ECHOS OF DRUG WAR IN FIGHT TO HALT ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

WASHINGTON -- In the pre-dawn hours of May 16, an international
anti-narcotics team headed by U.S. agents swept the drug empire
headed by Colombian-born Pablo Joaquin Rayo-Montano, arresting the
kingpin while he lay sleeping.

The operation, the result of a meticulous three-year investigation in
at least seven U.S. cities and 10 countries, shut down a massive
network that was smuggling tons of cocaine every month into the United States.

The billions of dollars spent on a drug war first declared by
President Nixon have raised the cost and difficulty of smuggling
drugs into the United States, but haven't dampened U.S. demand for
drugs or reduced their availability.

As President Bush calls for the deployment of some 6,000 National
Guard troops to help U.S. border control agents get a grip on illegal
immigrants pouring across the U.S.-Mexico border, some analysts are
asking what lessons can be learned from the country's decades-long
effort to thwart drug smugglers.

With upwards of 800,000 illegal migrants crossing the 2,000-mile
border each year, trying to fence out immigrants can stem the tide
but only so much, experts say.

As long as there are migrant workers willing to risk their lives for
good paying jobs in this country, border controls can make it harder,
more threatening and more expensive for illegal immigrants to sneak
in. But, as in the war on drugs, improved border controls alone will
never stop it.

"I don't think that strong border control by itself is going to do
anything to eliminate either one of those problems," said Jack Riley,
a border security expert with RAND, an international policy
consultant firm in Santa Monica, Calif.

It was 1971 when Nixon declared war on drugs, calling the trade and
abuse of illicit narcotics "public enemy number one in the United
States." The effort has become a permanent part of the country's
defense and law enforcement strategy. This year alone the federal
drug war will cost U.S. taxpayers $12.5 billion.

Battles have been and will be won - like the Rayo-Montano bust - but
the war will not.

"Three and a half decades of failure seems to demonstrate that," said
Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute, a nonpartisan Washington
think tank, and author of the 2003 book, "Bad Neighbor Policy:
Washington's Futile War on Drugs in Latin America."

The root problem is that demand remains steady in the United States
for illicit drugs. The State Department estimates that growing,
processing and smuggling illicit drugs is a $142 billion industry in
the economies of the United States, Canada and Mexico.

That represents a huge incentive for people, especially those in the
underdeveloped economies of Mexico and Latin America, to risk jail
time smuggling drugs. Get-tough border control policies can only go
so far toward countering that.

"Border control is going to lead to more drug seizures," said Riley,
"but that market signal, that profit, is still going to be there."

Similarly, he said, illegal immigration can't be stopped by border
watchdogs alone, so long as millions of U.S. companies small and
large - not to mention tens of millions of American homeowners - are
willing to turn a blind eye to illegal immigration if it means saving
money on wages or contracts to paint houses and mow lawns.

"Border control will help to some degree with illegal immigration,"
said Riley, "but until there are programs in place that help deter
people, to help reduce the demand for illegal immigration itself,
border control won't stop that problem either."

However, a commitment to better police the border could have an
important impact, said Steven Camarota, director of research for the
Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington advocacy group that
favors aggressive enforcement of U.S. border controls.

"We have not secured our border," he said. But it would be a mistake
to think a porous 2,000-mile border could be sealed with a few
thousand troops, Camarota added.

The Bush administration has stopped short of declaring war on illegal
immigration. It has, though, stepped up the number of border control
agents deployed along the U.S.-Mexico line to about 12,000, a 33
percent increase over the past five years.

They are aided by helicopter patrols, scores of miles of fences and
roadside barriers and new technologies like giant X-ray scanners and
infrared sensors that detect human heat.

The National Guard troops won't be used to help police the border,
but rather to help monitor remote areas, build new barriers and roads
and provide various types of logistics, communications and medical support.

But Camarota says a lack of coordination has hindered efforts. "The
state and local governments are not on the same page, federal
agencies within the federal government are often not on the same
page," he said.

Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies approach drugs and immigrants
completely differently. As many as 12 million illegal immigrants may
be in the United States, many of whom easily evade laxly enforced
federal and state tax and employment laws.

"It's one thing to go after the scum of the earth," Camarota said, in
reference to drug dealers. "If you're trying to go after
hard-working, church-going, tax-paying people who just want a better
life, it's hard to get out of bed in the morning."

Still, analysts hold out hope that strengthened border controls -
even if the system is not perfect - will to some extent reduce
illegal immigration.

"Even a broken clock is right twice a day," said Carpenter. "Maybe
this is one of those times."