DRUG FLOW FROM MEXICO STRONG, PANEL TOLD

Beefed-Up Border Security Isn't Helping, Officials Say

WASHINGTON -- Despite a greatly increased commitment of federal resources,
drugs continue to flood across the Southwest border, with heroin, cocaine
and methamphetamine from Mexico becoming a major part of the national
epidemic of illegal narcotics, federal officials testified yesterday.

The drug trafficking across the border, which mixes tightly with the flood
of illegal immigrants, is causing human tragedy throughout the nation and
is overloading federal law enforcement and justice resources along the
border, the officials told a House subcommittee.

The human cost of the drug epidemic was illustrated by Mario Medina of
Chimayo, N.M., who said his sister died of a drug overdose, leaving his
elderly parents to raise her two daughters.

Joseph D. Keefe, the agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement
Administration's special operations division, noted that the small town of
Chimayo had 85 deaths from drug overdoses in three years, largely because
of the high-purity "black tar" heroin from Mexico.

Mexican-produced heroin, once considered inferior and of low potency, has
been showing up in higher purity levels, adding to its popularity, Keefe said.

With purity as high as 84 percent, the heroin can be snorted or smoked,
making it preferable to users who shy away from injecting drugs. But that
high purity also results in more deaths from overdoses, he said.

The increasingly powerful Mexican drug cartels "routinely rely on violence
as an essential tool of the trade," with murders and assaults on law
enforcement officers spilling across the border, he said.

Keefe also said that Mexican-run "super laboratories" located in Southern
California or Mexico have become a major source of the methamphetamine that
is causing havoc throughout the country.

Although 90 percent of the meth factories in the nation are small
"mom-and-pop labs," the Mexican labs produce an estimated 85 percent of the
U.S. "speed," he said.

Many of those "super labs" are in San Diego and Los Angeles, Keefe said.

Edward Logan, special agent in charge of U.S. Customs Service operations in
San Diego, said that more than 58 percent of all the drug shipments
intercepted at the U.S. ports of entry last year occurred at the six
official California border-crossing points.

Logan said a substantial increase in agents and the addition of new
technologies have led to a sharp jump in the drug seizures at the
California ports of entry.

But he said the problem of trying to stop the growing flow of drugs and
illegal immigrants has been aggravated by the massive increase in
commercial truck traffic through those ports resulting from the NAFTA trade
agreement.

Truck traffic at the Otay border crossing is up 107 percent over last year,
he said.

He also stressed the rapidly growing problem of people smuggling
prescription medicine in from Mexico because of lower prices. He noted that
Tijuana has 950 pharmacies for 1.2 million people, while San Diego has only
400 for 2.7 million residents.

Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., chairman of the House Government Reform
subcommittee on criminal justice, drug policy and human resources,
expressed concern that while drug trafficking from Mexico has soared, drug
interceptions in Mexico have dropped.