Pubdate: Wed, 06 Mar 2002 Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA) Copyright: 2002 San Jose Mercury News Contact: http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/390 Author: Kevin G. Hall 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and other security-enhancing innovations on the U.S. side, saying, "Our technological approach to the border is really outdated."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. - --- MAP posted-by: Alex