DRUGS SEEN TIED TO BORDER INCURSION

Rep. Tom Tancredo, who spent three days this week touring parts of the
U.S.-Mexico border, said yesterday he is convinced Mexican soldiers who
cross the border and have shot at American officials are tied to drug
smugglers.

"The amount of drug trafficking is becoming so intense, and that is always
what's connected to these incursions," said Mr. Tancredo, Colorado
Republican and the point man for immigration reform efforts in Congress, in
a telephone interview after touring the Tohono O'odham Indian reservation
in Arizona and the area near Calexico in California.

U.S. officials say Mexican soldiers repeatedly cross the international
border and, in some instances, have fired on U.S. authorities.

In one border incursion on the reservation in May, a U.S. Border Patrol
agent said Mexican soldiers in a Humvee with military markings shot at him,
shattering the rear window of his Chevrolet Suburban.

As head of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, Mr. Tancredo has
called on Mexico to take steps to prevent the incursions.

Mexican officials say they don't approve of incursions, but they question
whether the reported incidents are really on the U.S. side of the border,
and said the May shooting incident could have been drug runners disguised
as soldiers.

Because of crackdowns elsewhere along the border, drug and immigrant
smuggling has been funneled toward the 76 miles of the Tohono O'odham
reservation's border with Mexico.

Mr. Tancredo said two border communities on the reservation -- San Miguel
on the eastern side and Gu Vo, a village near Menagers Dam on the western
side -- are controlled by drug cartels.

"They have intimidated the people in these two villages, or co-opted them,
so they are actually participating," Mr. Tancredo said.

He said he saw 5-year-old children walking the village streets while stoned.

Mr. Tancredo talked with the Border Patrol agent who was shot at in May,
and said there's no question the incident was on American soil.

He also doubted the soldiers were fakes, and said going through all that
trouble to get uniforms and paint a Humvee would cost more than it would to
pay off Mexican military officials.

He said officials caught one vehicle crossing the border the same day,
confiscating 2,200 pounds of drugs, while another vehicle managed to escape
back over the border. That incident convinces him the soldiers often are
paid to protect the drug runners.

"There isn't a soul down there on that border, either Tohono O'odham police
or Border Patrol, who do not believe that is exactly what they are doing,"
he said.

Reservation officials told Mr. Tancredo they caught 55,922 illegal
immigrants between Oct. 1 and July 31 -- about 185 a day. But they
estimated that about 1,500 persons cross their border each day.

"They are being invaded -- and that's exactly the way they put it," he
said. "They do not know what to do, their whole life and lifestyle is just
being absolutely destroyed."

The Colorado Republican said the solutions include erecting the same kind
of walls, fences and cameras along the Indian reservation's segment of the
border as exist elsewhere. He also wants the Mexican government to do more
on its side.