STATES SEEKING FUNDS FROM WASHINGTON FOR DRUG CASES

LAREDO — A battle is brewing between state and federal officials over who
should prosecute minor drug cases, known as "border busts," made by federal
agents guarding the U.S.-Mexico border.

Joe Rubio, Webb County's district attorney, launched a flare seen all the
way to Washington in October 1997 when he said he would no longer take such
cases unless the federal government reimbursed him for the cost of the
prosecutions.

As a result, the Justice Department has had to scramble to find new ways to
prosecute hundreds of area cases.

For years, Webb County and virtually every other border jurisdiction
prosecuted defendants arrested along highways or at international bridges
with narcotics stashes considered too small to push through federal court.

But seemingly minor cases added up to a huge drain on county resources,
federal and state officials concede.

"It was costing Webb County one million dollars a year. I was just asking
them to pay us," Rubio said recently.

"It was a sweetheart deal for them," he said of federal authorities.

Martha Chase, county attorney for Santa Fe County, Ariz., population
20,000, is also refusing to accept minor drug cases from the federal
government.

"It is a matter of resources and the feeling it is a federal agency that
made a stop on the border where the federal government has jurisdiction.
Why turn it over to a small, impoverished county?" Chase asked.

John Kelly, the Justice Department's lead prosecutor along the U.S.-Mexico
border, has said counties need more reimbursement as they feel the brunt of
federal law-enforcement policies.

He and Barry McCaffrey, the Clinton administration's drug czar, are trying
to find drug war grants and other resources to ease the strain on border
counties.

"As you get out into more remote areas, we get bigger challenges getting
the resources we need," Kelly said of prosecutions along the border.

"What has been a solution in San Diego or El Paso is not necessarily the
solution in McAllen or Laredo," said Kelly, who is the U.S. attorney for
the Southern District of New Mexico and is based in Albuquerque.

Kelly said more prosecutors have been sent to the border, including
doubling the number in Laredo since Rubio's policy shift.

Bill Blagg, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, which is
based in San Antonio, said his staff is prosecuting smaller drug cases to
help relieve pressure on local district attorneys.

"I felt like I had to do something so we did not swamp them," Blagg said.