Pubdate: Sun, 26 May 2002 Source: Newsday (NY) Copyright: 2002 Newsday Inc. Contact: http://www.newsday.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/308 Author: Melanie Lefkowitz KIDDIE COURIERS Recent Arrests Renew Focus on Child Drug Mules The pair of green, hard-sided suitcases caught an inspector's eye immediately. The flight into Kennedy Airport last month was considered high-risk for drugs - Avianca Airlines from Bogota. The suitcases were a kind frequently used for drug concealment. When the inspector noticed the bags again, a flight attendant was wheeling them away from the baggage carousel, accompanying two people: an elderly woman and a 5-year-old girl. The inspector wasn't surprised when she found more than a kilogram of heroin in the lining of one suitcase. But she was shocked to learn it was the 5-year-old's bag. "I was upset about it," said the inspector, who did not want her name printed. "She was an innocent little girl, and they used her." U.S. Customs Service inspectors have seen just about everything. Drugs sewn into women's hairpieces. Surgically implanted in men's thighs. And a new one - liquefied heroin that is soaked into clothes, then dried, to be extracted later. "We get a little used to everything here," said Sam Stabile, chief of a team of 35 roving inspectors who make more than 90 percent of Kennedy Airport's drug seizures. "But the thing that always hits you is when you see them using children." The recent arrest of a 12-year-old boy who swallowed 87 bags of heroin has focused public outrage on the use of children as drug mules. But the employment of innocent-seeming children to sneak drugs into the country - in their bellies, their bags or their clothes - is nothing uncommon, and nothing new. Last week, authorities arrested five people in Queens and six in New Jersey for allegedly recruiting students at a West New York, N.J., high school to smuggle heroin into the United States from Colombia, Guatemala and Aruba. The group in New Jersey usually would swallow drugs - a practice that led to the death of one young mule last year - while those in Queens instructed couriers to soak clothes in liquid heroin, customs officials said."Unfortunately, we've seen drug traffickers use drastic measures for years," said Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Customs Service in Washington, D.C. "It's really up to their imaginations. If they think it will work, they'll try it." The number of children used as drug mules has remained fairly steady since 1997 - between 500 and 650 people younger than 18 are arrested or detained at all United States entry points each year. In 2001, 555 juveniles were discovered. At Kennedy Airport alone, 63 minors have been arrested during the past five years. That number doesn't include Prince Nnaedozie Umegbolu, the 12-year-old who slipped by inspectors with 87 bags of heroin in his belly on April 11 after arriving at Kennedy from Nigeria. Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police arrested him later at LaGuardia Airport, when he turned himself in after becoming sick during a cab ride. Prince, who has been in custody since his discharge from the hospital, faces a sentence of up to 18 months in a juvenile facility. Prince is on the younger end of the spectrum for so-called drug mules, who more typically are 16 or 17. The 5-year-old girl with the heroin-laden suitcase is believed by customs officials to be the youngest drug courier ever caught. Children caught with drugs generally face criminal charges if they seem old enough to understand what is going on, officials said. If children are suspected of carrying narcotics, inspectors search their luggage and bring them to a private room for questioning. It's during the course of that interview that inspectors decide whether the child knows what's happening. At that point, inspectors will either make an arrest or start looking around for the relatives who may be waiting there to meet them, Stabile said. Experts say the decision to charge juvenile couriers, which usually falls to the U.S. Attorney's office, is a difficult one, as most of the perpetrators - whether they understand what they've done or not - are probably victims themselves. "They're recruited into this dangerous trade," said Eric Sterling, who helped draft federal drug laws during former President Ronald Reagan's administration and now runs the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, which promotes treatment over prosecution for drug users.. "One of the dangers that I'm sure the children aren't told about is that the drugs can leak out of the condoms they have swallowed and poison them," he said. "The risk of going to prison is a great one. Another one is that members of their families could be killed if they're believed to be cooperating with the government." Sometimes, officials say, children comply with the traffickers because the amount of money they're offered seems too great to turn down - as seemed to be the case with Prince, who told his mother he jumped at the $1,900 they offered so he could return to her in Atlanta. Other times, they have no idea what they're carrying - such as the 5-year-old girl, whose mother, Marian Lorena Conde, 32, was arrested in Colombia last month. Traffickers use children in a sweeping variety of ways. For example, 35 people were arrested in Chicago last year for "renting" infants to drug smugglers in the hopes that babies would make them seem less suspicious while traveling. In November 2000, inspectors at Kennedy stopped a 15-year-old boy who had swallowed 63 pellets containing 2,079 tablets of Ecstasy. In April 1999, a 13-year-old girl and her 11-year-old cousin, both wearing Sunday dresses, were found in Miami to be carrying two shampoo bottles filled with a total of 7 pounds of cocaine. Stabile said his inspectors don't focus heavily on children, but they do tend to be especially suspicious of anyone flying on a high-risk flight, regardless of age or circumstance. His inspectors - who usually have about 10 seconds to decide whether to stop and question passengers - must rely on clues or instinct. And sometimes, that clue may be a child traveling conspicuously alone. "It's no secret the kids are being used," he said. Seized Drugs: Far more heroin and Ecstasy were seized at Kennedy Airport in the past eight months than during the same period a year earlier. Heroin Seizures Oct. 1, 2000 - May 21, 2001 104 Oct. 1, 2001 - May 21, 2002 179 +72% Change Pounds of Heroin Seized Oct. 1, 2000 - May 21, 2001 517.28 Oct. 1, 2001 - May 21, 2002 1,636.16 +216% Change Ecstasy Seizures Oct. 1, 2000 - May 21, 2001 44 Oct. 1, 2001 - May 21, 2002 43 -2% Change Pills Seized Oct. 1, 2000 - May 21, 2001 465,786 Oct. 1, 2001 - May 21, 2002 1,459,853 +213% Change Cocaine Seizures Oct. 1, 2000 - May 21, 2001 158 Oct. 1, 2001 - May 21, 2002 158 No Change Pounds of cocaine seized Oct. 1, 2000 - May 21, 2001 869.13 Oct. 1, 2001 - May 21, 2002 814.64 -6 % Change Kid Drug Couriers Number of people younger than 18 stopped for drug possession nationally.* They include those trying to enter the country by air, land or sea. 1997 - 500 1998 - 648 1999 - 610 2000 - 646 2001 - 555 SOURCE: U.S. Customs Service - --- MAP posted-by: Alex