JOINT EFFORT TARGETS BORDER CRIME

U.S. and Mexican Forces, Sharing Patrols for the First Time, Take on
Drugs, Migration

In a politically sensitive operation at the Arizona-Mexico border,
U.S. Border Patrol agents and Mexican federal police officers are
training together, sharing intelligence and coordinating patrols for
the first time.

The goal of the historic partnership: a systematic joint attack on
northbound flows of drugs and migrants, and southbound shipments of
guns and cash. It is part of a major, unannounced crackdown started
in recent months involving hundreds of U.S. and Mexican officers in
the border's busiest smuggling corridor.

The initiative appears likely to expand. Homeland Security Secretary
Janet Napolitano and Mexican Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia
Luna will sign a declaration Thursday in Mexico City agreeing to
replicate the experiment. Eventually, officials say, joint operations
borderwide could lead to the creation of a Mexican force serving as a
counterpart to the Border Patrol -- an agency once regarded with
nationalistic aversion in Mexico.

"We are planting a seed of binational cooperation that interests all
of us," Mexican federal police Cmdr. Armando Trevino said Tuesday in
Nogales. "We are fighting a common enemy. We are going to work
together like friends, like comrades, like brothers."

Political urgency drives both sides. The Obama administration needs
results on border security in its uphill campaign for immigration
reform. Mexican President Felipe Calderon's government wants progress
in its war on drug mafias.

But the unprecedented effort faces imposing obstacles: violent drug
cartels, long-standing Mexican reluctance to interfere with illegal
immigration into the United States and a legacy of corruption that
has scuttled past enforcement efforts.

"There's so much potential for corruption," said Jennifer Allen,
executive director of the Border Action Network, a migrant advocate
group in Arizona. "It could be destined for failure. . . . Right now
law enforcement in Mexico cannot compete with the trafficking
networks. It can't compete with the money, the power."

In the 1990s, the Border Patrol worked closely with Grupo Beta, an
elite Mexican police unit. After a promising start, the unit faltered
under allegations of wrongdoing and functions today as an unarmed
humanitarian agency.

Nonetheless, Tuesday's visit by Trevino was full of signs that times
are changing. The 69-year-old lean, white-haired, retired army
general leads the Sonora, Mexico, contingent of the federal
preventive police, which conducts street-level enforcement involving
major crimes and patrols highways and airports.

Trevino watched a training session in which green-uniformed U.S.
instructors shouted directions as nine Mexican officers in blue
uniforms, goggles and helmets roared through mud and water on
all-terrain vehicles that the Border Patrol uses to chase border-crossers.

Mexican officers, who undergo U.S. background checks, also train in
close-quarters firearms techniques and medical rescue skills. The
Border Patrol plans to vet and train several hundred Mexican federal
officers who also will learn behavioral analysis and ways to detect
contraband concealed in vehicles.

Trevino and U.S. chiefs took a rattling hour's drive over a dirt
mountain road to inspect a remote base housing a dozen live-in
agents. Trevino plans to set up two "mirror" bases south of the U.S.
outposts to interdict smugglers, who use horses and ultra-light
aircraft in the rugged terrain.

Joint U.S.-Mexican operations got underway when a detachment of
Mexican federal police arrived in the Mexican state of Sonora about
two months ago. They began communicating daily with the Americans and
responded to security threats, disrupting smugglers' hilltop lookouts
and breaking up rock-throwing gangs who often clash with U.S. agents
in melees that have resulted in injuries, shootings and diplomatic tensions.

"There has been a decrease in rockings after their deployment," said
Al White, the Border Patrol agent-in-charge in Nogales.

The Mexican forces also have developed new southern barriers to
smuggling drugs and people. Trevino has deployed five roving
checkpoints in Sonora that have pushed marijuana traffickers west
from traditional land routes to emerging, more complicated maritime
smuggling efforts on the Sea of Cortez, officials say.

The Border Patrol will send two liaison agents to Trevino's
headquarters in Hermosillo; two Mexican officers will work at the
Border Patrol station in Nogales.

"The coordination will make our pursuits more flexible so we can stop
criminals from ducking back and forth across the border," Trevino
told his U.S. counterparts, adding that his agency "is most ready to
seal the border to put an end to this organized crime."

However, Trevino said that while his officers aggressively pursue
smugglers, they do not intend to interfere with Mexicans crossing
north illegally if there is no evidence of other criminal activity.
The policy is dictated by longtime Mexican political sensitivity and
public opinion, experts say.

Nonetheless, Mexican Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan praised the
Arizona-Sonora model as part of an enforcement "sea change" resulting
from government cooperation and the rising frequency of drug
traffickers who also smuggle people.

"Drug smuggling organizations have diversified their portfolio," he
said in an interview. "As organized crime has developed its
footprint, we have to do so as well and combat all kinds of trafficking."

Border Patrol officials say the Mexican anti-smuggling effort helps
disrupt the flow of illegal migrants and is the most they can hope
for at the present time. Smugglers have retaliated against the
five-month U.S. crackdown, dubbed the Alliance to Combat Transnational Threats.

Gunmen with automatic rifles wounded a Border Patrol agent in
December. A month earlier, a sniper on Mexican turf fired volleys at
the U.S. port of entry, causing havoc but no injuries. Officials
suspect it was payback for the seizure of $300,000 by U.S. inspectors.

In addition to the more recent cooperation with Mexico, U.S. border
agencies have deployed extra personnel in the Tucson sector, which
leads the southwest border in arrests and marijuana busts.

They have begun concerted scrutiny of southbound traffic and
pedestrians, a rare practice at the international line. The checks
have enabled inspectors to seize $2.2 million in smuggled cash and
identify more than 3,000 illegal immigrants since October. Although
U.S. officers have seized only five weapons in that period, Mexican
customs inspectors found 41 assault rifles hidden in a vehicle a month ago.

Bolstered defenses have caused an odd reverse scenario: Smugglers
based in Tucson and Phoenix occasionally try to smuggle people and
goods south into Mexico, officials say.

Meanwhile, the Sinaloa drug cartel has launched an offensive to take
control of Nogales, Mexico, from the Beltran Leyva cartel. January
brought 40 killings in the city and a spate of attacks on police
officials. There are fears that gangsters could target the Border
Patrol's new Mexican allies.

"Yes, it could increase danger for us," said Capt. Eduardo Pena, a
23-year veteran, after the training session. "But we are not going to
back down."

The cultural change resulting from the joint operation seems
profound. For years, the Border Patrol had a negative image among
many Mexicans and Latinos, fed by film stereotypes of sadistic,
racist agents. The caricature obscured the reality that many U.S.
border agents are Latino and that the Border Patrol has improved
relationships with Mexican consulates and migrant advocates.

But U.S. and Mexican officers admit the alliance would have been hard
to imagine not long ago.

"It's historic," Pena said. "I was based in Tijuana 15 years ago, and
there were bad feuds between the federal police and the Border
Patrol. There was a bad image, the old ugly image of the Border
Patrol. But now there is a new partnership. Good citizens won't
dislike this collaboration. Criminals will dislike it."