INVESTIGATORS QUESTION RISING NUMBERS OF DRUG SMUGGLERS CLAIMING
FORCED RECRUITMENT BY MEXICAN CARTELS

NEAR DONNA -- A U.S. Border Patrol agent spotted the men as they
approached the floodway levee under the moonlight early Friday morning.

She focused an infrared telescope on the figures, tracking seven men
as they marched north near Farm-to-Market Road 493 about 2:15 a.m.
Friday, according to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court
in McAllen.

Each person carried a large bundle with about 35 pounds of marijuana
strapped to their backs. The agent quietly kept the LORIS scope
focused on the figures for nearly two hours.

Finally, about 4:45 a.m., a Border Patrol helicopter swept over the
area. The men dropped the bundles and scattered into the brush.

The helicopter pilot spotted four of the seven smugglers huddled under
bushes about 5:30 a.m. Friday. Agents swept in and arrested the four
men --between 18 and 34 years of age -- all natives of Rio Bravo,
Tamps., just south of the Rio Grande from Donna.

Three other smugglers escaped. Agents seized seven bundles of
marijuana that weighed 351 pounds.

Each of the four men detained told similar stories to a U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration task force investigator: Unknown gunmen
picked them up in Rio Bravo, telling them they were going to work.

One of the gunmen put a pistol to his head, saying he needed to carry
the load, one man said.

Another said he was taken to an empty lot, held in a vacant lot for a
day and beaten in the abdomen and buttocks with a plank of wood. They
told him he needed to carry the bundles.

The case is the latest in a recent trend among drug smugglers caught
in the Rio Grande Valley. They tell investigators they were forced
into moving drug loads to avoid injury to themselves or their families.

Federal investigators say many of the claims are alibis to garner
sympathy and possibly a lighter penalty once their cases go to court.

But those who track criminal activity in Mexico say the stories are
part of a troubling trend that parallels recent discoveries of
hundreds of slain migrants in Tamaulipas and other northern states.
Mexican investigators have said Zeta assassins killed many of the
migrants after they refused to join their ranks.

"It's part of the norm where these guys are desperate to recover their
attrition," said a spokesman for Grupo Savant, a Washington D.C.-based
private security firm that operates throughout Mexico. "They're losing
so many fighters that they don't have enough to continue the fight
against the Gulf Cartel."

Will Glaspy, who heads the DEA office in McAllen, said he doubts many
smugglers' claims of cartel conscription. Waves of smugglers claiming
extortion have emerged and subsided in the past.

"The majority of them are stories that are being made up," he said.
"They're doing it for some other means, but it's a trend right now
that we are seeing."

Drug trafficking organizations like the Zetas and Gulf Cartel, which
move most of the narcotics through northeast Mexico into South Texas,
also have targeted more affluent Mexicans with visas who are able to
legally cross the border, said George W. Grayson, author of Mexico:
Narco-Violence and a Failed State?. Recruiting Mexican nationals with
immigration visas may draw less scrutiny from U.S. Customs and Border
Protection officers at international ports of entry, he said.

Josue Arturo Paniagua said he was in that situation when customs
officers arrested him April 30 in Hidalgo.

The 25-year-old resident of Nayarit, a state nestled in the mountains
along the Pacific coast, rolled up to the Hidalgo-Reynosa
International Bridge, claiming he was driving to Chicago for 10 days,
according to a criminal complaint filed May 2 in federal court.

Customs officers grew suspicious and searched his Toyota RAV-4,
uncovering more than 18 pounds of heroin concealed beneath the back
seats.

Paniagua claimed he refused a $10,000 offer to smuggle the brown
heroin across the border. Only when a cartel enforcer returned with
photos of his wife and kids did Paniagua comply, he told U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators.

A grand jury indicted Paniagua on possession and conspiracy to
distribute heroin charges. If convicted, he faces between 10 years and
life in prison, and a $10 million fine.

Whether Paniagua's claims are truthful remains unclear. Local ICE
officials did not return requests for comment last week.

But a man claiming to be Paniagua's father called The Monitor in the
days after his son's arrest.

The man, who said he was fearful to disclose his name, said he had not
heard from his son for several weeks until finding his name in a story
published online. The man said he did not know Paniagua to be involved
in illegal activity in his hometown of Tepic, the Nayarit state capital.

"There's more vigilance at the border on the part of U.S. authorities
and so the cartels, including the Zetas, are more inclined to use
individuals who appear to be traveling on legitimate business as
mules," said Grayson, a professor of government at The College of
William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va.

Federal investigators do not keep statistics on alleged extortion, but
court records detailing such claims have surfaced in fewer than 10
cases since February in U.S. District Court in McAllen, where at least
one new drug trafficking case is filed almost every day.

"It's a trend we've been seeing recently, but for the most part, in
many of these instances, it's an excuse," Glaspy said. "I'm not going
to say that it never happens, because I'm sure things like that do
happen."

DEA investigators regularly see cycles in the profiles of arrested
smugglers, Glaspy said. Trends in the past have included recruiting
juveniles to move drugs, assuming U.S. prosecutors would not lodge
charges against kids.

"Then, they'll get away from that trend after the juveniles will get
arrested," Glaspy said.

Agents are "much more concerned" on how cartels have evolved, moving
drugs with greater technology and sophistication, often employing
dozens of people to transport a single load, Glapsy said.

"It's a more complex operation than having one person and saying 'Hey,
I'm going to beat you if you don't cross this stuff,'" he said. "We
see the criminal organizations are employing 20-plus individuals in
the process of moving loads through the river, away from the river and
into stash houses across the Rio Grande Valley."

Still, federal agents do investigate claims alleged smugglers make
about their supposed conscription into moving drug loads. Often,
investigators debunk the stories.

Glaspy pointed to an example of how investigators discredit smugglers'
allegations of extortion.

A man claimed he was threatened with violence if he refused to move a
drug load. The man had a cell phone he said was provided by cartel
enforcers for use while moving the load.

But after they looked at the smuggler's phone records -- and found his
girlfriend's number in the call directory -- agents concluded the man
was lying.

"From an evidentiary standpoint, it didn't stand up," Glaspy said.