Security: Mexican smugglers are testing the beefed-up, post-Sept. 11 U.S. law enforcement presence. Customs officials report seizures have since jumped.

By RICHARD A. SERRANO
Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON -- Seizures of illegal drugs along the nation's southwest border have skyrocketed in recent months, as Mexican smugglers run up against the
concentrated effort of U.S. law enforcement officials to police the region after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Drug seizures from South Texas to Southern California have climbed beyond pre-Sept. 11 levels, rebounding from the sharp decline seen in the weeks immediately
after the assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, officials said.

That development comes as arrests of undocumented workers have fallen dramatically and continue to decline--in some areas well over 50%. Officials said it may
portend a dramatic clash between increasingly emboldened smugglers and shored-up police and military forces.

"The smugglers probably believed the high security would be short-lived," said Roger Maier, a U.S. Customs Service official in El Paso. "And when that didn't
happen, they still had to move their product. And for us, the more we looked, the more we were going to find. And we're looking harder than we ever have. Now
we have started catching them."

In Southern California, the amount of cocaine seized by Customs Service agents has doubled since Sept. 11, compared with the same period a year earlier, while the
amount of heroin seized has increased twentyfold.

Nationwide, customs officials report that heroin seizures since Sept. 11 have jumped more than 135% compared with a year earlier. Cocaine is up nearly 60% and
marijuana nearly 19%. The amount of illegal pills such as Ecstasy and steroids that has been seized is up more than 955%.

Along the border, where the most aggressive effort has been underway to turn back illegal drug smuggling and other activities since Sept. 11, the effort has had some
surprising results.

The decline in arrests of undocumented workers, for instance, is a phenomenon that officials attribute to Mexican migrants becoming increasingly wary of entering the
United States after the terrorist attacks and the roundup of illegal immigrants.

By contrast, smuggling of illegal drugs, which fell initially, is now back in full swing, even as the Bush administration plans to further strengthen the police presence
along the 2,000-mile-long border with National Guard and U.S. military troops.

The main thrust of the heightened police presence has been to make sure no terrorists get through, with the side benefit of interdicting other criminals, such as drug
dealers.

Dean Boyd, a spokesman at Customs Service headquarters in Washington, said Friday that law enforcement officials are amazed that drug dealers keep trying to
push their way into the United States in the face of such a daunting police barricade.

"We're still at the highest level of alert, and we will continue to be so for the foreseeable future," he said. "Our people are working increasingly long hours and a lot of
overtime."

Federal officials say they have received numerous reports of drug smugglers who stockpiled their inventories on the Mexico side of the border, then became
increasingly anxious when the beefed-up police patrols did not leave the border towns in the weeks after Sept. 11.

By October, the smugglers were slowly beginning to once again move their drugs across the line. The pace continues to accelerate.

"At first, they saw our enhanced security and decided to wait and see if things settled down, or they chose some alternate routes," Boyd said.

Marijuana smuggling is a prime example.

The increase in seizures occurred "during the middle of the marijuana harvest season in Mexico last fall," he said. "Huge quantities normally come up from central to
northern Mexico and, after a while, if that marijuana piles up just south of the border, it becomes a hazard for a trafficker.

"If I have tons and tons waiting at the border, I'm at a huge risk. My dope might get stolen by rival factions. The Mexican police might find me. The marijuana might
rot," Boyd said. "And I have a payroll to meet. I've got to get my product to market."

Since Sept. 11, waiting periods to enter the U.S. have stretched to as long as three hours, because "every vehicle, car, truck and motorcycle gets inspected," said
Maier, the El Paso customs official. "Drivers are getting out of their cars to open the trunk, to open the hood."

Life on the border has been transformed, and the smugglers from Mexico could not help but notice.

"We operate kind of in a fishbowl down here. A lot of what we do is very visible to the traveling public and the smugglers," Maier said. "They watch what we do and
try to circumvent what we do. That's their job, to move drugs, and they study us as closely as they can."

Jayson Ahern, customs' director of field operations in San Diego, said the "level one alert status" is on indefinitely. "Anti-terrorism remains our top priority, but this
increased scrutiny will continue to hamper smugglers."

Tom Lindenmuth, a federal public defender in McAllen, Texas, said he is seeing a rash of cases involving smaller amounts of drugs. "We are getting more marijuana.
Not big amounts, generally under 50 kilos. It's back to coming in like crazy. And now we're [arresting] a lot of women for smuggling drugs."

U.S. District Judge Filemon Vela in Brownsville, Texas, said that in South Texas the situation is the same as before Sept. 11.

"They just caught a guy a few blocks away from where I am with many hundreds of pounds of cocaine," he said, noting that the terrorist attacks apparently have not
dampened America's hunger for drugs.

"We're still the champion consumer of the world," he said.