Pubdate: Sat, 21 May 2011 Source: Monitor, The (McAllen, TX) Copyright: 2011 The Monitor Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/qsOVHygd Website: http://www.themonitor.com Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1250 Author: Jared Taylor INVESTIGATORS QUESTION RISING NUMBERS OF DRUG SMUGGLERS CLAIMING FORCED RECRUITMENT BY MEXICAN CARTELS NEAR DONNA -- A U.S. Border Patrol agent spotted the men as they approached the floodway levee under the moonlight early Friday morning. She focused an infrared telescope on the figures, tracking seven men as they marched north near Farm-to-Market Road 493 about 2:15 a.m. Friday, according to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in McAllen. Each person carried a large bundle with about 35 pounds of marijuana strapped to their backs. The agent quietly kept the LORIS scope focused on the figures for nearly two hours. Finally, about 4:45 a.m., a Border Patrol helicopter swept over the area. The men dropped the bundles and scattered into the brush. The helicopter pilot spotted four of the seven smugglers huddled under bushes about 5:30 a.m. Friday. Agents swept in and arrested the four men --between 18 and 34 years of age -- all natives of Rio Bravo, Tamps., just south of the Rio Grande from Donna. Three other smugglers escaped. Agents seized seven bundles of marijuana that weighed 351 pounds. Each of the four men detained told similar stories to a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration task force investigator: Unknown gunmen picked them up in Rio Bravo, telling them they were going to work. One of the gunmen put a pistol to his head, saying he needed to carry the load, one man said. Another said he was taken to an empty lot, held in a vacant lot for a day and beaten in the abdomen and buttocks with a plank of wood. They told him he needed to carry the bundles. The case is the latest in a recent trend among drug smugglers caught in the Rio Grande Valley. They tell investigators they were forced into moving drug loads to avoid injury to themselves or their families. Federal investigators say many of the claims are alibis to garner sympathy and possibly a lighter penalty once their cases go to court. But those who track criminal activity in Mexico say the stories are part of a troubling trend that parallels recent discoveries of hundreds of slain migrants in Tamaulipas and other northern states. Mexican investigators have said Zeta assassins killed many of the migrants after they refused to join their ranks. "It's part of the norm where these guys are desperate to recover their attrition," said a spokesman for Grupo Savant, a Washington D.C.-based private security firm that operates throughout Mexico. "They're losing so many fighters that they don't have enough to continue the fight against the Gulf Cartel." Will Glaspy, who heads the DEA office in McAllen, said he doubts many smugglers' claims of cartel conscription. Waves of smugglers claiming extortion have emerged and subsided in the past. "The majority of them are stories that are being made up," he said. "They're doing it for some other means, but it's a trend right now that we are seeing." Drug trafficking organizations like the Zetas and Gulf Cartel, which move most of the narcotics through northeast Mexico into South Texas, also have targeted more affluent Mexicans with visas who are able to legally cross the border, said George W. Grayson, author of Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State?. Recruiting Mexican nationals with immigration visas may draw less scrutiny from U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at international ports of entry, he said. Josue Arturo Paniagua said he was in that situation when customs officers arrested him April 30 in Hidalgo. The 25-year-old resident of Nayarit, a state nestled in the mountains along the Pacific coast, rolled up to the Hidalgo-Reynosa International Bridge, claiming he was driving to Chicago for 10 days, according to a criminal complaint filed May 2 in federal court. Customs officers grew suspicious and searched his Toyota RAV-4, uncovering more than 18 pounds of heroin concealed beneath the back seats. Paniagua claimed he refused a $10,000 offer to smuggle the brown heroin across the border. Only when a cartel enforcer returned with photos of his wife and kids did Paniagua comply, he told U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators. A grand jury indicted Paniagua on possession and conspiracy to distribute heroin charges. If convicted, he faces between 10 years and life in prison, and a $10 million fine. Whether Paniagua's claims are truthful remains unclear. Local ICE officials did not return requests for comment last week. But a man claiming to be Paniagua's father called The Monitor in the days after his son's arrest. The man, who said he was fearful to disclose his name, said he had not heard from his son for several weeks until finding his name in a story published online. The man said he did not know Paniagua to be involved in illegal activity in his hometown of Tepic, the Nayarit state capital. "There's more vigilance at the border on the part of U.S. authorities and so the cartels, including the Zetas, are more inclined to use individuals who appear to be traveling on legitimate business as mules," said Grayson, a professor of government at The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va. Federal investigators do not keep statistics on alleged extortion, but court records detailing such claims have surfaced in fewer than 10 cases since February in U.S. District Court in McAllen, where at least one new drug trafficking case is filed almost every day. "It's a trend we've been seeing recently, but for the most part, in many of these instances, it's an excuse," Glaspy said. "I'm not going to say that it never happens, because I'm sure things like that do happen." DEA investigators regularly see cycles in the profiles of arrested smugglers, Glaspy said. Trends in the past have included recruiting juveniles to move drugs, assuming U.S. prosecutors would not lodge charges against kids. "Then, they'll get away from that trend after the juveniles will get arrested," Glaspy said. Agents are "much more concerned" on how cartels have evolved, moving drugs with greater technology and sophistication, often employing dozens of people to transport a single load, Glapsy said. "It's a more complex operation than having one person and saying 'Hey, I'm going to beat you if you don't cross this stuff,'" he said. "We see the criminal organizations are employing 20-plus individuals in the process of moving loads through the river, away from the river and into stash houses across the Rio Grande Valley." Still, federal agents do investigate claims alleged smugglers make about their supposed conscription into moving drug loads. Often, investigators debunk the stories. Glaspy pointed to an example of how investigators discredit smugglers' allegations of extortion. A man claimed he was threatened with violence if he refused to move a drug load. The man had a cell phone he said was provided by cartel enforcers for use while moving the load. But after they looked at the smuggler's phone records -- and found his girlfriend's number in the call directory -- agents concluded the man was lying. "From an evidentiary standpoint, it didn't stand up," Glaspy said. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.