DRUG PROFITS HIT HOME

Recruited Dealers Choose To Seek Asylum In Vancouver 'Because They
Give You Welfare'

EL GUANTILLO, Honduras - No one in this obscure village of coffee
growers speaks English, but a remarkable number understand the meaning
of the words "welfare" and "refugee."

Nestled high in the red-clay hills of poverty-stricken central
Honduras, El Guantillo has become so notorious for its role in
Canada's drug trade that the town's teens eye foreigners warily,
reluctant to have their secrets exposed. They parade around the
garbage-strewn streets in flashy gold chains and baggy cholo, or
bandit pants, testament to their peddling of crack cocaine in Vancouver.

"People choose Vancouver to ask for political asylum because they give
you welfare," says one 17-year-old. "They think of Canada as a gold
mine. It's ugly to live here. People go to Canada to get money and
come back here to live better."

Officials in Canada and Honduras believe an organized ring of
traffickers -- including "well-placed Hondurans" who have re-located
to Canada over the last decade -- are behind the exodus of hundreds of
Honduran youths from the province of Francisco Morazan, where El
Guantillo is located. They are trafficked to Vancouver where, in a
scene reminiscent of Oliver Twist, they hook up with older Hondurans
who help them to sign up for social assistance and show them how to
keep vacuum-packed rocks of crack under their tongues.

"Most of the young people are willing victims," said Staff Sergeant
Elton Deans, in Burnaby, B.C., who has directed police raids on
Vancouver's SkyTrain, where the drug trade flourished until recently.
"The organizers make it look so enticing, telling them they can get
$500 a month on welfare and earn $100 a day selling drugs."

There is little data on how many children around the world are
trafficked each year, but the movement of Honduran youths to Canada is
one example of what the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has termed
the frequent abuse of children by international traffickers.

Many of the prostitutes trafficked around the world are teenagers;
according to the CIA, a group of pimps called the West Coast Players
traffics Canadian teenagers to Los Angeles for the sex industry. In
India and Sri Lanka, destitute families sell their daughters to sex
brokers. Mail-order bride catalogues advertise women from the
Philippines who are as young as 15.

"The impetus to migrate in poor regions is strong and there are people
who profit from that desperation. Kids are especially vulnerable,"
says Analee Lepp, with the Global Alliance Against Traffick in Women.

A special Honduran task force investigating the ring in Vancouver
believes as many as 20 individuals -- including one former Honduran
police officer -- may be involved in the syndicate that brings the
Hondurans north.

The task force -- composed of narcotics investigators and special
prosecutors -- also believes former Honduran military officers,
accepted into Canada as refugees in the 1980s, may play a role in the
trafficking of their compatriots, says Gustavo Zelaya, a task force
member and lawyer with Casa Alianza, a non-governmental organization
affiliated with New York-based Covenant House.

Officials are investigating drug laundering, and the transfer of money
from Western Union in Vancouver to a branch in Tegucigalpa, the
Honduran capital.

Nearly half of the 725 Hondurans who have filed refugee claims in
Vancouver in the past four years have been deported; 142 of them
returned with criminal convictions. About half ended up abandoning
their asylum claims.

It is impossible to say how many are children, because most arrive
without identification and tell immigration officials they are adults.
Murray Wilkinson, with Canada immigration in Vancouver, says fewer
than 20 are under the age of 18, but police and street workers
estimate the real number is closer to 200.

John Turvey, a Vancouver community activist, says the Hondurans are
impressively well-organized. "They arrive, go directly to social
assistance and within a day are selling drugs on the street," said Mr.
Turvey, with the Downtown Eastside Youth Activities Society in
Vancouver. "The Honduran children are the victims, but they are
motivated by mercenary fantasies."

And, in the classic case of victim becoming victimizer, Mr. Turvey
says the Honduran youths have begun to recruit aboriginal teens into
the drug trade.

Rigoberto Portillo, Honduras' Minister Responsible for Children,
blames the pernicious social problem in part on what he describes as
Canada's lax immigration laws: "The minors appear to have special
protection under Canadian law and are inventing stories that permit
them to stay in Canada, at least temporarily," he says. Mr. Zelaya
also believes Canada's refugee laws are "excessively benevolent," and
suggests all Hondurans who enter Canada illegally should be promptly
deported.

Money from the north is slowing changing El Guantillo, a bumpy
four-hour, 140-kilometre journey north of Tegucigalpa, over winding
mountain roads.

The town, lined with mango trees and orange acacia blossoms, has no
running water or electricity. Most families eke out an existence in
the coffee fields and live in tiny adobe shacks with tin roofs. But
several two-storey brick houses now tower over the village, as out of
place as the thick gold chains glinting in the sun around young
farmers' necks. Parked next to the donkeys many families keep for
transportation are brand new US$20,000 Toyota four-by-fours.

One teenager says he was recently deported from Vancouver after nearly
two years there selling drugs in the streets. He will not give his
name and at first, denies he ever was in Canada. Slowly, he reveals
his story. "I went by bus and cargo train and entered Canada through
Sarnia. Immigration officials kept me for four hours," says the young
man, dressed in the ubiquitous baggy jeans and a red shirt emblazoned
with U.S.A. "I asked for asylum and then stayed two years in Vancouver
before being deported."

An official with Francisco Morazan said groups of youths continue to
leave on a monthly basis from El Guantillo, El Porvenir, Cedros and
nearby towns. "We try to control the migration, but it is very
difficult," said the man, who was recently threatened by several
"coyotes," the slang term for those who arrange the journey north,
after speaking out about the issue.

Last year, Canadian immigration officials contacted him to inquire
whether a religious sect exists in El Porvenir, the apparent basis of
several refugee claims in Canada.

"They said several young Hondurans had said they were persecuted for
being members of an evangelical church," he said. "I told them it was
nonsense. People leave because they want to leave."

Two Hondurans from El Guantillo started the trafficking operation
several years ago, bringing in the first group of people to Vancouver,
according to a recent report in La Prensa, a Honduran newspaper.

The trip takes about 30 days, and is often overseen by the coyotes,
who take the youths by bus through Guatemala to Mexico for a $3,000
fee. The Mexican leg of the journey is the most perilous as Hondurans
are not supposed to travel there without a visa.

The illegals jump on moving cargo trains and hide between the
carriages; not all of them make it. In El Guantillo, nine people have
lost limbs in this way. One is Carlos Contreras, who had to have both
his legs amputated three years ago after he fell on to a train track
in Chiapas, Mexico.

"The trip is a very dangerous one to make," the 27-year-old said,
sitting in a wheelchair on the veranda of his parents' home. "I try to
tell the young kids not to go, but they don't listen. Money is the
only image they have of Canada."

News of Canada's police vigilance and the raids along Vancouver's
SkyTrain has filtered back to El Guantillo, where trafficking has
slowed in the last six months.

Mr. Zelaya says recruiters are now looking for fresh dealers. It
should be an easy sell in the dusty mountain towns, where everyone
dreams of escape.