IMMIGRANTS-RIGHTS GROUPS' GRIPES FLAWED

Add this one to the list of contenders for the Emptiest Argument of
2000: When U.S. Customs agents unveiled high-technology tools to catch
smugglers, immigrant-rights groups complained that the money should have
been spent instead on improving conditions in which migrants are captured
and deported.

That's a flawed comparison. New high-tech tools have absolutely nothing to
do with handling and the deportation of illegal aliens. They're used
strictly to intercept some of the illegal drugs that move across the border
from Mexico into the U.S. in enormous amounts.

A new X-ray machine the size of a car wash at a border-crossing bridge near
Laredo, Texas, pin-pointed more than 5,600 pounds of marijuana with a
street value of $7.8 million hidden inside a vehicle crossing the border
from Mexico. The cargo X-ray machine used to probe vehicles along the
Southwest border can scan a 40-foot truck in minutes. A driver brings his
truck onto a moving platform, where the vehicle is dragged between two
X-ray systems looking for hidden goods.

The machines - which cost about $3.5 million each - can identify fake walls
or other compartments stashed with illegal drugs. One tractor passing
through the X-ray at the Bridge of the Americas in El Paso was found to
have several hundred pounds of cocaine concealed in its front tires.

With seven such systems in place, Customs officials conducted 57,000
examinations in fiscal year 1998, seizing 23,000 pounds of drugs. Beginning
earlier this year, railroad cars crossing the border at Laredo pass through
a similar system.

Agents are also using a thermal imaging camera the size of an average
camcorder to find out whether someone is handing someone a baggie
containing narcotics. And they can even do it in the dark.

The thermal imaging camera is so sensitive it can detect a change of a
quarter of one degree in temperature. If a suspect carrying drugs decides
to rid himself of the evidence, the drugs - still warm from being close to
his body - would show up a different shade than the screen background.

At Miami International and New York's Kennedy airports, travelers selected

for a pat-down search can choose instead a body-imaging machine that is
capable of revealing drugs fixed to a person's body.

No good is served when critics attempt to mix apples and oranges in an
effort to discredit a worthwhile program.

The human conditions under which illegal aliens are detained and deported
have absolutely no connection with new equipment employed to identify
smuggled drugs.

The immigrant-rights groups need to have their complaints judged on their
own worth not on attempted comparisons to things not even remotely
connected to those complaints.