ARMY TROOPS, CONSTRUCTION CREWS READY ANTI-DRUG EFFORT ON BORDER

SAN ANTONIO (AP) -- In its first major move along the U.S.-Mexico border
since a Marine shot and killed a teen-ager, the military is bringing in
construction equipment and more than 500 soldiers for anti-drug operations.

The project will begin in about two weeks near Laredo and Carrizo Springs,
the San Antonio Express-News reported Wednesday.

Army construction crews will build or improve more than 240 miles of roads,
build a dozen helicopter landing pads, build a refueling site for
helicopters and generally make it easier for the U.S. Border Patrol to
reach remote areas along the Rio Grande.

Targets of the operation are drug smugglers and illegal immigrants and the
bandits who prey on them.

"They know it's safe to be in there. They have cover, and it's tough for us
to get in there," said Luis Barker, chief of the Border Patrol sector in
Laredo.

The Army is sending 380 soldiers and 150 vehicles, including trucks,
bulldozers and graders, to Laredo from Fort Lewis, Wash. An additional 180
solders and 70 vehicles are heading from Fort Hood to Carrizo Springs.

Reaction to the project is mixed among the area residents.

Gene Allen of Carrizo Springs, owner of the 5,000-acre Stone Ranch where
one of the helicopter landing pads is to be built, welcomes the effort.

"The main thing is they fight drug traffickers. That's what I'm concerned
about," he said.

But a Laredo Community College professor opposes the plan, saying
road-building proposals will damage the Rio Grande's ecology and destroy a
recently improved campus nature trail.

Biology Professor Jim Earhart wants students to "jump out of the bushes" in
protest when the bulldozers show up to clear a road through a newly
established nature trail fronting the river.

"At least it would call attention to them screwing up what we've had down
here and our plan for an educational site," Earhart said.

The Border Patrol contends the military projects won't harm the environment.

The controversy is the latest for the Pentagon in its anti-drug efforts.

The Pentagon suspended the use of armed military personnel on anti-drug
patrols along the border after a Marine fatally shot Esequiel Hernandez
Jr., 18, a high school student who was tending his family's goats in
Redford in the Big Bend area last May.

The patrols have not resumed, but the Pentagon has given the go- ahead for
the joint Army-Border Patrol projects, which are to begin Jan. 19 and
should conclude by April.

Another mission set for later this month involves Marine Corps reservists
improving more than 80 miles of border-area roads in Presidio County in
West Texas, not far from where Hernandez was killed.

Maureen Bossch, spokeswoman for the military's Joint Task Force Six, which
coordinates joint law enforcement-military operations, stressed the troops
will be unarmed.

"They're not going to be carrying weapons," she said. "They're going down
there to do engineering and construction. This is great training for them
and what they would need to do in case of world events."

Timothy Dunn, an El Paso-based author of a book on militarization of the
U.S.-Mexico border, said the road-building projects follow a perilous path.

"It's building the relationship between military and law enforcement, which
is dangerous for a democratic society," he said.