National Guard to Aid Customs in War on Drugs at Ports

Nearly 300 California National Guard members will join U. S. Customs Service inspectors at the Ports of San Diego, Los Angeles and Long Beach starting this weekend in a stepped-up program to find narcotics being smuggled into the country on foreign ships, guard officials announced Thursday.

Although the soldiers will assist custom inspectors in searching containers and other cargo, they will not be armed and will have no authority to make arrests. The program is slated to last four weeks and will be financed by a $1-million federal grant, part of $40 million allocated by Congress for drug interdiction by the National Guard.

California National Guard Maj. Steve Mensik said during a press conference at the Armed Forces Reserve Center at Los Alamitos that an estimated 30% of all illegal drugs smuggled into the country arrive in containerized cargo. The adjacent Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are two of the largest on the West Coast. Combined, they are the busiest in the nation.

Trained to Spot Drugs

Guard members from throughout the state who volunteer for the anti-drug program, Mensik said, will be given a four-hour course on how to spot illegal drugs. The duty will last for two weeks, and soldiers will come from as far north as Mt. Shasta and as far south as San Diego. All of them will be processed and receive their training at the National Guard facilities at Los Alamitos.

“Any discoveries of illegal drugs will be reported to custom officials who will decide on the appropriate action to take,” Mensik said. “We will be supporting customs only.”

Although there is virtually no chance that the Guard members would come in contact with smugglers or drug dealers in this program, Mensik still described the Guard role as “low-intensity combat.” But he said the program would be confined to the seaports and no Guard member would be crossing the border into Mexico or riding in helicopters patrolling the border.

Mensik said no particular country or its ships have been targeted for search. “Drugs come in from all countries, Europe and South America,” he said, adding that the program will last four weeks because that will cover the ships that were already at sea and bound for the United States before the program was announced to the public.

The cargo inspection program is not the first time the Guard has been involved in drug interdiction, Mensik said. As far back as 1983, the Guard supplied helicopters and crews to the state in its search for marijuana fields in Northern California.

More recently, Guard helicopters and crews were used by law enforcement in a long-term surveillance in Southern California.

The idea to use National Guard troops to deter drug trafficking was first proposed in 1986 by Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Coronado). Although some officials condemned the plan as extreme and dangerous, a bill later sponsored by Hunter led to the use of military planes to help the Border Patrol detect illegal border crossings by aircraft.