BORDER WAR: MEXICAN POLICE JOIN DRUG LORDS

Part Three of Five

SONOYTA, Mexico - This isolated area of the U.S.-Mexico border, a 100-
mile-wide stretch of wild desert between the Organ Pipe Cactus National
Monument and Coronado National Forest, has become one of America's newest
drug corridors. Top Stories

Mexican drug lords, backed by corrupt Mexican military officers and police
officials, will move tons of marijuana, cocaine and heroin this year over
rugged desert trails to accomplices in Phoenix and Tucson for shipment to
willing buyers throughout the United States.

Most of the smuggling routes pass through the Tohono O'odham Nation, a
sprawling Indian reservation, where undermanned and outgunned tribal police
will confiscate more than 100,000 pounds of illicit drugs this year, about
300 pounds a day.

"They keep us running like you can't believe," said Detective Sgt. David
Cray, who heads the Tohono Police Department's anti-drug unit. "They have
two-way radios, night-vision gear, body armor and carry automatic weapons."

"They've put people on the hills to act as lookouts and use portable solar
panels to power their communications equipment," he said. "They have
powerful four-wheel-drive vehicles and are under orders not to stop - to
shoot their way through if they have to."

The smugglers, according to U.S. law-enforcement authorities, often are
protected by heavily armed Mexican military troops and police, who have
been paid handsomely to escort the drug traffickers and their illicit
shipments across the border and into the United States.

The drug lords are expected to spend more than $500 million this year in
bribes and payoffs to a cadre of Mexican military generals and police
officials to ensure that the illicit drugs reach their destination, the
authorities said.

Mexican smugglers will account for 80 percent of the cocaine and nearly
half the heroin that reaches the streets of America this year.

Law-enforcement authorities all along the U.S.-Mexico border are concerned
about the involvement of Mexican military troops and police in the alien-
and drug-smuggling business. Several officials said in interviews that many
Mexican police agencies along the border have been "totally corrupted" by
drug smugglers and that the corruption included a number of key Mexican
generals and other commanders.

Violence along the border, fueled by the drug trade, has spiraled out of
control, the officials said.

Corruption among Mexican police is so extensive, they said, that some U.S.
law-enforcement agencies refuse to work with their Mexican counterparts.
Mexican police officials have been tied not only to alien and drug
smuggling, but also to numerous incidents of extortion, bribery, robbery,
assault and kidnapping along the border.

Border Patrol agents in Douglas, Ariz., were pulled from their duty
stations after police in Aqua Prieta, Mexico, tipped U.S. authorities of a
pending drug shipment. Supervisors were fearful of putting their agents in
the middle of a shootout between rival drug gangs, each supported by
competing Aqua Prieta police.

About two dozen incursions by the Mexican military have been documented
this year, some of which resulted in unprovoked shootings, including one
recent incident involving a U.S. Border Patrol agent. Several
law-enforcement authorities along the border questioned why the Bush
administration has not made an issue of Mexican troops crossing into the
United States.

"I'm not sure what other country allows foreign military troops such
willy-nilly access," said one veteran Border Patrol agent, speaking on the
condition of anonymity. "I've seen them come across the border, heavily
armed and equipped, and I often wonder why we're not doing anything about it."

The Mexican military deployments have occurred all along the 1,940- mile
U.S.-Mexico border, from Texas, where Border Patrol agents in El Paso were
fired on in March 2000 by people in two Mexican army Humvees, to
California, where 10 Mexican soldiers shot at a Border Patrol helicopter in
October 2000.

Many of the incursions have occurred near this Mexican town, where drug
trafficking by Mexican smugglers has reached new levels.

"There's no doubt Mexican military units along the border are being
controlled by the drug cartels, and not by Mexico City," said Rep. Tom
Tancredo, Colorado Republican, who recently returned from a tour of the
Southwest border. "The military units operate freely, with little or no
direction, and several of them have made numerous incursions into the
United States."

"Mexican President Vicente Fox may be trying to take control of his
military, but there is a major disconnect between him and them -
particularly among the units along the U.S.-Mexico border," he said.

Mr. Tancredo, head of the 65-member Congressional Immigration Reform
Caucus, said the amount of drug trafficking in the remote regions of the
Southwest desert has become so intense that armed confrontations are a
constant threat.

He said the trafficking has been tied to Mexican drug cartels, and the
shipments often are protected - sometimes even delivered - by Mexican
military units.

"There isn't a soul down there on that border, either the Tohono O'odham
police or the Border Patrol, who do not believe that is exactly what the
Mexican military is doing," he said. "U.S. law- enforcement personnel
actually have watched the Mexican military unload drugs from their Humvees
to awaiting vehicles for transport into the United States."

Military Incursions Into America

Over the past five years, U.S. authorities have documented 118 incursions
by the Mexican military. It is not known how many times Mexican military
units have crossed undetected into the United States.

"I am amazed our government is not up in arms about this, but I am not
surprised," Mr. Tancredo said. "While we have the resources to actually
take control of our borders, including a combination of the U.S. military
and the Border Patrol, we lack the political will."

"Instead, we continue to send young men and women in harm's way, to be shot
at and, perhaps, killed. We're asking them to fight a war against an
invasion of illegal immigrants and drugs, but we fail to give them the
support they need to win that war."

The most recent documented Mexican military incursion occurred on May 17,
when a Border Patrol agent was fired on by three Mexican soldiers in a
military Humvee near what is known as the San Miguel gate on the Tohono
reservation, about 30 miles northwest of Nogales, Ariz. The gunfire, which
erupted shortly after 8:30 p.m., shattered the rear window of the U.S.
agent's four-wheel-drive vehicle.

The unnamed agent, after spotting the soldiers, had sought to avoid a
confrontation and, according to U.S. authorities, had turned his
significantly on the level of service we can provide to our own community,"
said acting Assistant Police Chief Joseph Delgado. "The Border Patrol has
pushed the illegal immigrants out of the cities and towns and to our
reservation, where we do not have the manpower to deal with the crunch. The
community is upset that we can't focus on them."

Chief Delgado noted that because of the flood of immigrants and drug
smugglers, the reservation has become a violent place for the 13,000 people
who call the Tohono O'odham nation home. He said alien smugglers and drug
smugglers refuse to stop for police and often race their four-wheel-drive
vehicles over the reservation's many dirt roads at speeds of up to 100
miles per hour.

"Our children are out in the community, and every day they have to face
these ruthless people," he said. "It is very frustrating that we have had
to divert our attention and our resources to focus not on our own community
but to deal with this rising immigration and drug problem."

"We're literally the front line of defense for the United States, and we
are doing the best we can," he said. "But I assure you, it's going to get
worse before it gets better."