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Drug Situation: The greater Dallas/Fort Worth
area serves primarily as a drug distribution and transshipment area. Drug
smuggling and transportation are dominated by major Mexican trafficking
organizations. These groups are poly-drug organizations smuggling
methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine and marijuana to the Dallas/Fort Worth area
for distribution in the Eastern, Southeastern, and Midwestern United States.
The Division's central location, and its physical and cultural proximity to the
Mexican Border, provide a natural advantage for drug distribution/transshipment
throughout the United States.
Due to its geographical location and extensive
transportation infrastructure, the Houston Field Division continues to be a
primary transshipment area for the bulk importation of most major categories of
drugs to include marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine. Drug smuggling and
illicit transportation are primarily dominated by Mexican, Colombian and
Dominican poly-drug trafficking organizations.
The El Paso Division area-of-responsibility covers 54
counties in West Texas and New Mexico, comprising 778 miles, which is
approximately 40% of the U.S./Mexico Border. The Division has 117 agents, who
cover an area that includes 18 Ports-of-Entry (POE) and USBP Checkpoints, 6 of
which are in New Mexico, in addition to an estimated minimum of 80 illegal
crossing points. Some of these locations are over 100 miles from our offices.
This area of the Southwest is unique because of our
location on the U.S./Mexico border. El Paso and its sister city, Ciudad Juarez,
Mexico, comprise the largest metropolitan area on the border between the U.S.
and Mexico. Nearly 2 million people inhabit the El Paso/Juarez borderplex. Over
1.2 million people reside in Juarez. Daily, over 100,000 people cross the POEs
into El Paso. Since the formation of NAFTA, commercial truck crossings from
Mexico into West Texas and New Mexico have risen 11.7%, from 666,225 trucks in
1999 to 744,407 in 2002. Pedestrian traffic has risen 55%, from 6.2 million in
1999 to 9.6 million in 2002. A reduction in the amount of private vehicle
traffic was seen in 2002, due to heightened security after September 11, 2001.
However, 15.3 million vehicles still crossed our borders in 2002. During a
normal day, a vehicle can wait up to one hour to cross the border. During
periods of heightened security each private vehicle is inspected.
The introduction of NAFTA had a major impact on the El
Paso/Juarez area. The people crossing the international bridges on a daily
basis and the large transportation industry available in this area (air, bus,
trucking and rail) provide drug traffickers with innumerable drug and money
smuggling opportunities. Rural, desert-like areas in New Mexico and West Texas,
whether they be large ranches or National Park land backing up to the border,
or some easily crossed places along the Rio Grande offer tremendous smuggling
opportunities to drug trafficking organizations.
West Texas serves as the gateway for narcotics
destined to major metropolitan areas in the U.S., which is commonly referred to
as the El Paso/Juarez Corridor. Sources-of-supply (SOS) from Mexico move
significant quantities of marijuana and cocaine through the POEs using major
east/west and north/south interstate highways that crisscross through the El
Paso Division. These highways provide the traffickers with transportation
routes for distribution of drugs throughout the country. Drug traffickers also
obtain warehouses in El Paso for stash locations and recruit drivers from the
area to transport the narcotics to various destinations throughout the U.S.
Additional threats to the region are the shipments of controlled substances via
commercial vehicles, including aircraft, buses, and by Amtrak rail. EL Paso is
also considered a hub for significant amounts of drug proceeds being laundered
through small businesses.
The Alpine, Texas Resident Office covers 22,609 miles,
315 of which are directly on the Southwest Border. This area is largely rural
and sparsely populated and includes the Big Bend Corridor, a transshipment
route for drugs entering the U.S. from Northeast Mexico en route to
Midland/Odessa and other cities in the U.S. Criminal organizations based in
Chihuahua, Mexico maintain command and control elements in the Midland/Odessa
area to the north, and in the border towns of Presidio and Redford to the
south. Higher echelon members of the criminal organizations are often extended
family members, making penetration of those organizations extremely difficult.
The Mexican Government is building 4-lane "La Entrada
al Pacifico" highway (95% complete) which will serve as a northeast/southwest
trade route from the port city of Topolobampo, Sinaloa, Mexico, through the
Presidio, Texas POE, intersecting 3 major east-west Interstates: I-10, I-20,
and I-40. It is estimated that as much as 30 % of the truck traffic will be
diverted from California and El Paso POEs to Presidio. This highway begins at a
deep-water Pacific Ocean port that is over 500 miles closer, and much less
congested than the Port of Los Angeles. This completed route will save up to
four shipping days for goods moving between the Pacific Rim countries and
Texas.
Additionally, the South Orient Railroad (purchased by
the State of Texas in 2001), was leased for 40 years to Nuevo Grupo, Mexico,
and in the near future is expected to provide not only daily passenger train
service but also freight service between Mexico and the U.S. |
