Border War: Drugs

The DEA estimates that the drug cartels generate about $10 billion annually from the sale of drugs which pass through Arizona alone.

Just marijuana alone is predicted to be over 700 tons seized, so think about the amount not seized. The U. S. Border patrol fight against illegal drug trafficking into Arizona has proved to be a daunting task.

With the money that can be made in the United States from the sale of drugs cartels put it all on the line to supply the demand for drugs. There are three ways to deliver drugs to the States and that by land, sea, and air.The US has improved on the sea and air side but the task on land has become too much to handle. Delivery on land includes both on the ground and beneath the ground.

Drug smugglers us tunnels to believer drugs beneath the ground and use the rugged land of Arizona on the ground. Drug trafficking has also gave rise to an increase in crime along places near the border because of routes and territory that some innocent civilians find themselves in the middle of. Most of the state of Arizona is covered by the Tucson Sector of the United States Border Patrol.This area covers a total of 262 border miles and is the busiest Sector in the country. The role of the border patrol is to be the primary drug-interdicting organization along the Southwest border.

To tackle the huge task of combating drug smugglers the border patrol has work force of over 20,000 agents. In 1964 the agency consisted of just a handful of agents. Agents patrol the border in vehicles, boats, and afoot. In some areas, the Border Patrol even employs horses, all-terrain motorcycles, bicycles, and snowmobiles.The agency also uses dogs that are trained to find drugs. Even though is may seem like all that is done is finding drugs and apprehending suspects the job does come with danger.

Drug smugglers are sometimes armed with someone to protect their drugs from robbers and sometimes law enforcement. On October 2, 2012, two border patrol agents where fatally shot by drug smugglers. These agents where traveling on house back in the early a. m.

hours (York, 2012). Shooting at officers from across the border is not a rare thing, these seem to be a normal thing.Border patrol agents must always keep a watchful eye out because of the remote places they can find themselves having to work. Drug cartels have financed the building of smuggling tunnels throughout the Mexican/ Arizona border. The reasoning behind these tunnels was because of the United States heighten enforcement of land and air.

In 2012, a massive 240-yard drug smuggling tunnel with lights, air shafts and sophisticated support beams linked Mexican cartels with Arizona strip mall (Associated Press Reporter, 2012).These tunnels give cartels direct access to the United States that if not discovers could allow tons of drugs into the states. These tunnels could cost anywhere from a couple hundred thousand dollars to well over a million dollars. These are no ordinary people that design and supervise the building of these tunnels they are very educated engineers. The sophistication of these tunnels is by any standard amazing.

The more sophistication and length of the tunnel the more money it cost. These tunnels have a well laid out foundation usually surrounded by wood to support its top and sides from a cave in.Because the tunnel has no access to fresh air they are lined with a ventilation system from hoses that travels the length of the tunnel. One end would usually provide some kind of pump to keep the air supply going. The tunnels also are sometimes equipped with electricity. For the most part these tunnel entrance and exit are usually set up in abandoned places.

Some of the tunnels exits could pop up anywhere and the drug smugglers usually use something to cover the entrance so that it can be used over and over. These tunnels are usually found by the luck of the draw.Law enforcement officers sometimes conduct stake out of suspected drug smugglers and when caught use them to discover the location of the tunnel. There are a couple instances when in the process of being completed the tunnels cave in exposing it to the public. Sometimes the tunnels cave in might be in the middle of a road or a business. Arizona shares a drainage system with Mexico that smugglers also use to transport bundles of drugs.

The cross-border drainage system, known as the Grand Tunnel, runs north from the city of Nogales, Mexico and beneath the port of entry under Grand Avenue, a main street in Nogales, Arizona.The tunnel turns south at the fence which drug smugglers use for the drugs. Law enforcement officers regularly search through the tunnel on a daily bases looking for drug smugglers and new tunnels dug into the drainage system. This is a nonstop mission that smugglers always seem to find a way around every effort setup to combat the flow of drugs into the United States.

Arizona also provides rugged land for the drug smugglers to navigate to find their way to their drop off point. Since the land is so rough in places it has been impossible to set up fencing to cover the land.In most places a barbed wire fence is used to differentiate the deference between Mexico and the United States. A section known as the Nogales-Phoenix corridor is one of the roughest, least-accessible swaths of land along the U.

S. Mexico border (tietz, 2012). The corridor is the most active corridor for marijuana smuggling activity into and throughout Arizona. Drug smugglers use this area because of the tightening along the border and the difficulty of the Border patrol to patrol tis area. The corridor is so mountainous that it makes it impossible to be fenced.

Large quantities of marijuana are also smuggled through the Tohono O’odham Reservation, which covers more than 2. 8 million acres in southern Arizona between Lukeville and Sasabe and straddles the border with Mexico for 75 miles. Much of the border area is open to allow unimpeded travel for residents on the reservation. These vast stretches of remote and sparsely populated desert are mostly unprotected and difficult for law enforcement to adequately patrol. The smugglers carry packs with load upward of one hundred pounds across the Arizona/Mexico border.

These routes are usually remote, predetermined locations where they transfer the load to a contact on the US side or hide them for retrieval on a different day. Most of this activity takes place under the cover of darkness so not to bring any attention to their suspicious activity. The drug cartels have scouts places in locations that monitor law enforcement activity to come to the best times for their operations. The Customs and Border Patrol use different tactics to combat the flow of drugs into the US. With every new tactics to stop the drug trafficking in the area the drugs are rerouted to another section.The Department of Homeland Defense authorized the deployment of advanced surveillance systems: laser range finders, mobile ground radar, unmanned aerial vehicles, infrared cameras (tietz, 2012).

The most high tech equipment used is the unmanned aerial vehicles, also referred to as drones, monitors the boarder from the air. The drones fly at an attitude of 20,000 feet and have the ability to see foot prints on the ground. For the most part the system proves to be working but the apprehension of the drug smugglers seems not to be.Between October and December, the remotely operated aircraft detected 7,333 border crossers during its Arizona missions but the border patrol reported 433 (Becker, 2013).

The system sheds light onto the problem of the losing war we are fighting along the border. The drones help identify drugs from the air by the capability of its camera quickly identifies the backpack drug smugglers wear. When identified the operator locks in on the suspected drug smuggler while notifying enforcement officers on the ground.Because of this, between October and December they were credited with providing surveillance that led to 52 arrests and 15,135 pounds of seized marijuana (Becker, 2013). Even though many more suspected where identified and even with the number of border patrol agents it is still impossible to catch all the identified targets. This is sometimes impossible because of the land and the inaccessibility of the officers to get to the locations.

If not caught by the drones sometimes land based cameras identify them. Along this area border patrol operates three camera towers, a Cyclops eye in the sky, and motion detected sensors.According to a ranch owner who has watched at least nine drugs drive-through across his land involving 21 trucks; the border patrol’s methods are not working (Banks, 2012). Most of these intrusions take place within 100 feet of a camera tower.

Since 2006 funding was provided for 10,000 additional Border Patrol agents and 700 miles of new fencing. Arizona is lined with miles and miles of fencing to supposedly stop drug traffickers from just driving across the border. Smugglers sometimes just cut the border fence and pull it down and load the drugs.So not to cause any undue watchful eyes the drug smugglers ensure that they make the fence look the same by tack welding it back up and brushing away their tracks. They have also been known to throw the bails of drugs over the fence to be loaded. Most of the drugs are loaded in plan daylight onto trucks and driven to their destination.

These can lead to very dangerous times because being in a high speed chase with a truck loaded with drugs probably the only thing going through the smugglers mind is I can’t go to jail and I got to ditch this truck.It’s not only a dangerous situation for law enforce but also for pedestrians wondering the streets. For the most part the smugglers have a lot to lose because in some cases they are the only ones who are providing for a source of income into the household, the cartel could have a family member and is making them do what they need to deliver the goods, or they simply may owe the cartel money or anything the they may seem like its either do the drug run or its death. In Conclusion the government has many things set in place to catch drug smugglers but the only thing they seem to be doing is slowing down the flow of drugs into the United States.This only seems to put a minor dent into the cartels cash flow.

For the most part cartels put into the equation that some of the drugs the send to the US will get confiscated by law enforcement but because on the huge return on the drugs that do make it to the states the reward is worth the chances. The U. S. has put billions of dollars into protecting the boarder and a real solution hasn’t seemed to have panned out. As you have read drug smugglers always have found a way to deliver their drugs weather it’s by land, sea, or air. No one seems to know the correct actions to take.

Recently congress have approve more fending for border patrol agents and more fencing along Arizona’s border with Mexico but we can only sit, wait and wonder if this will even work. What next will drug smugglers think of to deliver their goods? Technology has seemed to have improved the chances of smugglers being caught but for the most part this has only effects the smugglers who travel on ground not underground. My opinion on the matter is that more remote station needs to be set up to monitor and patrol these remote places whereas the officers are on a rotational schedule.Another option would be to use National Guard members or even changed the law so that active duty units could be trained in boarder protection to beef up the numbers that law enforcements slacks. The reason that I say active military is because they are already getting paid 24 hours 7 days a week anyway why not alter the law for this to be accomplished.

Many people are afraid if you use the military soon the military will take over. What is more important the protection of the border from smugglers or what people might think would happen because only one conclusion can be reached and that’s boarder security.