Pubdate: Fri, 31 Dec 2004
Source: Arizona Republic (AZ)
Copyright: 2004 The Arizona Republic
Contact:  http://www.arizonarepublic.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/24
Author: Susan Carroll
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)

RECORD POT SEIZURES IN STATE LIKELY

TUCSON - In the peak of harvest season for marijuana, federal agents
along the Arizona-Mexico border are predicting another record year for
pot seizures, which have skyrocketed more than 440 percent during the
past decade.

Agents patrolling Arizona's border and inspecting cargo at the six
ports of entry intercepted more than 168,000 pounds of marijuana since
Oct. 1, the start of the federal fiscal year. Last year, agents in
southern Arizona confiscated a record amount of pot: more than 400
tons all told.

That's greater than the weight of the Statue of Liberty.

For decades, smugglers have used southern Arizona's canyons and
deserts to import drugs stealthily, but never in the state's history
has such a large volume of drugs flowed north, authorities said.
Funneled into Arizona by federal crackdowns in Texas and California,
smugglers are running into a record number of law enforcement officers
and are growing increasingly violent and creative, officials said.

"We all have bounties on our heads," Jim Hawkins, a senior U.S. Border
Patrol agent, said as he searched for marijuana smugglers on a chilly
night in Sycamore Canyon, outside Nogales.

Hawkins walked up and down steep, rocky hills near the border toting a
rifle and wearing a bulletproof vest. "It's all part of the game," he
said.

The violence associated with smuggling often heads north from the
border, with one in five homicides in Phoenix in 2003 linked to
smuggling drugs or people. Agents know they are outnumbered.

Smuggling is a multibillion-dollar business, although no agency gives
a concrete estimate for exactly how much money is involved in Arizona.

"Smuggling has been going on since the beginning of time almost," said
Kent W. Johansson, deputy special agent in charge for the U.S. Bureau
of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Tucson. "Unfortunately,
there's more of them than us."

The smuggling game

Tony Ryan, Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman, said officials
have identified scores of drug-trafficking organizations in Sonora and
Arizona, which share roughly 350 miles of border. Two major
trafficking organizations dominate: the Ismael "El Mayo"
Zambada-Garcia cartel and a cell of the infamous Arellano-Felix group,
which has possibly the bloodiest history of all Mexican drug-smuggling
organizations.

Mexican officials have identified the Zambada-Garcia organization in
connection with killings in Sonora, including the murder of an Agua
Prieta man indicted on U.S. drug-smuggling charges and slain in May at
a restaurant, along with two family members and a waiter.

In July, the U.S. government announced drug-related indictments
against Zambada-Garcia and 240 trafficking suspects in Mexico and the
United States, including Phoenix and Nogales. The DEA said the cartel
continues to be a major player along the Sonoran border.

The smugglers are known for their innovation when it comes to moving
drugs, officials said. Although much of the marijuana is carried into
the state by backpackers, dubbed mules, hauling bundles of 30 to 50
pounds, smugglers also vary tactics. They use vehicles with high-tech
equipment to run through the border or try to sneak loads past
inspectors at the ports, stashing pot in loads of produce or
merchandise.

The smuggling organizations in Mexico often post lookouts or armed
smugglers along the border to protect shipments, federal officials
said, increasing danger for agents. Hawkins said the lookouts cover
the escape routes for vehicles that drop loads of drugs in the United
States.

"They'll have a guy with a gun waiting on the other side," he said.
"They open up on us."

The drugs arrive at stash houses in Tucson and Phoenix, then are moved
to destinations around the United States, sometimes using elaborate
schemes. In November DEA agents arrested two Tucson men accused of
shipping 700 pounds of pot from Arizona to Massachusetts in acetylene
tanks, commonly found in welding shops. In December, Oklahoma
officials stopped a tractor-trailer from Tucson that contained four
coffins packed with pot.

"The smugglers are as creative as ever," Johansson said. "They try to
exploit whatever weaknesses they see along the border, and those
fluctuate almost daily. We try to stay one step ahead of the game, and
it's very difficult, human nature being what it is. The bad guys will
always come up with something different."

Killings hit home

Although officials said the large increase in marijuana seizures
during the past decade indicates more drugs coming through Arizona,
some also said it could be partly attributed to improved technology
and the swelling ranks of local, state and federal agents along the
state's border. The U.S. Border Patrol alone has more than 2,000
agents in Arizona.

Lt. Ken Hunter is intelligence director with the southern Arizona
High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas task force. He said
investigators are finding more big loads of marijuana and more weapons
in stash houses. Since January 2003, the agency has reported 17
seizures larger than 1,000 pounds at Tucson stash houses; it had found
only one load that large in all of the previous three years.

Increasingly, the smugglers are carrying guns, he said, with three
times as many weapons confiscated with marijuana seizures in 2003 than
in 2000.

The smuggling violence hits hard in Tucson and Phoenix, where the
drugs are stashed before they are sent on to other states around the
country. Rival organizations at the street level sometimes try to
steal loads of marijuana and, like those higher up in the smuggling
organizations, murder other distributors or their family members.

Take the killing of Maria Lucia Corella, 41, in Tucson. She and her
husband, Eduardo Corella, were in bed just after midnight Dec. 9 when
armed intruders kicked in a door decorated with Christmas wrapping
paper. Maria's mother and the couple's two kids were home and heard
the screaming and the gunshot.

When police arrived, Maria's mother cried, "Why did they kill my
daughter? Why? Why?" according to reports. Police say the motive was
clear: Intruders were looking for bundles of marijuana stashed in the
storage shed in the back yard.

Eduardo Corella, 47, was booked into a Pima County jail on charges of
marijuana possession for sale. Tucson police have not arrested anyone
in the killing. In 2004, investigators in Tucson have linked 12 of 55
homicides to drugs.

"There's a direct correlation between the homicide rate in southern
Arizona and the illegal drug trafficking trade in Arizona," Ryan said.
"There's no doubt about that."
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin