DRUG LORDS TRAFFIC IN PEOPLE

Mexican Immigrants Are Used to Divert Border Forces From Narcotics Routes

SASABE, Sonora - Mexican drug lords are taking over the business of
smuggling immigrants into the United States, using them as human
decoys to divert authorities from billions of dollars in cocaine
shipments across the same border.

U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials told The Associated Press
that drug traffickers, in response to a U.S. border crackdown, have
seized control of the routes they once shared with human smugglers and
are transforming themselves into more diversified crime syndicates.

The drug gangs get protection money from the immigrants and then
effectively use them to clear the trail for the flow of drugs.

Undocumented immigrants are used "to maneuver where they want us or
don't want us to be," said Alonzo Pena, chief of investigations for
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Arizona.

Gustavo Soto, a spokesman for the U.S. Border Patrol in Tucson, Ariz.,
said smugglers are carrying drugs along paths once used primarily by
immigrants. New fences and National Guard troops have helped seal the
usual drug routes, and vehicle barriers are forcing traffickers to
send more drugs north on the backs of cartel foot soldiers, he said.

The advent of drug-trafficking extortionists along the border might
also be responsible for much of the drop in illegal immigration that
U.S. officials have attributed to better enforcement, Mexican
officials and analysts say.

The new order became clear in December when heavily armed men stopped
12 vans packed with 200 emigrants on a desolate desert road just south
of the border. Local officials say they ordered everyone out, doused
the vehicles with gasoline and set them ablaze.

Nobody was hurt, but the charred carcasses of the vehicles remain an
unmistakable message to the thousands traveling north on the top
people-smuggling route.

Since then, members of the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel have
consolidated control of most of the main routes into Arizona, using
teams of gunmen to set up the haggard border-crossers as decoys for
U.S. security, U.S. and Mexican officials said.

Just south of the Arizona border, near the key way station of Sasabe,
armed men at a gas station stop vans full of people heading north,
charging them $90 each and dictating when and where they can cross,
immigrants and local officials told the AP.

At times, the emigrants are pooled and sent across in large numbers at
one time of the day, clearing the route for a drug shipment a short
time later. Smugglers also direct people away from successful drug
routes in hopes of minimizing the personnel U.S. authorities assign to
the area.

"The drug traffickers won't allow migrants to enter because the area
will 'heat up' and the U.S. Border Patrol will be on alert," one
Mexican official said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of
retribution. "They want control so they can 'cool off' the area and go
in with their cargo."

While the Sinaloa cartel controls the Arizona border, its main rival,
the Gulf cartel, has become involved in the people-smuggling business
along the Texas border, according to Noe Ramirez, a Mexican deputy
attorney general.

Federal police have seen the same trend.

"Drug smugglers are shifting toward people- and arms-smuggling," said
Patricio Patino, a top Mexican security official.

People-smuggling is only part of the cartels' new efforts to
diversify.

The Mexican border is providing a less reliable profit stream for drug
smugglers, analysts and law enforcement officials say. The U.S. seized
20 percent more cocaine and 28 percent more marijuana along the border
in the past six months, compared with the same period a year earlier.

The cartels now collect protection money from all manner of
businesses, much like traditional U.S. mafia organizations. In many
parts of Mexico, the cartels dictate everything from who shines shoes
on street corners to who is chosen as police chief.

President Felipe Calderon vowed two weeks ago to intensify his
crackdown on the cartels in response to violence. Headless or tortured
bodies turn up in public places nearly every day.

The border has become especially bloody, and some of the violence
appears to be connected to people-smuggling. Mexican officials say the
violence is scaring emigrants.

In the 10 months since the arrival of National Guard troops, 271,195
people have been detained along the Arizona border, an 18 percent drop
from the period a year ago, according to the Border Patrol.

"Now migrants are facing two sets of controls: the U.S. Border Patrol
and criminals," a Mexican immigration official said on condition of
anonymity.