatus, the American
Friends Service Committee's Martinez argues, using the military even in
a supportive role breaches the spirit of the Civil War-era law.

"There's just so much out there already that has created an image of a
fortress mentality like the Berlin Wall," Martinez said. "The pressure
from several hawk legislators and anti-immigrant groups is to put the
military on the border. Now, we're getting closer to that reality."

Louis H. Bruni, a two-term Laredo city councilman, worries about the
impact the military's presence will have on Laredo's relationship with
Nuevo Laredo, its sister city across the Rio Grande.

"I don't think we need the military between two friendly nations. It's
not what we want for Laredo," he said.

Michael Yoder, a professor at Laredo's Texas A&M University-
International, called the military's presence in the area "racist,
jingoistic and condescending."

"We've lost the war on drugs. We're only fighting the supply," he said,
adding that he believes the military's role will expand.

"It'll grow until this is the most highly militarized border in the
world," Yoder said.

But even in Laredo, opposition to using the military along the border
has cooled since Hernandez's death, Yoder admitted.

"People were outraged (by Hernandez's death), but since then a lot of
people have forgotten," he said. "We still have economic problems. It's
a low-wage town, and we're dependent on Washington."

The Mexican consul general in Laredo acknowledged that placing military
forces along the Rio Grande is a "touchy subject."

"Every country, of course, has the sovereign right to mobilize their
personnel and resources within their borders," said Daniel Hernandez-
Joseph. "It makes people wary when it happens near the border."

While admitting that the Mexican government has its own military
garrisons along its side of the Rio Grande, he waved away concerns that
Mexico will try to match the U.S. effort.

"We don't need to necessarily have mirror images of your actions," he
said. "It assumes the relationship is belligerent, which it is not."

About a week after the Army troops returned to their base, Gunnoe said
he considered their mission an unqualified success. The Border Patrol
doesn't measure success by how many pounds of drugs are confiscated, he
said.

"It seems to have disrupted them (the smugglers)," Gunnoe said. "Their
activity has kind of gone to ground. The uncertainty of what's in the
area has forced them to lay low for a while."