Jerry Seper

Border War: Mexican police join drug lords

Wed Sep 25 06:11:48 2002
208.152.73.47

Border War: Mexican police join drug lords

By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

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.

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 clearly marked, green-and-white Border Patrol
vehicle away from the Humvee when it was hit by gunfire.
The Mexican soldiers were armed with assault rifles.
One bullet was deflected by the vehicle's prisoner partition,
located directly behind the agent's seat. It then knocked out the
right rear window. The agent involved has been on the job for
about a year, authorities said.
Earlier that day and in the same area, Border Patrol agents
had confiscated 2,200 pounds of drugs from a vehicle that had
crossed into the United States, although a second vehicle had
escaped back into Mexico.
Edward Tuffly, president of the National Border Patrol
Council Local 2544, asked in a message posted online to union
members why the U.S. government was slow to acknowledge
the incident. "The politicians will run like hell to avoid
'offending' anyone," he wrote.
Local 2544 represents Border Patrol agents in the Tucson
sector. The National Border Patrol Council represents more
than 8,000 nonsupervisory Border Patrol agents.
The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, which
oversees the Border Patrol, is investigating the May incident.
The INS has asked the Mexican government also to
investigate the shooting.
In August, U.S. National Park Service ranger Chris Eggle,
28, was killed on the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument
while trying to apprehend two men fleeing Mexican law
enforcement, who had crossed the border into the United
States. One of the men shot Mr. Eggle just below his
bulletproof vest.
U.S. authorities have since identified the suspected
assailant as Panfilo Murillo Aguila, a Mexican national known
as "El Zarco," a known drug smuggler in the Sonoyta area.
Arrest warrants also have been issued in the case for two
former Mexican soldiers identified as Rogelio Velasquez
Jocobi and Carlos Perez Sanchez.
Helping the drug trade
Questions concerning the Mexican military's involvement in
the drug trade, however, are long-standing.
In 1998, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
reported an extensive connection between drug traffickers in
Mexico and senior members of the Mexican army. The DEA
said at the time that it avoided cooperating with Mexican army
officers for fear that intelligence would be passed on to drug
smugglers.
Former DEA Administrator Donnie Marshall told a House
subcommittee in 1999 that drug traffickers "have long had the
ability to corrupt public officials and institutions throughout the
world," noting that the Mexican military was not exempt.
At the time, Mexican military officers assigned to an elite
anti-drug smuggling group had been arrested in Mexico City on
charges of drug trafficking and alien smuggling. Among those
arrested were several captains and majors, all of whom had
been assigned to the Mexican Attorney General's Office as
anti-narcotics agents.
Since Mr. Fox's 2000 election there has been an increase in
the number of arrests of Mexican government and military
officials, along with the creation of a federal drug-enforcement
unit that has seized tons of narcotics and made numerous
arrests.
Mexican authorities also have been more willing to work
with their U.S. counterparts, and a number of the leaders and
top lieutenants from all four of Mexico's major drug cartels
have been arrested.
The Mexican government has denied that any part of its
military is working with the drug cartels, saying in a recent
statement that military units along the border are working the
same areas as the U.S. Border Patrol in fighting the illegal
transport of drugs and people into this country.
The statement said that sometimes the troops "get lost in
those areas," noting that there is "no clear marking for the
border" in many regions. Mexican Defense Department
officials have declined to say how many soldiers are patrolling
the U.S.-Mexico border or to comment on the incursions.
Many U.S. law-enforcement authorities doubt the
contention that the units were lost.
"Some of these 'lost' units are carrying drugs, and we've
seen them before," said a second veteran Border Patrol agent,
speaking on the condition of anonymity. "Besides, if they are
lost, why are they shooting at us instead of asking for
directions?"
The politics of immigration
The White House opposes the stationing of U.S. troops on
the Mexican border for "cultural and historical reasons."
President Bush, former governor of Texas, has sought to
appeal to Hispanic voters through such initiatives as promoting
a Western Hemispheric free trade zone, giving amnesty to 4

• Border War: (Cont'd) — Jerry Seper, Wed Sep 25 06:18