Texas Prosecutors Balk at Drug Cases

For many years, drug arrests at checkpoints on the U.S.-Mexico border have worked this way: Federal agents make the busts, then hand off the smaller cases--usually those involving less than 50 pounds of marijuana--to local district attorneys to prosecute.

Now some district attorneys are backing out of the arrangement because the soaring number of drug arrests is proving too big a burden.

At least four of the eight district attorneys in Texas counties along the Mexican border say they will no longer take such cases as of July 1. A fifth district attorney, in Laredo, stopped accepting such cases in 1997.

“We wanted to do our share of fighting the war on drugs,” said Rene Guerra, district attorney for Hidalgo County. “But now it’s too much.”

The local prosecutors say the federal government will not reimburse their counties for jail expenses, public defenders’ fees or investigation and court costs.

Drug arrests at border checkpoints are made by agents from the U.S. Customs Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The number of arrests has skyrocketed since 1994 as the result of a border crackdown.

The district attorneys contend the border clearly is a federal responsibility.

“It surprises me that the federal government would think some of the poorest counties in the country would have the resources if they don’t have the resources,” said Jaime Esparza, district attorney in El Paso.

Justice Department officials discussed the matter at a meeting Thursday in Washington, and “a number of ideas were kicked around,” department spokesman John Russell said.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. “will bring these to the attorney general’s attention and hopes that we can have a resolution of this issue in a few weeks,” Russell said.

The local prosecutors could not provide exact numbers for cases handled or dollars spent. But Esparza, whose district is the busiest of the four, said he takes at least 500 drug cases handed over by the Feds each year, and the number continues to rise.

District attorneys along the border in New Mexico, Arizona and California are not planning to join their Texas counterparts in refusing such cases.

If the Texas prosecutors go through with their threat, the drug cases will be handled by the two U.S. attorneys’ offices that serve the Texas border or will be dropped altogether.

Those offices already are swamped. The number of criminal cases filed in federal courts in Texas’ western district has jumped 182% since 1995, and in Texas’ southern district, 145%. The five federal court districts that serve the U.S.-Mexico border region now handle one-fourth of all federal court criminal filings in the country.

William Blagg, U.S. attorney for the western district, said he may need to send prosecutors from other parts of the state to El Paso to work the additional cases.

“We don’t have a choice,” he said. “We can’t just let the people go.”