Pubdate: Sun, 03 Sep 2000 Source: Houston Chronicle (TX) Copyright: 2000 Houston Chronicle Contact: Viewpoints Editor, P.O. Box 4260 Houston, Texas 77210-4260 Fax: (713) 220-3575 Website: http://www.chron.com/ Forum:http://www.chron.com/content/hcitalk/index.html Author: Mike Glenn LAREDO PATROL WELCOMES MILITARY, BUT SOME RESIDENTS SAY IT'S TOO MUCH Soldiers On The Border LAREDO -- The camouflaged Army helicopters lifted off with a dust- churning roar from the abandoned airstrip and gently swung toward the west. The only light came from the iridescent glow of the cockpit controls. The OH-58D Kiowa Warriors quickly picked up speed and split up -- half moving out of the area for training and the rest racing toward the border to conduct surveillance missions. The nine Kiowa Warriors, plus an additional medevac Blackhawk helicopter, were from the Echo Troop "Renegades" of the 1st Squadron, 10th Cavalry Regiment. Their destination that late August night wasn't a troubled region in the Balkans or the Middle East. The Renegades were heading for Laredo. Some lawmakers and activists predicted that the May 1997 shooting death of an 18-year-old West Texas goatherder by a Marine Corps surveillance team would end the military's role in the drug war, especially along the U.S. border with Mexico. That has not been the case. While there was heated, vocal opposition to the policy immediately after Esequiel Hernandez Jr. was shot to death by a camouflaged Marine corporal looking for drug smugglers, the public uproar faded quickly. Armed infantry patrols that were suspended after the shooting are an option again, although no patrol has been dispatched since Hernandez's death. Still, the Defense Department continues to mount a vigorous program to support the government's war on narcotics trafficking. "At any one time, we have up to 90 missions going on throughout the country," said Armando Carrasco, a spokesman for Joint Task Force-6. That is the El Paso-based command that continues to coordinate military support for anti-drug operations. "Missions can vary from a couple of weeks up to 179 days. One of the factors is the availability of the units." The wide variety of military assistance still being provided to local, state and federal law-enforcement agencies includes road- and fence- building along the southern border, anti-drug intelligence analysis and Special Forces training teams. The Special Forces instruct police in topics ranging from marksmanship to interview and interrogation techniques. JTF-6 also offers aerial observation and reconnaissance support for law- enforcement agencies. Laredo Border Patrol officials took the military up on that offer, which brought the Renegades from their home base at Fort Hood in Central Texas to the strip of concrete on a ranch about 30 miles east of the city. Capt. Chad Smith, commander of the Echo Troop aviators, had been on four other drug surveillance missions. He said the operations are conducted as if his soldiers were heading into combat. "When we go out and fly our missions, they are going to do a full battle drill," said Smith, 30. "We do everything but weapons engagement." While the Kiowa Warriors are capable of firing missiles, rockets and machine guns, the Echo Troop aviators left their weapons at Fort Hood. The Border Patrol was more interested in the array of sophisticated electronics the helicopters carry in their role as reconnaissance aircraft. With its infrared thermal imaging capability and accurate navigation system, the Kiowa Warrior can give precise target locations to both a military commander in combat and a law-enforcement agency that wants help. "It's all kind of green. You can make out individuals on occasion," said Chief Warrant Officer Luis Correa, 33, describing how targets appear with the night-vision equipment. "You can tell if their vehicle was driven recently, because the engine would be hot." As a fuel tanker rolled up to top off his helicopter prior to the night's mission, Correa said the aviators were told to restrict their patrol locations to areas along the Rio Grande known as drug pipelines into the United States. "We're looking for individuals moving around and being where they should or shouldn't be. We give them (Border Patrol agents) the information, and we move on," Correa said. "The law is very specific on what we can do and not do. We can't be chasing around American citizens." The Army troops, who returned to their Fort Hood base four days later, on Aug. 26, spent about three weeks in the Laredo sector. JTF-6 officials declined to be specific about the length of the assignment, citing security concerns. The largest single drug seizure during their time on the border occurred on the Aug. 22 mission. One of the Kiowa Warriors went to Zapata, about 50 miles south of Laredo, after a Border Patrol agent came across 5,000 pounds of marijuana with an estimated street value of more than $4 million. The unarmed helicopter crew hovered in the area, with its lights turned on, to ward off any smugglers who might be nearby. *** Pentagon involvement in the drug war began several years before the Hernandez shooting, when the posse comitatus law, which forbids military involvement in law enforcement, was loosened in 1989. Civilian law-enforcement powers are not conferred on soldiers assigned to JTF-6 missions, unit spokesman Carrasco said. "Our personnel do not detain, search, seize or arrest. All they are doing is identifying an illegal activity for the Border Patrol," he said. "The Border Patrol is making the judgment based on their expertise. The military is not involved in that decision process." Military operations coordinated by JTF-6 must focus on stopping the drug trade. Opponents of the military's role contend, however, that the Fort Hood aviators -- and other units assigned to the border -- aren't able to distinguish between drug smugglers and undocumented workers. "There's no way you can line up hundreds of military personnel along the border and not get involved in immigration. It's a no-brainer," said Roberto Martinez of the American Friends Service Committee, a human rights group. Officials deny that troops are being used in rounding up illegal immigrants. Anyone inadvertently identified by the helicopters, however, will be taken into custody, said the second-in-command of Laredo's Border Patrol sector. "We have no way of telling what their immigration status is before they get into that river, while they are in that river or when they get on the other side of the river," said George A. Gunnoe, assistant chief patrol agent. "If we happen to catch them, we have no way of telling. Immigration is not the question here, not in our minds." The Border Patrol has the primary responsibility for intercepting drugs coming across the 2,000-mile border from Brownsville to San Diego. While the number of agents in the Laredo sector has grown in recent years, some admit privately that there aren't enough officers to do the job. They welcomed the Renegade aviators and the military engineers who built a road they use near the border fence line. "When they come out here, it is great," Border Patrol Supervisory Agent Robert P. Swathwood Jr. said, gunning his truck up Mines Road, a lonely stretch of blacktop along the border that drug smugglers often use. Agent J.W. Marshall, a four-year veteran of the Border Patrol, said he would rather have military personnel fighting drug traffickers along the Rio Grande than going on missions halfway around the world. "What better way to pay back the community than show their tax dollars at work?" he said. "Let's take care of home first." The former Army officer's job was coordinating with the helicopter troops on the night's mission. "I've worked a lot of operations with the aerial guys. I can speak their language," he said. "I think they are very productive. If the wind is in their favor, those aircraft can be stealthy." **** Antagonism to the use of military forces to combat drug trafficking may have dropped off in the years since Hernandez, a high school student with no criminal history, was killed while tending his family's goats on a bluff near Big Bend National Park on the Rio Grande. A four-man undercover team had trailed him for 20 minutes before Hernandez fired his .22-caliber rifle twice. It was not clear whether he knew what he was firing at. A grand jury declined to indict the Marine who fired the lethal shot, but the U.S. government agreed to a $1.9 million wrongful-death settlement with the family. Pockets of opposition to the military's anti-drug role can still be found in places like Laredo, where the Border Patrol's green-and-white trucks are a familiar sight. Even if it is not violating the letter of posse comitatus, the American Friends Service Committee's Martinez argues, using the military even in a supportive role breaches the spirit of the Civil War-era law. "There's just so much out there already that has created an image of a fortress mentality like the Berlin Wall," Martinez said. "The pressure from several hawk legislators and anti-immigrant groups is to put the military on the border. Now, we're getting closer to that reality." Louis H. Bruni, a two-term Laredo city councilman, worries about the impact the military's presence will have on Laredo's relationship with Nuevo Laredo, its sister city across the Rio Grande. "I don't think we need the military between two friendly nations. It's not what we want for Laredo," he said. Michael Yoder, a professor at Laredo's Texas A&M University- International, called the military's presence in the area "racist, jingoistic and condescending." "We've lost the war on drugs. We're only fighting the supply," he said, adding that he believes the military's role will expand. "It'll grow until this is the most highly militarized border in the world," Yoder said. But even in Laredo, opposition to using the military along the border has cooled since Hernandez's death, Yoder admitted. "People were outraged (by Hernandez's death), but since then a lot of people have forgotten," he said. "We still have economic problems. It's a low-wage town, and we're dependent on Washington." The Mexican consul general in Laredo acknowledged that placing military forces along the Rio Grande is a "touchy subject." "Every country, of course, has the sovereign right to mobilize their personnel and resources within their borders," said Daniel Hernandez- Joseph. "It makes people wary when it happens near the border." While admitting that the Mexican government has its own military garrisons along its side of the Rio Grande, he waved away concerns that Mexico will try to match the U.S. effort. "We don't need to necessarily have mirror images of your actions," he said. "It assumes the relationship is belligerent, which it is not." About a week after the Army troops returned to their base, Gunnoe said he considered their mission an unqualified success. The Border Patrol doesn't measure success by how many pounds of drugs are confiscated, he said. "It seems to have disrupted them (the smugglers)," Gunnoe said. "Their activity has kind of gone to ground. The uncertainty of what's in the area has forced them to lay low for a while." - --- MAP posted-by: John Chase