Mexico Wins Official’s Trust in War on Drugs

While up to 70% of the drugs smuggled into the U.S. arrive via Mexico, American authorities believe that top Mexican officials are now doing their best under adverse circumstances to help stop the flow.

U.S. Commissioner of Customs Raymond W. Kelly said increased cooperation between U.S. and Mexican agents in the past year has resulted in significant new drug seizures.

For example, he said the stationing of Mexican agents in the U.S. Customs Service’s interdiction center in Riverside has enabled authorities to intercept several drug-laden planes in Mexico before they entered the U.S.

However, Kelly, who took over as Customs commissioner a year ago with a vow to crack down on drug smuggling, said Mexican officials face the difficult job of trying to reform a country that even they acknowledge has tremendous problems with corruption and flaws in its justice system.

“They’re trying to do the right thing, but it is a tremendous problem,” he said. “People at the top are trying to effect change, but it’s difficult to do that.”

Interviewed at a breakfast session of Times Washington Bureau reporters and editors, Kelly said smugglers are increasingly sophisticated in how they bring drugs into the U.S. from Mexico.

They use air drops, fast boats, and a “blitzkrieg approach” of sending lots of vehicles through an entry port after distracting agents with a single drug-laden vehicle.

To help counter this, he said, Customs is trying to do a better job of singling out suspect vehicles and has deployed X-rays at seven major border points. Customs plans to have X-ray devices deployed at all 24 major border points with Mexico by 2002.

Last month, President Clinton certified Mexico as a “fully cooperating” partner in the fight against drugs, despite opposition from some U.S. law enforcement officials.

Congress, which has never rejected a presidential certification, has until later this month to overturn the decision.

The U.S. and the Colombian government are also cooperating more closely, Kelly said.

He cited Colombia’s Business Anti-Smuggling Coalition, an effort by business and government to uncover drug shipments before they leave the country.

Kelly said Customs is also planning to address a long-standing complaint that it shortchanges the West Coast in its deployment of agents.

He said he has commissioned a study to determine how Customs can deploy its personnel more efficiently.

The agency has about twice as many agents in its New York and Miami offices as it has in Los Angeles.

Customs is also tackling what Kelly called the “nightmare public relations problem” of searching suspects arriving at U.S. airports, a practice that has been widely criticized because so many innocent people have been searched.

For fiscal 1998, Customs records show that 737 of 10,608 people searched were found to possess illegal drugs.

Twelve lawsuits accusing Customs agents of abusing their search powers are pending in federal courts, according to Kelly, who noted that a woman in San Francisco won a $450,000 judgment in a case she filed.