LATIN AMERICA : Asian Drugs Find Way to U.S. Via Mexico : Seizure of pure white heroin shows Eastern suppliers have discovered route into America, officials fear.

At first, it appeared to be just another drug bust by U.S. border agents--nothing compared to the thousands of pounds of Colombian cocaine they have intercepted entering the United States in recent years near this strategic border town.

On May 27, using sophisticated night-vision equipment and a helicopter, the U.S. Border Patrol swooped down on four female drug couriers crossing into New Mexico about eight miles from here. It was a common scene on a prime desert smuggling route that helps supply up to three-fourths of America’s cocaine each year.

The yield that night: less than 30 pounds of white powder packed tightly into cellophane bags.

But days later, when federal drug agents at the El Paso Intelligence Center received the laboratory analysis of the white powder that had been strapped to the couriers’ stomachs, they were alarmed. The powder was not cocaine, nor the crude Mexican heroin that pours across the border by the hundreds of pounds each year.

This shipment was pure white heroin from Southeast Asia--the first significant shipment from the so-called Golden Triangle of Thailand, Myanmar and Laos ever intercepted on the U.S.-Mexican border. In the weeks that followed, federal agents concluded that the 28-pound load they seized from the four Houston women in May was the cutting edge of the latest drug threat to America’s southern border.

“This is a clear indication that countries other than Colombia are aware Mexico has become the easiest smuggling route into the U.S.,” said Phil Jordan, a veteran Drug Enforcement Administration official who heads the 320-agent border intelligence center.

Jordan and other senior law-enforcement agents say Mexico’s drug organizations appear to be taking on a more central role in the multibillion-dollar international narcotics trade. The officials attribute this development to the increased demand for heroin in the United States; intensified port surveillance by the DEA, Interpol and other international counter-narcotics agencies, and the Colombian government’s recent crackdown on leaders of the Cali drug cartel.

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“I see the Mexican connection becoming a stronger and bigger player in the world trafficking of all major drugs to the United States,” Jordan said. “That’s bad for the U.S., and that’s bad for Mexico.”

Jordan stressed that cooperation between U.S. and Mexican authorities in combatting the trend has increased greatly since December, when Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo took office and declared war on narcotics trafficking. But so has the growth of the cartels, Jordan said.

“We just hope that the concerted, ongoing efforts between the U.S. government and the Mexican government will prevent the Mexican connection from becoming another Cali cartel in their own right,” Jordan said.

May’s seizure so shocked narcotics officials in Washington that the DEA implemented what Jordan called “special, ongoing operations” to attempt to stop the supply from reaching Mexico. Agency officials declined to specify those measures and refused to disclose the exact route the Asian heroin has taken to Mexico.

The greatest danger, according to Jordan, is that Mexico’s drug cartels--which amassed billions of dollars in profits smuggling Colombian cocaine through Mexico into the United States during the past decade--are now plugging into the global heroin trade, which has profit margins and addiction rates that dwarf cocaine by comparison. If that trade expands, they said, it would increase the Mexican cartels’ profits--and power--exponentially.

“Put it this way,” Jordan said. “One kilogram of 89% pure heroin would make me a millionaire if I took it from wholesale to retail, which is pretty much what the Mexican cartels do.”

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Drug Crossing Points

Virtually all heroin seized last year at points along the U.S.-Mexico border was manufactured in Mexico. But the recent interception near Ciudad Juarez of a shipment of pure white heroin from Southeast Asia has provoked concern among U.S. authorities that the region could develop into a deadly new pipeline from international drug sources. Drug seizures in 1994 by U.S. agents at various points of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border:

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Point of entry Cocaine (in pounds) Heroin (in pounds) Laredo, Tex. 914 10 El Paso, Tex. 14,869 21 Nogales, Ariz. 7,700 5 Calexico, Calif. 9,885 5 Tecate, Calif. 295 0 San Ysidro, Calif. 800 18 Otay Mesa, Calif. 468 4

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Source: U.S. Customs Service

Note: Figures are for fiscal 1994--Oct. 1, 1993, to Sept. 30, 1994