Business
As
Usual
on
the
Border:
More
Cops,
More
Drugs
Seized,
No
Impact
on
the
Street
11/24/00
The US Customs Service was busy last week trumpeting a series of press releases about its successes in combating drug smuggling (http://www.customs.ustreas.gov/news/pressrelf.htm). Titles such as "FY 2000, A Record-Setting Year: Arizona Customs Officers Seize Almost 90 Tons of Illegal Drugs," and "FY 2000, A Record Setting Year: West Texas/New Mexico Customs Officer Seize Almost 155 Tons of Illegal Drugs," illustrate the self-congratulatory tenor of the press releases. Customs and Border Patrol officials told reporters the increase in seizures, up every year since 1996, are the result of technological innovation and increased manpower. The Border Patrol has accounted for much of the increase in manpower. Since 1996, when Congress passed an immigration bill mandating massive increases in Border Patrol ranks, the agency has nearly doubled in size to 9,212 agents -- more than the DEA and rapidly closing in on the FBI's 11,428. The Border Patrol added 1,708 new agents during the fiscal year ending September 30th. Most of them are destined for desolate stretches of the border, such as the new station at Deming, New Mexico, opened last week, and the one at Fabens, New Mexico, which opened in September. The push to the remote borderlands comes as increased Border Patrol pressure on urban areas such as San Diego and El Paso pushes immigrants and smugglers alike into ever more desolate and dangerous parts of the border. In its effort to seal the border like a zip-loc baggie, the Border Patrol follows, pouring new agents into the fray. Congress authorized a thousand new agents a year, but even that isn't enough for some lawmakers. US Rep. Sylvestre Reyes (D-El Paso), a former El Paso Border Patrol sector chief, told the Houston Chronicle he and others in Congress want to build the Border Patrol to a force 20,000 strong. Despite all the dollars and manpower, drug law enforcers are plowing the sea. Customs officials admit they do not know the amount of drugs imported into the country every year. Customs spokesman Roger Maier told the Dallas Morning Herald, "We don't know the universe, we just know what we catch." "We don't know how much is out there. We're catching a lot, and obviously we're not catching it all, but we're having a significant impact." But 31 years and untold billions of dollars after President Richard Nixon first tried to stop cross-border drug trafficking with his ill-fated Operation Intercept, the truth of Maier's assertion is arguable at best. Here is what the Office of National Drug Control Policy's latest National Drug Control Strategy had to say. On marijuana availability: "According to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the majority of the marijuana in the US is foreign-grown. Mexico, Colombia, and Jamaica are primary source nations; Canada, Thailand, and Cambodia are secondary sources. On heroin availability: "Unprecedented retail purity and low prices in the United States indicate that heroin is readily accessible." Accompanying charts show heroin prices declining at both the retail and wholesale level for the past decade. On cocaine availability: "Cocaine continues to be readily available in nearly all major metropolitan areas. Approximately 60 percent of the cocaine smuggled into the US crosses the Southwest border." Can you say "cost-benefit analysis"?
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