Pubdate: Tue, 25 Feb 2014
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Copyright: 2014 Associated Press
Contact: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1
Website: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388

SMUGGLERS EXTEND REACH ALONG PACIFIC

(AP) - While security has tightened at the U.S. border, drug 
smugglers are increasingly turning to the high seas.

The area where boats were seized off California and the northwest 
coast of Mexico tripled to a size comparable to the state of Montana 
during the 2013 fiscal year, which ended in September. Off South 
America, traffickers over the years have been traversing territory so 
big the continental United States could be dropped inside of it.

Mexico's Sinaloa cartel has been loading marijuana bales onto 50-foot 
vessels as far south as the Mexican port of Mazatlan - where its 
leader, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, was captured early Saturday - and 
running them up the Pacific coast to the U.S., as far as Northern 
California. It's unclear if Guzman's arrest will hinder the maritime runs.

Meanwhile, budget cuts have hit one of the lead U.S. law enforcement 
agencies on international waters - the Coast Guard, the only U.S. 
military service able to make drug arrests hundreds of miles 
offshore. To meet automatic federal budget cuts, it reduced its 
operating costs by 25 percent in 2013. It also lost help from U.S. 
Navy ships on drug missions off Latin America that were 
decommissioned and not replaced.

As a result, only a third of suspected drug smuggling boats or 
aircraft out of South America that were tracked by U.S. intelligence 
in cocaine-trafficking corridors in the Pacific and Caribbean were 
stopped last year, said the Coast Guard's top officer, Adm. Robert Papp.

U.S. authorities stopped some 194,000 pounds of cocaine last fiscal 
year - more than 40,000 pounds less than in 2012, according to Coast 
Guard statistics. Marijuana seizures dipped between 2012 and 2013 
from 124,000 pounds to 81,000 pounds.

The Coast Guard oversees 95,000 miles of coastline and 4.5 million 
square miles of maritime territory. Rear Adm. Karl Schultz said the 
tiny Coast Guard is doing its best to optimize its resources but the 
challenge is "like a police cruiser in Cleveland responding to 
something in Atlanta."

Smugglers driving three-engine boats have been landing along remote 
coasts of Northern California, reaching as far as Santa Cruz. That's 
a shift from the one-engine drug skiffs seen landing for years in San 
Diego County.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom