MEXICO DRUGS INTO US SAID INCREASING

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Mexican drug smugglers are getting as bold and
efficient as their Colombian counterparts, and stepped up U.S. efforts
to catch them have caused a logjam in federal courtrooms, law
enforcement and judicial officials say.

Nearly half the illegal cocaine in the United States comes through
Mexico, and the country' s southern neighbor is America' s predominant
foreign source of marijuana, Special Agent Joseph Keefe of the Drug
Enforcement Administration told a House Government Reform
subcommittee.

With heroin, Mexican crime syndicates dominate the West Coast market,
hold a substantial share of sales in the Midwest and are actively
pursuing markets on the East Coast, he said.

" Today, no country in the world poses a more immediate drug threat to
the United States, " said Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., the criminal justice
subcommittee' s chairman.

And complicating matters, said Luis Barker of the Border Patrol, the
days of just catching criminals driving drugs over the borders in
trucks and cars are over.

" For the first time, we are seeing consistent patterns of narcotic
smuggling in southern New Mexico via backpacking and horseback in
outlying areas of New Mexico, " said Barker, chief agent in the El
Paso sector of Texas and New Mexico. " Drug couriers commonly use
storm drainage tunnels, which consist of an entire network of
underground entranceways into the United States."

Barker noted the Border Patrol seized more than 1 million pounds of
marijuana, cocaine and heroin last year, a 35 percent increase over
the year before.

At the same time, U.S. Customs agents in California seized 192 tons of
marijuana, 5 tons of cocaine, 1, 164 pounds of methamphetamine and 226
pounds of heroin and arrested more than 4, 000 drug smugglers, the
service' s Edward Logan said. Those include seizures at the border, at
ports and at airports.

American officials have stepped up enforcement at the border, and
clogged courts have resulted, said U.S. District Judge W. Royal
Furgeson, presiding judge of the Pecos division in Western District of
Texas.

He said in 1995 he saw only 45 criminal narcotics cases filed in his
courts. In 1999, there were 386, and already in the first five months
of 2000, there have been more than 250 filed -- a pace for 600 this
year, he said.

" We are really under tremendous stress handling these cases coming
into our courts, " Furgeson said.

Mica said Mexico needs to increase enforcement, noting reports that
said the number of Mexican seizures of cocaine had dropped while coca
production has increased.

" Despite some reports that progress has been made against drug
trafficking in Mexico, I am not convinced that Mexico has done enough
to stem the rising tide of drug exportation across the border to our
country, " Mica said.

On the Net: House Government Reform subcommittee on criminal justice,
drug policy and human resources: http://www.house.gov/reform/cj/