WORKER AT MEXICAN CONSULATE APPREHENDED AT BORDER WITH POT

A Mexican consulate worker arrested for drug trafficking in Nogales on
Thursday is an administrator who previously worked for the Mexican consul
general in Phoenix, officials said.

Pedro Victor Manuel Hortiguela-Garibay, 43, a native of Mexico City, was
hired by the Mexican Consulate in Nogales in February after serving in the
same capacity for about a year in the Phoenix consulate, said Roberto
Rodriguez, the Mexican consul in Nogales. Hortiguela was arrested Thursday
as he entered the United States through Nogales with 268.6 pounds of
marijuana in his van.

Mexican officials moved to dispel fears of broader corruption, saying
Hortiguela was believed to be acting on his own. His arrest is the latest
in a string of drug cases involving officials on both sides of the border.

Hortiguela was suspended until his case makes its way through U.S. federal
courts, and Mexican officials pledged to cooperate in the investigation.

"We condemn it," Rodriguez said. "We do not accept these sorts of things,
especially when both governments are working to fight corruption."

Miguel Angel Isidro, Mexico's deputy consul general in Phoenix, called it
"a very sad reminder of this threat that drug trafficking poses not only to
U.S. authorities, but to Mexican authorities as well."

A criminal complaint filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Tucson said
Hortiguela drove Thursday to a Nogales, Sonora, taco stand, where he met a
friend. Hortiguela is alleged to have waited at the taco stand while his
friend drove away, loaded the van with marijuana and returned.

The complaint said Hortiguela "was to drive the van (back) across the
border and park it across the street from the Mexican Consulate office in
Nogales, Arizona, where it was to be picked up by another person."

The van was registered to Hortiguela and had Arizona license tags.

The van cleared initial inspection booths at the Grand Avenue Port of
Entry, but a U.S. Customs Service drug-sniffing dog singled out
Hortiguela's van as it moved past a secondary inspection point. Customs
inspectors then found 27 bundles of marijuana under the seats.

Customs spokesman Roger Maier said it was not immediately clear whether
Hortiguela was working for a major drug trafficking organization or how
frequently he had crossed the border.

Jim Molesa, Phoenix spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration, said
most smugglers moving large amounts of drugs through the Nogales area are
operating under the auspices of a Mexican drug cartel headed by Miguel Caro
Quintero.

"You can't move loads through unless someone is sanctioning it," Molesa said.

Rodriguez said Hortiguela did not have any consular duties, which involves
representing the Mexican government and Mexican citizens in legal and
immigration affairs within the United States.

Rodriguez said the office does not handle any law-enforcement information
or intelligence regarding narcotics trafficking.

Hortiguela had passed a background check when he was hired by the Nogales
consulate in February, Rodriguez said. He had no criminal record.

Isidro said Hortiguela resigned "for personal reasons" from the Phoenix
office and left on good terms. Maricopa County records show Hortiguela and
his wife borrowed $99,898 last December to buy a house in Glendale. Isidro
said he did not know whether they still owned the property.

At the time of his arrest, Hortiguela was said to be living in the Nogales
area.

Mexican consular officials on Friday announced a review of all local
employees.

"The current incident is a reminder of the constant menace posed by
narcotics trafficking and, as a consequence, corruption of Mexican and U.S.
institutions," the statement said.

In February, two current and one former U.S. Immigration and Naturalization
Service inspectors were arrested in Nogales for accepting bribes to wave an
estimated 20 tons of cocaine through the port of entry.

All have since pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing. A fourth
inspector was charged with accepting bribes to approve immigration documents.

Last month, a National Guardsman working with the U.S. Border Patrol in
Nogales, Ariz., was arrested for trying to sell information about informers
to drug traffickers.

On the nearby Tohono O'odham Nation reservation, a former tribal judge was
indicted last month on charges that she and her daughter-in-law spent four
years trafficking hundreds of pounds of marijuana.

Also on the border near where the judge lived, a U.S. Customs patrol
officer searching for smugglers was fired on in March by members of the
Mexican military who U.S. authorities believe strayed across the border
into the United States. Mexican officials denied their military did
anything wrong. U.S. law-enforcement officials suspect certain Mexican
military units of aiding traffickers during their cross-border forays.

In May, a south Tucson police officer was indicted on federal
cocaine-trafficking and money-laundering charges.

The constant threat of corruption led in 1997 to the creation of the
Southern Arizona Corruption Task Force, which includes the FBI, DEA,
Customs and the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office.