SMUGGLERS USE CREATIVE WAYS TO GET ILLEGAL CARGO ACROSS BORDER

SAN YSIDRO, Calif. (AP) -- There are obvious ways to smuggle drugs -- seal
them in plastic and stash them in tires, car and truck side panels, the gas
tank or inside the backseat.

More creative thinkers try a speaker box, a phony car battery, or even a
baby's diaper.

After nine years here at the world's busiest border crossing south of San
Diego, Customs Service Chief Inspector Robert Bickers has seen it all.

He's also sure many smugglers are still getting away with it.

"There are people out there right now crossing with drugs," said Bickers,
who has gotten so good at spotting drugs that he teaches classes to other
police agencies.

His experience at San Ysidro is a window into drug smuggling along the
Southwest border, the principal route for cocaine and marijuana entering the
country -- where booming trade and massive legitimate cross-border traffic
masks a huge trade in illicit commerce.

It was through the Southwest border -- principally El Paso, Texas -- that
authorities say Omar Rocha Soto, 37, supplied one of the nation's 20 largest
drug trafficking rings.

Rocha, who pleaded innocent to drug charges Wednesday, was living in a
palatial home in San Diego while directing an organization that transported
drugs to Houston, Chicago, New York, Nashville, Cleveland, Boston and other
U.S. cities, authorities said.

Rocha's organization, law enforcement officials said, mostly moved the drugs
in the back of long-haul trucks from Juarez, Mexico, across the border at El
Paso. He also sometimes used smaller vehicles and trains, authorities said.

This method of breaking down drug shipments into smaller loads and sending
them over border highways has become widespread along the 34 Southwest
border checkpoints as smugglers seek to avoid heightened security and the
risk of losing a large haul.

At San Ysidro, which links Tijuana, Mexico, to San Diego, authorities face
perhaps the greatest challenge of all the border points.

"Just because of the volume of traffic, I would have to say it probably has
more drug traffic than any port in the world," said Vince A. Rice, a special
agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration's San Diego office.

More than 15 million cars and 40 million people pass into the United States
via San Ysidro each year, or an average of 41,000 cars and 20,000
pedestrians a day through two dozen lanes that snarl with traffic during
rush hour.

U.S. Customs marijuana seizures, which don't include drugs caught by other
agencies, totaled 173,000 pounds in San Ysidro during the fiscal year that
ended Sept. 30, 1998. For the entire Southwest border, seizures came to
831,000 pounds and 955,000 pounds nationwide.

All along the Southwest border, drug seizures are up this year. Customs
seized 521,000 pounds of marijuana from for the five months ending March 31,
up 34 percent from the same period a year earlier.

This surging drug trade comes in addition to the illegal smuggling of
fireworks, Cuban cigars, rare animals, untaxed cigarettes, wholesale
quantities of pharmaceuticals and Freon, the air conditioning additive
banned in the United States because it depletes the ozone layer.

Once in the United States, the drugs are sometimes stored at false business
fronts or homes until there is enough for a large shipment by truck or
private plane to Los Angeles or New York.

Faced with this onslaught, inspectors look for suspicious signs such as
shaking hands or drivers who grip the steering wheel too tightly. With a few
seconds of observation, they try to separate the legitimate border crossers,
who make up the vast majority, from the potential smugglers who are sent to
secondary inspections.

They also use drug-detecting dogs, but authorities say the canines can't
sniff every car and sometimes track a false scent.

But for all the ways law enforcement officials try to catch smugglers, the
smugglers create ways to get around them, said Bickers, who estimates that
only about 30 percent of the narcotics entering the U.S. country are
actually discovered.

Could it all be stopped? Only with extreme measures -- and authorities doubt
the public is willing to accept them.

"You know what would happen if we stopped and searched every car? The
traffic would be backed up all the way to Ensenada ... and the politicians
would howl," Bickers said.