JAILS STRAINED BY BORDER BUSTS

BLAINE, Wash. (AP) - A flood of federal agents patrolling the Canadian
border for would-be terrorists instead are catching drug smugglers and
small-time criminals, who are beginning to clog local court systems.

"My jail is full," said Dale Brandland, sheriff of Whatcom County in the
nation's northwestern corner. The county has long contended with what
officials call the "border effect," when cases too small to interest
federal prosecutors are turned over to local jurisdictions.

But as more border agents start making more busts, they fear it's only
going to get worse.

"We are starting to stagger under this load," Whatcom County prosecutor
Dave McEachran wrote to Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., last fall.

County officials are hinting that unless they get more federal money, they
just might stop handling federal cases - a stance that counties along the
southwestern border have used to secure funding for the past few years.

The county contains the Blaine border crossing, the busiest crossing west
of Detroit, used to transport potent marijuana from British Columbia to
Seattle, Portland and California, and cocaine north to Canada.

About 8 million people cross the border at Blaine each year.

Of arrests made there by the feds, 85 percent to 90 percent - about 400 a
year - are handled by the Whatcom County prosecutor's office. Jailing,
prosecuting and providing legal help for those arrested usually runs the
county about $2.3 million a year, and officials expect that number to climb.

Currently, the federal government pays for one drug prosecutor and one
staff member for the county, for a total of about $100,000 a year.

That's more than the zero assistance given to St. Clair County, Mich.,
where the Blue Water Bridge links Port Huron to Sarnia, Ontario. Joseph
McCarthy Jr., the senior trial attorney in the county prosecutor's office,
said that for now, the cases his office handles - mostly of the drug and
weapons varieties - don't pose too great a burden.

But, he added: "Anytime you increase the enforcement, you're likely to
detect larger volumes of contraband.

"I can see the bridge from my office window, and I can tell you the
semi-truck traffic is barely crawling. The more thoroughly you inspect, the
more you're going to find there."

In May, President Bush signed a bill authorizing 1,600 new immigration
officers along the United States' 5,000-mile border with Canada by 2006.
That includes 100 new agents for Washington this year.

In his letter to Rep. Larsen, the prosecutor asked for more financial
support from the federal government to handle the increased case load.

The letter contained a barely veiled threat: When the federal government
began focusing on stemming illegal immigration from Mexico in the 1990s,
several Texas counties simply refused to handle federal arrests until the
federal government agreed to pay for them, McEachran noted.

Now, the Justice Department compensates those counties and others in the
Southwest for every case they handle. El Paso County, Texas, across the
border from Juarez, has received $2 million in the past 2 1/2 half years,
said District Attorney Jaime Esparza.

No one is suggesting the problem along the northern border is that serious.
Still, the county's jail averaged 250 prisoners a day in 2001 - 17 over
capacity, an overpopulation that can be attributed at least in part to
border cases.

John McKay, the U.S. attorney in Seattle, said it's unlikely the Justice
Department will start reimbursing counties in Washington state, but there
are other things the federal government can do. One possibility: assign a
full-time federal prosecutor, and possibly even a federal judge, to Whatcom
County.

"We need to deploy our resources in a different way," McKay said. "Our
principal focus now is terrorism, but with added resources we're going to
see more drug cases, more arrests, and that's going to put more pressure on
the court system."

On the Net:

U.S. attorney: http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/waw/

Whatcom County prosecutor: http://www.co.whatcom.wa.us/prosecut/home.htm