Pubdate: Sun, 20 Aug 2006 Source: Lexington Herald-Leader (KY) Copyright: 2006 Lexington Herald-Leader Contact: http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/240 Author: Kevin G. Hall BORDER A SMUGGLER'S HAVEN Texas Overwhelmed By Trafficking Of Drugs And People RIO GRANDE CITY, Texas - At a convenience store in this desolate border town, a man parks his black Ford pickup with tinted windows and begins hawking a live zebra. The animal, bleeding and abused, usually is found on the African Serengeti. But in this poor town in one of the poorest counties in the United States, the asking price is $6,000 cash -- no questions asked. Welcome to the U.S.-Mexico border, where just about anything can and does happen. The zebra salesman is a grim reminder of the Wild West atmosphere that prevails along much of the 2,000-mile border, where drugs, people and money are smuggled 24/7. Before the arrest last week of Javier Arellano FZlix, the alleged leader of Mexico's ruthless Tijuana drug cartel, the national debate over illegal immigrants crossing the border drove the drug war off the front pages. But make no mistake about it, America's drug war rages on. Here in the Rio Grande Valley sector, cocaine seizures by Border Patrol agents have more than doubled so far this fiscal year and account for more than half of all Border Patrol seizures along the southern border. Halting the flow of illicit drugs here, much like the flow of illegal immigrants, is nearly impossible. There are about 1,400 Border Patrol agents assigned to cover an area that spans 18,584 square miles, including along the Rio Grande river and the Gulf of Mexico. That's about one agent for every 13.3 square miles. On any given day, traffickers smuggle cocaine into and around border towns such as Roma and Rio Grande City, where 60 percent of the children live in poverty and only 6 percent of the population has attended college. Go west of McAllen and walk along the banks of the Rio Grande -- called the Rio Bravo, or Angry River, in Mexico -- and evidence of illicit activity abounds. On the Mexican side of the river, smugglers and would-be undocumented workers loiter, waiting for night to fall. On the U.S. side, discarded tires, clothes and assorted trash litter the most remote riverbanks -- the byproduct of drug and immigrant smuggling. "We see a steady flow throughout the whole Rio Grande Valley sector," Jose Vicente Rodr'guez, a Border Patrol agent and spokesman, said during a tour of an inland highway checkpoint in Falfurrias. For years, Mexicans thought the drug trade was a U.S. problem that needed to be tackled by quelling the demand of addicts and recreational drug users. Today, Mexico is wrestling with an alarming increase in drug use among its youth and an explosion of violence deep in its interior. Existing and up-and-coming drug gangs are gunning it out for control of entry routes in the south and domestic distribution. U.S. officials say Mexico's outgoing president, Vicente Fox, has done more than any other leader in Mexican history to cooperate in the drug war. After Dec. 1, the task falls to the country's apparent president-elect, conservative Felipe Calder--n. "Relations with Mexico have never been better. We're getting (intelligence) from Mexico that we've never gotten before," a senior U.S. law-enforcement official who requested anonymity because of his ongoing work in the drug war said in reference to federal-level cooperation. "Six years ago, we would have gotten, 'You're going to do what with Mexico?' We're hopeful that we'll be able to build on the progress we've made with the Fox administration." During Fox's six-year term, Benjamin Arellano FZlix, alleged former leader of the Tijuana cartel, and Osiel Cardenas, leader of the Juarez cartel, were arrested. Calder--n has acknowledged that Fox's success in disrupting the cartels has come with a price: escalating violence within Mexico and along the border. Calder--n has discussed creating a super-agency to combat drug trafficking, but U.S. officials would prefer to see Calder--n focus on legal revisions that would make it easier to prosecute and extradite trafficking suspects.