Pubdate: Mon, 18 May 2009
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Copyright: 2009 Associated Press
Contact: http://www.dallasnews.com/cgi-bin/lettertoed.cgi
Website: http://www.dallasnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/117

INSPECTIONS OF MEXICO-BOUND TRAFFIC RISE

Newly Intensified Search For Cash, Weapons Being Smuggled From U.S. 
Yields Uneven Results

NOGALES, Ariz. (AP) - Hawks circle above the lines of traffic at the 
hot, arid border crossing into Mexico. Sagebrush catches clothes 
tossed by fence climbers. Three curious, dusty horses watch the 
federal agents who are tapping on car windows, opening trunks, 
looking in vain for contraband.

"We're sucking up a lot of exhaust out here," supervisory Customs and 
Border Protection officer Edith Serrano says.

This is what the Obama administration's new commitment to help Mexico 
fight its drug cartels looks like.

President Barack Obama this spring promised his Mexican counterpart, 
Felipe Caldersn, that the U.S. would fight two of the biggest 
contributions U.S. residents make to drug cartels: cash and weapons. 
The latter is hard to come by in Mexico.

For the past five weeks, hundreds of agents participating in a newly 
intensified $95 million outbound inspection program have been 
stepping into southbound traffic lanes and stopping 
suspicious-looking cars and trucks.

Associated Press reporters fanned out to the busiest crossings along 
the Mexican border - Laredo and El Paso; Nogales, Ariz.; and San 
Diego - to see how effective the inspections are.

The findings? Wads of U.S. currency headed for Mexico, wedged into 
car doors, stuffed under mattresses, taped onto torsos, were sniffed 
out by dogs, seized by agents and locked away for possible 
investigations. No guns were found as the reporters watched; they rarely are.

"I do not believe we can even make a dent in [southbound smuggling] 
because that assumes the cartels are complete idiots, which they're 
not. Why in the world would they try to smuggle weapons and currency 
through a checkpoint when there are so many other options?" said 
Border Patrol Agent T.J. Bonner, president of the agents' union.

According to Customs and Border Protection, between March 12 and 
April 30 officers seized:

. Fifty-one pieces of ammunition, weapons parts and guns, a fraction 
of the 2,000 weapons the Mexican government estimates are smuggled 
south every day.

. $12 million in cash, less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the $17 
billion to $39 billion the U.S. Justice Department estimates is 
illegally sent to Mexico from the U.S. annually, but more than the 
$10 million seized in outbound checks in 2008.

. Sixty-one people on charges involving weapons or currency offenses 
and on outstanding warrants.

Millions of cars pass into Mexico from the U.S. every year. The 
federal government doesn't keep track, but a count by Texas A&M 
International University's Texas Center for Border Economic and 
Enterprise Development shows more than 27 million vehicles a year 
drove into Mexico just from Texas.

The outbound checkpoints the AP observed stopped sometimes one of 
four cars, sometimes one of 100, and didn't make stops every day. 
Even that level of inspection created huge traffic backups at some 
locations and, agents said, might have allowed spies to call any 
smugglers heading that way and warn them to put off their Mexico trip.

Some of those stopped were annoyed.

"I guess they think I have drugs or something," said Daniel Saucedo, 
a 15-year-old Albuquerque, N.M., high school student who climbed out 
of the passenger side of a small white pickup truck with his two dogs 
last week in El Paso. "It's dumb."

William Molaski, port director in El Paso, said agents at his four El 
Paso bridges haven't found much since the focus on outbound checks 
started in early April - one handgun and about $400,000 - "but not 
for lack of trying."

Customs and Border Protection's 2010 budget request, released May 7, 
includes an additional $46 million targeted at southbound enforcement.

Customs inspectors' techniques range from primitive to high-tech, 
with about an equal success rate. Sometimes a small white truck 
drives slowly alongside vehicles that have been pulled over, beaming 
X-rays at them to reveal hidden cash or weapons. A smaller X-ray unit 
scans spare tires or pieces of luggage, a hand-held density meter 
called a "Buster" can reveal hidden compartments loaded with cash, a 
fiber-optic scope snaked into gas tanks looks for hidden cargo, and 
trained dogs can sniff out cash or weapons.

But before they get to any of the gadgets, officers knock with a 
knuckle or flat palm on a car's body panels. And they ask, again and 
again: "Do you have any weapons? Cash? Merchandise?"

Often the dogs make the finds.

Grill, a "currency canine," smelled something on 63-year-old Isabel 
Ortega Garcma on April 3 in Hidalgo, Texas, when Ortega was walking 
into Mexico. When Grill got excited, agents patted Ortega down and 
found $148,000 in neat wads of $100 bills taped around her waist.

Two weeks earlier in Laredo, Akim sniffed cash under the floor of a 
southbound bus. Under the seats, in a hidden compartment, were 75 
bundles of bills totaling $2,997,510.

But even finding that much cash doesn't always yield an arrest.

Without a U.S. attorney's say-so, the best an agent can do is seize 
cash in amounts over $10,000 that the traveler does not declare, hand 
them a receipt and send them on south.

The best-case scenario for agents who seize undeclared currency is 
that federal prosecutors decide to bring charges and begin a 
forfeiture procedure.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom