DRUG TRAFFICKERS FORCED TO TRY MAIN GATES AGAIN

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- The two Americans in the blue-gray Ford F-150 were slow
to make eye contact, and the veins in the driver's neck began to bulge
slightly as he explained what the pair had been doing in Tijuana.

Pointing his flashlight under the truck, U.S. customs inspector Edric
Ongsioco could see that the bolts around the gas tanks had been loosened.
Then Sasha, a drug-sniffing Belgian shepherd, let out a howl and made a
beeline for the vehicle.

Pulling apart the truck's underbelly, inspectors found two breadbox-sized
cavities in the gas tanks - but no drugs.

"This truck has been used for smuggling, probably heroin or coke. But this
was a dry run," Ongsioco said. "The smugglers are being careful; they are
testing us. But you know they'll be back with full tanks."

Authorities had to let the pair go but made them hire a tow truck to haul
off the pickup. Ongsioco said the vehicle was not legal for street use
because holes had been cut in the top of the gas tanks for access to the
hidden cavities. Fuel could slosh out and ignite, he said.

America's efforts to make it tougher for illegal immigrants, drug
traffickers and terrorists to cross even remote parts of the border have
brought smugglers back to formal border crossings, where more trucks, cars
and big rigs crammed with drugs are trying to slip across.

Sneaking drugs through the most-watched crossing points on a border
better-fortified since the Sept. 11 attacks, and now war in Iraq, is an
indication that smugglers are trying to throw more drugs at inspectors than
they can detect, U.S. and Mexican officials say. For every load caught,
countless others slip through.

"Antiterrorism efforts have pushed most of the loads back to us, back to
the border crossings all over," said Oscar Preciado, customs port director
at San Diego's San Ysidro entry point, the world's busiest land border
crossing.

Heightened security in the first weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks saw
drug-seizure quantities plummet along the border. But customs inspectors at
the 40 official crossings into Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas
have been busier lately.

Inspectors in South Texas set a record for their region in fiscal 2002 by
seizing 385,777 pounds of cocaine, heroin and marijuana. West Texas and New
Mexico border crossings also set a record in the period that ended Sept.
30, capturing 326,371 pounds of drugs.

"The smugglers are becoming more brazen," said Rick Pauza, a customs
spokesman for the crossing between Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.
"There's such a large quantity of narcotics that they're trying to move
through now that they are willing to lose substantial quantities if we find
them."

In California, drug seizures were down 30 percent last fiscal year, to
315,442 pounds. But Preciado said his inspectors were encountering more
test runs such as the one Ongsioco discovered, and the officers who do make
busts are finding larger loads.

"The smugglers aren't afraid to come at us," said Preciado, whose office
looks out on 24 lanes of cars waiting to cross into San Diego.

Authorities say more gangs are shipping Colombian cocaine to Mexico rather
than flying it directly to the United States.

Until the late 1990s, Colombian gangs flew cocaine into U.S. airports or
air-dropped it near the U.S. border for Mexican smugglers who used vans,
donkeys and human couriers to carry it north. Mexico's Juarez cartel used
Boeing 727s to fly drugs as far north as Manhattan.

But Mexican and U.S. authorities improved radar surveillance - a trend
reinforced in the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks. The U.S. Border
Patrol also increased surveillance of the terrain between formal border
crossings.

"Sept. 11 has made it harder to cross contraband into the United States,"
said Charles Harrison, special agent in charge of customs operations in
South Texas.

The Drug Enforcement Administration estimates that 75 percent of the
cocaine that reaches the western United States is shipped from South
America to Mexican harbors.

The journey begins with large Colombian ships carrying cocaine far out to
sea, near the Galapagos Islands, to rendezvous with Mexican-controlled
fishing vessels and speedboats.

Those boats then cross the 3,750 miles of ocean to western Mexico, moving
only at night. By day they lie still and use blue tarps as camouflage. Once
in Mexico, the cocaine is loaded on trucks, horse-drawn carts or
single-engine planes that carry it to stash houses and processing dens just
south of the U.S. border.

Antonio Martinez, attorney general for Mexico's Baja California state, said
efforts to close secret landing strips as well as crack down on crooked
police had hindered smuggling.

"But," he said, "anyone who says we don't have problems with drug
smuggling, with organized crime, and with the violence these elements bring
is living on another planet."