BORDER A SMUGGLER'S HAVEN

Texas Overwhelmed By Trafficking Of Drugs And People

RIO GRANDE CITY, Texas - At a convenience store in this desolate
border town, a man parks his black Ford pickup with tinted windows
and begins hawking a live zebra.

The animal, bleeding and abused, usually is found on the African
Serengeti. But in this poor town in one of the poorest counties in
the United States, the asking price is $6,000 cash -- no questions asked.

Welcome to the U.S.-Mexico border, where just about anything can and
does happen. The zebra salesman is a grim reminder of the Wild West
atmosphere that prevails along much of the 2,000-mile border, where
drugs, people and money are smuggled 24/7.

Before the arrest last week of Javier Arellano FZlix, the alleged
leader of Mexico's ruthless Tijuana drug cartel, the national debate
over illegal immigrants crossing the border drove the drug war off
the front pages.

But make no mistake about it, America's drug war rages on. Here in
the Rio Grande Valley sector, cocaine seizures by Border Patrol
agents have more than doubled so far this fiscal year and account for
more than half of all Border Patrol seizures along the southern border.

Halting the flow of illicit drugs here, much like the flow of illegal
immigrants, is nearly impossible. There are about 1,400 Border Patrol
agents assigned to cover an area that spans 18,584 square miles,
including along the Rio Grande river and the Gulf of Mexico. That's
about one agent for every 13.3 square miles.

On any given day, traffickers smuggle cocaine into and around border
towns such as Roma and Rio Grande City, where 60 percent of the
children live in poverty and only 6 percent of the population has
attended college.

Go west of McAllen and walk along the banks of the Rio Grande --
called the Rio Bravo, or Angry River, in Mexico -- and evidence of
illicit activity abounds. On the Mexican side of the river, smugglers
and would-be undocumented workers loiter, waiting for night to fall.

On the U.S. side, discarded tires, clothes and assorted trash litter
the most remote riverbanks -- the byproduct of drug and immigrant smuggling.

"We see a steady flow throughout the whole Rio Grande Valley sector,"
Jose Vicente Rodr'guez, a Border Patrol agent and spokesman, said
during a tour of an inland highway checkpoint in Falfurrias.

For years, Mexicans thought the drug trade was a U.S. problem that
needed to be tackled by quelling the demand of addicts and
recreational drug users. Today, Mexico is wrestling with an alarming
increase in drug use among its youth and an explosion of violence
deep in its interior. Existing and up-and-coming drug gangs are
gunning it out for control of entry routes in the south and domestic
distribution.

U.S. officials say Mexico's outgoing president, Vicente Fox, has done
more than any other leader in Mexican history to cooperate in the
drug war. After Dec. 1, the task falls to the country's apparent
president-elect, conservative Felipe Calder--n.

"Relations with Mexico have never been better. We're getting
(intelligence) from Mexico that we've never gotten before," a senior
U.S. law-enforcement official who requested anonymity because of his
ongoing work in the drug war said in reference to federal-level
cooperation. "Six years ago, we would have gotten, 'You're going to
do what with Mexico?' We're hopeful that we'll be able to build on
the progress we've made with the Fox administration."

During Fox's six-year term, Benjamin Arellano FZlix, alleged former
leader of the Tijuana cartel, and Osiel Cardenas, leader of the
Juarez cartel, were arrested.

Calder--n has acknowledged that Fox's success in disrupting the
cartels has come with a price: escalating violence within Mexico and
along the border. Calder--n has discussed creating a super-agency to
combat drug trafficking, but U.S. officials would prefer to see
Calder--n focus on legal revisions that would make it easier to
prosecute and extradite trafficking suspects.