NAFTA IS CAUSING TRAFFIC CONGESTION AT BORDERS

LAREDO, Texas -- It was a trip of four and a half miles, to haul a trailer
of Mexican-made air-conditioner parts from a warehouse in Nuevo Laredo,
Mexico, to a freight forwarder just across the border in Texas. For
Salvador Romero, the driver, the journey took 29 hours, door to door. First
came a four-hour backup on the Mexican side. Then, once Romero made it
across the Lincoln-Juarez Bridge over the Rio Grande, his truck got flagged
for a random, intensive search by United States Customs agents and their
drug-sniffing dogs. A paperwork mistake meant the trailer had to stay
parked at Customs overnight. More inspection backups meant the search was
not finished until the next afternoon.

"It's a constant traffic jam out here," said Romero, who earns 80 pesos --
about $9.30 -- for every round trip he makes between the two nations. "On
average, I can make one trip a day, maybe two or possibly even three if I'm
lucky. And then there are days like this."

More than four years after the North American Free Trade Agreement took
effect, many crossings along the 2,000-mile border between the United
States and Mexico are increasingly jammed with trucks, as the roads and
bridges simply cannot keep pace with the booming growth of trade. While the
congestion affects entry points from Southern California to the Rio Grande
Valley of Texas, it is at its worst in Laredo, the busiest cargo crossing
on the border, with lines sometimes stretching for five or six miles in
either direction from the Rio Grande here.

A decade ago, 185,000 trucks a year crossed the two bridges at Laredo,
while now nearly one million trucks cross three bridges each year, with at
least a doubling of that figure projected by 2010.

The heavy traffic causes tie-ups that have added to the cost of shipping
goods all along the border and that periodically set off tensions between
the two nations.

In recent months, the tie-ups have been compounded by lengthy searches
ordered by the Customs Service, an agency caught between conflicting
mandates to help speed the flow of commercial goods between the two
countries and to stem the flow of illegal drugs.

"We've got a big drug problem at the border, and we're not going to turn
our eye away from that," said Leonard C. Lindheim, special agent in charge
of investigations at the Customs Service's South Texas division. "If it
causes long lines, that's a price we'll have to pay."

Here in Laredo, the trade agreement has brought some economic activity,
evident in the warehouses that have sprouted all over town. But there is
also a nagging sense that the pact's benefits to Laredo were overstated
while its drawbacks -- pollution, traffic and other problems -- are
overwhelming this city of 150,000 people. The unemployment rate here
remains above 10 percent, more than twice the national average. Despite
their obvious frustrations at the system, most Mexican drivers seemed
resigned to the process as they gathered at a waiting area in the customs
lot here. Although it was only March, temperatures hit the 90s by midday,
and many drivers said they were already dreading the nightmarish heat of
summer.

"You have to stay near the truck at all times, so what can you do?" said
Jorge Campos, 42, a driver based in Nuevo Laredo who was waiting as crates
of elevator parts he was taking to Laredo were removed from his truck by
forklifts, searched by Customs officials and sniffed by the dogs. "Of
course we are mad, but you can't blame them," he said, gesturing toward the
agents and their dogs. "They're just doing their jobs. They didn't make the
law." The searches are part of Operation Brass Ring, a six-month program
started by Customs in February that includes roving teams of inspectors and
intensive random inspections, like the one Romero's truck underwent, that
are all aimed at sharply increasing the amount of drugs seized at the
border. Customs already seizes more drugs than all other federal agencies
combined, including more than 607,000 pounds of marijuana and 46,000 pounds
of cocaine in its border regions alone last year. But with some
law-enforcement officials estimating that 90 percent or more of all drugs
that cross the border go undetected, the agency is under constant pressure
to step up the pace and scope of its searches.

Some drugs still enter the country in backpacks carried by smugglers across
remote stretches of desert. But with border crossings overwhelmed by
commercial traffic, many dealers have become increasingly brazen about
trying to hide the drugs inside shipments aboard 18-wheelers and other big
trucks. Recent searches by Customs agents have turned up cocaine and heroin
in the doors, walls, axles, fuel tanks and tires of the big trucks, and
inside cargo pallets and even the hollowed-out cores of a load of
vegetables. Sgt. First Class Richard Rodriguez of the Texas National
Guard's antidrug task force, who was assisting Customs agents with truck
searches here recently, said it could take up to six hours to complete a
thorough inspection. Many trucks are given a cursory inspection and waved
on at the bridges. Local transportation planners say they are trying to
ease the tie-ups, which tend to be at their worst in the late afternoons.
Trucks are increasingly using the six-year-old Colombia-Solidarity Bridge,
about 20 miles northwest of here, which had initially been considered
something of a government white elephant because drivers balked at making
the detour from major highways. That diversion can take two hours or more
on either side; but the eight-lane bridge has dozens of inspection docks
and the crossing procedure is much quicker. The sister cities are also
embarking on construction of another bridge later this year.

Customs officials also have long-range plans for easing the congestion. The
agency already uses three huge X-ray machines along the border, two in
California and one in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, that look a bit like
mammoth car washes and that can inspect a truck's contents in minutes. But
prospects for their widespread use are uncertain, since the machines cost
$3.5 million each.

Customs officials are also considering use of high-tech devices that can
"sniff" cocaine vapors and are pressing plans to streamline paperwork by
putting truck manifests on computers that would be linked to Customs
agencies in Mexico, Canada and the United States.

"There is no question that the infrastructure limits what you can do," said
Noel Sanchez Jr., the Customs Service's director of passenger operations
and vehicular traffic here. "But we can still do a good job at both things,
helping to move goods across the border and stopping drugs. Just give us
the resources, and we can do the job."