U.S. PLANS BORDER 'SURGE' AGAINST ANY DRUG WARS

The soaring level of violence in Mexico resulting from the drug wars
there has led the United States to develop plans for a "surge" of
civilian and perhaps even military law enforcement should the
bloodshed spread across the border, Homeland Security Secretary
Michael Chertoff said Wednesday.

Mr. Chertoff said the criminal activity in Mexico, which has caused
more than 5,300 deaths in the last year, had long troubled American
authorities. But it reached a point last summer, he said, where he
ordered specific plans to confront in this country the kind of
shootouts and other mayhem that in Mexico have killed members of
warring drug cartels, law enforcement officials and bystanders, often
not far from the border.

"We completed a contingency plan for border violence, so if we did get
a significant spillover, we have a surge - if I may use that word -
capability to bring in not only our own assets but even to work with"
the Defense Department, Mr. Chertoff said in a telephone interview.

Officials of the Homeland Security Department said the plan called for
aircraft, armored vehicles and special teams to converge on border
trouble spots, with the size of the force depending on the scale of
the problem. Military forces would be called upon if civilian agencies
like the Border Patrol and local law enforcement were overwhelmed, but
the officials said military involvement was considered unlikely.

Mr. Chertoff has expressed concern in recent months about the violence
in Mexico, but the contingency plan has not been publicly debated, and
the department has made no announcement of it. Department officials
said Mr. Chertoff had mentioned it only in passing.

Aides to members of the House Homeland Security Committee, which
oversees the department and has often clashed with Mr. Chertoff over
his border policies, said Wednesday that they had heard little about
the plan, though they welcomed it.

"We support almost anything to secure our border," said Dena Graziano,
a spokeswoman for the committee.

Mr. Chertoff said that he had advised Gov. Janet Napolitano of
Arizona, nominated by President-elect Barack Obama to succeed him as
homeland security secretary, that "I put helping Mexico get control of
its borders and its organized crime problems" at the very top of the
list of national security concerns.

Ms. Napolitano's confirmation hearing begins next week. Her office
denied requests for an interview.

In the wide-ranging interview with Mr. Chertoff, two weeks before he
leaves office, he suggested that his controversial efforts to rapidly
build a fence along nearly 700 miles of the Mexican border, as well as
his bolstering the size of the Border Patrol, were part of the push to
defend against drug violence, not just to control illegal
immigration.

"That's another reason, frankly, why I have been insistent on putting
in the infrastructure and fencing and stuff like that," he said.
"Because I don't want, God forbid, if there is ever a spillover of
significance, to have denied the Border Patrol anything they need to
protect the lives and safety of American citizens."

He said the Border Patrol had reached a target of more than 18,000
agents by December, though some are still in training and not yet
patrolling. Officials of the agents' union contend that the rapid
buildup, to a size double that of less than a decade ago, and the
agency's turnover have resulted in a largely inexperienced corps.

Fencing has gone up on 580 miles of the 2,000-mile border, short of
the planned 661 miles, but Mr. Chertoff said he expected it to reach
the final mark sometime in the coming months.

And though he said he regretted not seeking more advice initially from
the Border Patrol on developing the "virtual fence," the
much-publicized and much-delayed system of cameras and sensors to
supplement border personnel, Mr. Chertoff predicted that it would gain
widespread use in the coming years.

Mr. Chertoff said the department's efforts to increase enforcement at
the border and conduct immigration raids at workplaces had led to the
lowest level of illegal immigration in decades, though he acknowledged
that the recession had also had an impact on the number of illegal
border crossings.

He expressed no regret over the department's tactics, often criticized
by immigrants' advocates as draconian and a cause of family
separation, and disputed critics who suggest that the department is
sprawling and in need of "reform."

Mr. Obama used that word in introducing Ms. Napolitano and describing
what she would bring to the job of overseeing a department created in
2003 out of 22 agencies and now employing more than 200,000 people,
making it the third-largest cabinet-level department.

There has been speculation in Washington that the Obama administration
will reinstate the Federal Emergency Management Agency as an
independent body outside of the department. But Mr. Chertoff said that
as part of the Homeland Security apparatus, FEMA had redeemed itself
after an admittedly poor response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. He
pointed to more recent disaster responses, including the generally
praised federal reaction to Hurricane Gustav on the Gulf Coast last
summer.

"What I would not do," he said, "is start to monkey around with the
major working parts, because that is only going to set us back."