Customs Targets Cruise Ship ‘Mules’

Every year, cruise ships bring San Juan more than half a million tourists, millions of dollars and far too many mules carrying drugs.

With the high season under way, the U.S. Customs Service is running Operation Cruise Control in an attempt to catch the drug couriers, known in the trade as “mules.”

Nelson Rolon, chief of Caribbean enforcement, said the waterfront operation and a similar one at the San Juan airport are intended to stop Colombian drug traffickers from using Puerto Rico as an entry to the United States.

It is no easy task, since 1,495 cruise ships arrived in the port from October, 1991, through August, 1992, carrying 546,911 passengers and crew members.

This month, the heavy winter schedules began and cruise ships started operating for the first time from Ponce, on the southern coast of Puerto Rico.

“The courier system is expanding more and more,” Rolon said in his office at the Customs building, which was erected at harborside in colonial days.

“Those Colombians who are knowledgeable know that, if they can get it to Puerto Rico, they’re almost home free because there’s very little customs inspection to the U.S. mainland.”

Several months ago, Customs agents arrested a 23-year-old New York woman at the end of a cruise. She had 20 pounds of heroin in her suitcase.

Her arrest was one of 86 in two years either on or connected with commercial vessels docking in San Juan, including 20 of passengers or crew members, said Maria Palmer, chief of the Customs Service seaport division in San Juan.

Under Operation Cruise Control, agents track certain passengers and crew members as they head ashore and train on-board security personnel to spot possible drug couriers.

Most cruise lines provide customs agents with passenger information that can be run through enforcement computers to check on criminal records, currency violations and frequency of trips.

One Sunday morning, Customs inspectors were being briefed on the computer information before 2,600 passengers came ashore from the Monarch of the Seas, one of the largest cruise ships.

As they listened, 40 sweating porters with dollies spread thousands of pieces of luggage on the floor of the Pier 4 building, an area about the size of a football field.

People who travel frequently on cruise ships “are either very rich or they’re smuggling,” one of the inspectors said, on condition of anonymity.

On the palms of his hands, the inspector had written in red ink the names of several people who fit the profiles of drug smugglers and were about to leave the ship.

Operation Cruise Control pays particular attention to ships that stop in Venezuela and St. Maarten, thought to be major transshipment points for drugs from Colombia. Rolon said his personnel keep a close watch on crew members who know the ports and customs agents.

Most cocaine and marijuana confiscated in and around Puerto Rico is either air-dropped at sea, smuggled in aboard commercial vessels or flown to airstrips and airports.

Rolon believes couriers have a bigger role in smuggling heroin because it is less bulky and has a street value 10 times that of cocaine. He and agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration say a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of heroin is worth $200,000 in the United States.

Most heroin seized in the Caribbean is from Asia, but U.S. officials say poppy cultivation in Colombia has grown more than sixfold in the last year.

No drugs were found coming off the Monarch of the Seas on this return from a week’s cruise to Martinique, Barbados, Antigua, St. Maarten and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The speed of the inspection indicated the pressure Customs agents are under.

Alfonso Robles, district director of the Customs Service, said many passengers leave ships in San Juan with less than two hours to get to the airport for flights to the mainland.

“We have very tight deadlines for processing these passengers or they miss their connecting flights,” he said in an interview.

Robles said the service meets with cruise line officials to make sure that its agents can finish the job in time.