U.S., MEXICO TO TIGHTEN UP BORDER

Enhanced Security, Data-Sharing Planned

MEXICO CITY - The United States and Mexico soon will tighten their
vulnerable 2,000-mile common border, U.S. Homeland Security Director Tom
Ridge promised Tuesday.

"Neither the United States nor Mexico is satisfied with the border
arrangements we have today," Ridge said on a trip to Mexico. He pledged
more and better detection devices and other security-enhancing innovations
on the U.S. side, saying, "Our technological approach to the border is
really outdated."

President Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox will sign a joint border
security-improvement agreement March 22, Ridge said, when they meet in the
northern Mexican city of Monterrey.

Mexican border authorities had no immediate comment on Ridge's views on the
state of border security.

The porous U.S. border with Mexico has long been an open door to drug
traffickers and "coyotes" who smuggle illegal immigrants into the United
States. The majority of those smuggled are Mexicans, but in recent years
the smuggling has expanded to include people of many other nationalities.

Initial reports that some Sept. 11 terrorists entered the United States
through Mexico proved false, but the attacks intensified U.S. concern about
its borders. The United States and Canada already have signed a border
security-improvement measure.

One precondition of both deals is that tighter border security would not
interfere with commerce. Canada and Mexico are the United States' No. 1 and
No. 2 trading partners.

Ridge said the improvements would build on existing anti-drug efforts.

One initiative, he said, is so-called "smart" technology to distinguish
quickly between an executive from Fort Worth, Texas, who crosses the border
regularly on business and a potential terrorist crossing for the first time.

The two governments also are looking at preferential border-crossing
systems that speed through, say, regular shipments from a California-based
manufacturer to its Mexican subsidiary while flagging and slowing cargo
from an infrequent exporter whose load might include terrorist weaponry.

The Bush administration's fiscal 2003 budget proposes to spend $11 billion
on border security, $2.2 billion more than in 2002. Much would go to
patrolling the Canadian border, but Ridge said he also wants more high-tech
mobile and fixed X-ray machines to screen Mexican border cargoes.

The Mexican border threat was driven home last week when authorities
discovered an elaborate tunnel from the Mexican border city of Tecate to a
pig farm in the California city of the same name. If traffickers could move
drugs through the tunnel for years, why couldn't terrorists make the same trip?

"We can't guarantee a foolproof system," Ridge conceded.

Jeffrey Davidow, U.S. ambassador to Mexico, said better information-sharing
was the key.