COUNTY NOT GETTING CASH TO PROSECUTE FEDERAL DRUG DEFENDANTS

EL PASO, Texas (AP) - Federal payments to the El Paso district attorney's
office for prosecuting hundreds of federal narcotics cases have been suspended.

A year after a plan between Congress and border counties was arranged to
pay counties for the extra work, the funds were temporarily pulled back.

The funds are not being terminated, but temporarily postponed, said Daryl
Fields, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice for the Western
District of Texas.

"The funds are not in jeopardy," Fields said in Sunday's El Paso Times.
"The money is still there; it's just being realigned."

The DA's office in El Paso got $1.27 million through the program in January.

With drug crackdowns on the rise as a result of intensified border
scrutiny, federal prosecutors had been spending millions of dollars to
prosecute petty federal seizures.

Two years ago, El Paso District Attorney Jaime Esparza and other border
district attorneys refused to accept any more federal drug cases, citing a
drain on their resources.

An agreement reached early last year devised a payment plan for the drug cases.

Since 2000, the El Paso County district attorney's office has accepted at
least 415 cases a year, said spokeswoman Renee Railey.

Esparza and other border prosecutors stopped accepting the cases in October
2000 after the counties were not reimbursed for the hundreds of federal
cases the counties prosecuted each year.

Esparza said prosecuting the cases had become too expensive to undertake
without federal reimbursement.

In March 2001, border prosecutors resumed taking the smaller cases when a
reimbursement plan was developed.

Joe Rubio, district attorney for Zapata and Webb counties, also stopped
prosecuting federal marijuana cases in 1997.

Webb County, which has one of the lowest per-capita incomes in the nation,
was spending at least $1 million annually just for jail expenses.