PEACE ARCH CROSSING KEY TO DOPE HEADING INTO U.S.

Ecstasy smuggling across the B.C. border has exploded, according to a
cross-border team of law enforcers.

"Blaine is a hotspot for ecstasy smuggling," said Roy Hoffman, U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement assistant special agent in charge.

"We're seeing a huge amount of ecstasy heading for points in the U.S."

Hoffman was among officers to brief the Cascadia Mayors Council
meeting June 30 in Surrey on work of the Integrated Border Enforcement
Team (IBET), which pools policing efforts from both sides of the
border to bust smugglers.

Hoffman said 52 per cent of the ecstasy tablets smuggled into the U.S.
come from B.C.

He said it's a shift from the typical smuggling pattern of Canadian
marijuana heading south and cocaine, guns and other chemicals going
north.

Ecstasy is easier to transport than marijuana, Hoffman noted.
Methamphetamine component chemicals are increasingly arriving in
Vancouver from China, he added.

IBET officials recounted major drug busts of recent years - from
this year's discovery of a tunnel crossing the border at Aldergrove to
the breakup of a helicopter pot smuggling operation based in the Okanagan.

Smugglers sometimes drive stolen vehicles at high speeds through
raspberry fields across the border, they said. Others use pleasure
boats, kayaks or drop contraband from airplanes.

But most busts involve cars or trucks crossing at points like Peace
Arch crossing near White Rock, where in 2003 officials seized 1,871
pounds of marijuana that had been smuggled into Blaine amid frozen
raspberries.

The cargo isn't always drugs.

Surrey RCMP Supt. Bill Ard cited a human smuggling case a year ago
where people landed in Toronto, were moved to safe houses in Vancouver
and were then taken across the border, sometimes at Peace Arch park.

"That group is now out of business," Ard said.

Better technology used to find illicit cargo is making a difference,
officers said.

Scanners can now detect different densities of materials inside sealed
trucks or containers, Hoffman said. But he said adept smugglers are
finding ways to defeat the devices.

The challenge of getting the cargo across may be increasingly leading
pot growers to shift operations south of the border, he added.

Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts said IBET has been a success.

"They're working very closely together, which is just tremendous for
us because they're sharing intelligence," she said.