USA > History > 2010 > Drugs (I)

Drug Gang Chief

Reported Killed in Mexico

November 5, 2010
The New York Times
By ELISABETH MALKIN

MEXICO CITY — The Mexican authorities said Friday that a leader of the Gulf drug gang had been killed in Matamoros during a day marked by street fighting between soldiers and gunmen that paralyzed the city, which is across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Tex.

The gang leader, Antonio Ezequiel Cárdenas Guillén, who American and Mexican officials say took control of the cartel after his brother Osiel Cárdenas Guillén was arrested in 2003, was killed by Mexican marines, according to a statement by Alejandro Poiré, the security spokesman for the government.

Three other gang members were also killed, the statement said, and the Mexican Navy reported that two marines and a soldier died during the six-hour gun battle.

There was no official confirmation of any additional deaths. But the Matamoros newspaper El Expreso reported on its Web site that one of its reporters, Carlos Guajardo Romero, had been killed in the cross-fire shortly after noon as he covered the fighting.

Mexican officials shut down all three bridges that link Matamoros with Brownsville. They were closed for two hours but reopened on Friday night.

The United States Consulate in Matamoros tightened restrictions for its personnel, restricting personal travel from midnight to 6 a.m. The consulate recommended that Americans in Matamoros limit their travel to the daylight hours and urged them to be “vigilant and aware of their surroundings at all times.”

With much of the Mexican media silenced in Matamoros and Reynosa, which is across from McAllen, Tex., it was left to social networks to report what took place on Friday.

On one video posted on YouTube, gunfire and grenade explosions rang out across streets that were almost deserted. A battle for control between the Gulf gang and its onetime enforcement arm, the Zetas, has unleashed fierce fighting this year, and the Mexican authorities have stepped up their search for the leaders of both. Mr. Cárdenas, 48, controlled the Matamoros-Brownsville smuggling corridor for the Gulf gang and was responsible for shipping large cargos of marijuana and cocaine to the United States, the State Department has said.

    Drug Gang Chief Reported Killed in Mexico, NYT, 5.11.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/06/world/americas/06mexico.html

When Drugs Cause Problems

They Should Prevent

October 16, 2010
The New York Times
By GINA KOLATA

In the past month, the Food and Drug Administration has concluded that in some cases two types of drugs that were supposed to be preventing serious medical problems were, in fact, causing them.

One is bisphosphonates, which is widely used to prevent the fractures, especially of the hip and spine, that are common in people with osteoporosis. Those drugs, like Fosamax, Actonel and Boniva, will now have to carry labels saying they can lead to rare fractures of the thigh bone, a surprising new discovery that came after another surprise — that they can cause a rare degeneration of the jawbone.

The other is Avandia, which is widely prescribed for diabetics, whose disease puts them at risk for heart attacks and heart failure. Two-thirds of diabetics die of heart problems, and a main reason for taking drugs like Avandia is to protect them from that.

But now the F.D.A. and drug regulators in Europe are restricting Avandia’s use because it appears to increase heart risks.

In the case of bisphosphonates, the benefits for people with osteoporosis still outweigh the risk, bone experts say. And no one has restricted their use.

But the fact remains that with decades of using drugs to treat chronic diseases, the unexpected can occur.

Something new is happening, said Daniel Carpenter, a government professor at Harvard who is an expert on the drug agency. The population is aging, many have chronic diseases. And companies are going after giant markets, huge parts of the population, heavily advertising drugs that are to be taken for a lifetime.

And the way drugs are evaluated, with the emphasis on shorter-term studies before marketing, is not helping, Dr. Carpenter said.

“Here is a wide-scale institutional failure,” he said. “We have placed far more resources and requirements upon premarket assessment of drugs than on postmarket.”

Dr. Jason Karlawish, a University of Pennsylvania ethicist who studies the ways new treatments are developed and disseminated, expressed a similar concern.

“The point is not that the drugs are bad, but that drugs for these chronic diseases present a novel set of challenges about how to assess their safety,” he said.

But such discussions make Dr. Ethel Siris, an osteoporosis expert at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, nervous. Bisphosphonates have been extensively studied, she said, and the thigh fractures from bisphosphonates — while surprising — are very rare. Dr. Siris’s fear is that people who really need the drugs will turn away from them.

It is not clear how the nation should respond to the new era of widespread drug use for chronic diseases.

“The basic underlying theme is that we don’t have good long-term safety indices for common chronic diseases that we are treating with major drugs,” said Dr. Clifford J. Rosen, director of the Maine Center for Osteoporosis Research. Dr. Rosen, in addition to studying osteoporosis, was on an advisory committee of the drug agency that examined the evidence that Avandia was linked to heart risks.

The difficulty is in figuring out how to assess the safety of drugs that will be taken for decades, when the clinical trials last at most a few years.

Today’s system, which largely consists of asking doctors to report adverse reactions and of researchers’ attempts to look at patient experiences in a variety of diverse databases, like records of large health plans, is ineffective, medical experts agree.

“There has to be a better system,” Dr. Rosen said.

Congress recently gave the drug agency the power to require studies after drug approval, but the agency has used it sparingly.

Some, like Dr. Rosen and Dr. Carpenter, would like large clinical trials after a drug is approved and continuing for years, even for drugs that met all the premarket requirements.

Dr. Karlawish questions whether this is practical. Once a drug is approved, it can be difficult to persuade doctors to assign their patients randomly to one approved treatment or another, and the sort of studies being suggested would go on for many years, making them difficult.

He favors something different — the development of a national electronic drug database that would reveal drug use and complications. In the meantime, Dr. Karlawish said, he could not help marveling at the paradox of drugs causing what they were supposed to prevent.

“This is priceless,” he said.

    When Drugs Cause Problems They Should Prevent, NYT, 16.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/health/policy/17drug.html

Report: Illegal Drug Use Up Sharply Last Year

September 16, 2010
Filed at 3:28 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The rate of illegal drug use rose last year to the highest level in nearly a decade, fueled by a sharp increase in marijuana use and a surge in ecstasy and methamphetamine abuse, the government reported Wednesday.

Gil Kerlikowske, the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, called the 9 percent increase in drug use disappointing but said he was not surprised given ''eroding attitudes'' about the perception of harm from illegal drugs and the growing number of states approving medicinal marijuana.

''I think all of the attention and the focus of calling marijuana medicine has sent the absolute wrong message to our young people,'' Kerlikowske said in an interview.

The annual report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found marijuana use rose by 8 percent and remained the most commonly used drug.

Mike Meno, a spokesman for the pro-legalization Marijuana Policy Project, said the survey is more proof that the government's war on marijuana has failed in spite of decades of enforcement efforts and arrests.

''It's time we stop this charade and implement sensible laws that would tax and regulate marijuana the same way we do more harmful -- but legal -- drugs like alcohol and tobacco,'' Meno said.

On a positive note, cocaine abuse continues to decline, with use of the drug down 32 percent from its peak in 2006.

About 21.8 million Americans, or 8.7 percent of the population age 12 and older, reported using illegal drugs in 2009. That's the highest level since the survey began in 2002. The previous high was just over 20 million in 2006.

The survey, which was being released Thursday, is based on interviews with about 67,500 people. It is considered the most comprehensive annual snapshot of drug use in the United States.

Other results show a 37 percent increase in ecstasy use and a 60 percent jump in the number of methamphetamine users. In the early 2000s, there was a widespread public safety campaign to warn young people about the dangers of ecstasy as a party drug, but that effort declined as use dropped off.

''The last few years, I think we've taken our eye off the ball on ecstasy,'' Kerlikowske said.

Meth use had been dropping after a passage of a 2006 federal law that put cold tablets containing pseudoephedrine behind pharmacy counters. But law enforcement officials have seen a rise in ''smurfing,'' or traveling from store to store to purchase the medicines, which can be used to produce homemade meth in kitchen labs.

Kerlikowske attributed the rise in meth abuse to more people getting around the law and an increase in meth coming across the border with Mexico.

The rise in marijuana use comes as California voters prepare to decide in November whether to legalize the drug. An Associated Press-CNBC poll earlier this year found that most Americans still oppose legalizing marijuana, but larger majorities believe it has medical benefits and want the government to allow its use for that purpose.

Medical marijuana sales in the 14 states that allow it have also taken off since the federal government signaled last year that it wouldn't prosecute marijuana sellers who follow state rules. The survey does not distinguish between medicinal and non-medicinal marijuana use.

The survey found the number of youths aged 12-17 who perceived a great risk of harm from smoking marijuana once or twice a week dropped from 54.7 percent in 2007 to 49.3 percent in 2009.

------

Online:

SAMHSA: http://www.samhsa.gov/

    Report: Illegal Drug Use Up Sharply Last Year, NYT, 16.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/09/16/us/politics/AP-US-Drug-Abuse.html

Soldiers Kill 25 in Mexico Gunbattle

September 2, 2010
Filed at 11:47 p.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

MONTERREY, Mexico (AP) -- Soldiers killed 25 suspected cartel members Thursday in a raid and gunbattle in a Mexican state near the U.S. border that has seen a surge in drug gang violence, the military said.

A reconnaissance flight over Ciudad Mier in Tamaulipas state spotted several gunmen in front of a property, according to a statement from Mexico's Defense Department.

When troops on the ground moved in, gunmen opened fire, starting a gunbattle that killed 25 suspected cartel members, according to the military. The statement said two soldiers were injured but none were killed.

Earlier, a military spokesman had said the shootout happened when troops on patrol in neighboring Nuevo Leon state came under fire from a ranch allegedly controlled by the Zetas drug gang.

The spokesman, who was not authorized to be quoted by name, said the troops returned fire at a ranch, known as ''The Stump.'' A defense department statement later said the shootout took place in Tamaulipas.

Authorities rescued three people believed to be kidnap victims in the raid, according to the statement. The military said troops seized 25 rifles, four grenades, 4,200 rounds of ammunition and 23 vehicles.

Violence has surged in northeastern Mexico this year since the Zetas broke ranks with their former employer, the Gulf cartel, making Tamaulipas one of the country's most dangerous battlegrounds.

In June, gunmen ambushed and killed the leading candidate for state governor a week before the elections. And in May a mayoral candidate in Tamaulipas was assassinated.

In August, Mexican marines discovered the bodies of 72 Central and South American migrants believed to have been gunned down by the Zetas after refusing to smuggle drugs, in what may be the deadliest cartel massacre to date. The dead migrants were discovered at a ranch about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the U.S. border in Tamaulipas.

The Zetas began as a gang of drug assassins but have since evolved into a powerful cartel.

Drug violence has claimed more than 28,000 lives since President Felipe Calderon intensified a crackdown on cartels after taking office in late 2006.

    Soldiers Kill 25 in Mexico Gunbattle, NYT, 2.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/09/02/world/americas/AP-LT-Drug-War-Mexico-Violence.html

21 Die in Gun Battle Near U.S. Border

July 2, 2010
The New York Times
By ANAHAD O’CONNOR

Nearly two dozen people were killed in a Mexican border area on Thursday during a fierce gun battle between suspected members of rival drug gangs, Mexican authorities said.

The bloodshed took place only 12 miles from the U.S. border, in Sonora, a state that is a popular tourist destination famed for its beaches but whose interior has increasingly been consumed by drug violence. Prosecutors said the battle was a showdown between two rival drug and migrant-trafficking gangs, who sprayed gunfire at one another in a sparsely populated area near a dirt road between the hamlets of Tubutama and Saric, an area frequented by traffickers, the Associated Press reported.

The shooting culminated in the deaths of 21 people, with Mexican authorities taking another nine people into custody, including six with bullet wounds.

The Sonora state Attorney General’s Office said in a statement that nine people were captured by police at the scene of the shootings, six of whom had been wounded in the confrontation, according to the A.P. Eight vehicles and seven weapons were also seized. All of the victims were believed to be members of the gangs.

For several years now, Mexico has been gripped by violence as warring drug cartels battle over lucrative drug routes through border regions like Sonora, Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez. The heavily armed and ruthless cartels have murdered wantonly, killing hundreds of police, military officers, top officials and politicians.

In the last year, the rate of killings has only surged, and this year is already on track to become the deadliest in half a decade. More than 5,000 drug-related killings have occurred thus far in Mexico, eclipsing the totals in 2007 and 2008 and nearing the 6,500 killed in 2009 alone.

    21 Die in Gun Battle Near U.S. Border, NYT, 2.7.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/03/world/americas/03drug.html

Hundreds Held in Drug Raids in 16 States

June 10, 2010
The New York Times
By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — A coordinated series of law enforcement raids across 16 states this week resulted in the arrests of 429 people accused of participating in smuggling and transportation networks for Mexican drug cartels, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced Thursday.

The raids, which took place Wednesday and involved more than 3,000 federal, state and local law enforcement officers, were a “very significant blow” to the cartels’ ability to move drugs across the border and distribute them in the United States — and to smuggle cash and weapons into Mexico, Mr. Holder said.

“This interagency cross-border operation has been our most extensive, and most successful, law enforcement effort to date targeting these deadly cartels,” Mr. Holder said at a press conference.

Officials seized $5.8 million in cash, 2,951 pounds of marijuana, 247 pounds of cocaine, 17 pounds of methamphetamine, 141 weapons and 85 vehicles.

Those raids were part of a larger, 22-month effort, called Project Deliverance, in which a series of related operations aimed at delivery networks resulted in some 2,200 total arrests and the seizure of 74.1 tons of illegal drugs, the Justice Department said.

Michele M. Leonhart, the acting administrator of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, said the effort had “inflicted a series of blows that will have a real impact on the cartels and their ability to function.”

She also said federal agents were seeing “more sophisticated” ways of smuggling drugs across the border. In the past, she said, agents had seized drugs carried by individual passengers on commercial buses. But during this operation, drugs and money were found hidden within the structure of commercial buses.

At a background briefing for reporters, another D.E.A. official said some drug smugglers had developed ways to hide several pounds of drugs inside a car’s transmission while still allowing the engine to function. He also described the alleged smugglers and distributors arrested in the sweeps as “mercenary transportation groups” who worked for multiple cartels, rather than operating as arms of specific gangs.

The official also said the operation was likely to disrupt the flow of drugs from Mexico for a period by removing the “institutional memory” of figures who are experts in drug transportation.

Mr. Holder also praised Mexican government officials as “waging a courageous battle” against the violent drug cartels, singling out their arrest last month of Carlos Ramon Castro-Rocha, who has been indicted in the United States on charges of importing heroin.

Mr. Holder rejected the notion that there may be mounting tension between law enforcement agencies in Mexico and the United States after the shooting death of a 14-year-old Mexican by United States border agents on Monday.

While expressing “our sincere regrets about the loss of life for that 14-year-old youngster,” and saying that the F.B.I. was investigating the incident, Mr. Holder said law enforcement officials on both sides of the border have an enduring “bond” based on their interest in combating violent drug trafficking organizations.

While praising the operation as a success, Mr. Holder and other officials said it would not stop drug smuggling from Mexico.

“Has drug trafficking come to an end? Of course not,” said John Morton, the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “But it just got harder and there are a lot of people this morning who wish they had a made a better career choice in life.”

    Hundreds Held in Drug Raids in 16 States, NYT, 10.6.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/us/politics/11drugs.html

Obama to Send Up to 1,200 Troops to Border

May 25, 2010
The New York Times
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

LOS ANGELES — President Obama will send up to 1,200 National Guard troops to the Southwest border and seek increased spending on law enforcement there to combat drug smuggling after demands from Republican and Democratic lawmakers that border security be tightened.

The decision was disclosed by a Democratic lawmaker and confirmed by administration officials after Mr. Obama met on Tuesday with Republican senators, several of whom have demanded that troops be placed at the border. The lawmakers learned of the plan after the meeting.

But the move also reflected political pressure in the president’s own party with midterm election campaigns under way and with what is expected to be a tumultuous debate on overhauling immigration law coming up on Capitol Hill.

The issue has pushed Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, into something of a corner. As governor of Arizona, she demanded that Guard troops be put on the border. But since joining the Obama administration, she has remained noncommittal about the idea, saying as recently as a month ago that other efforts by Mr. Obama had made the border “as secure now as it has ever been.”

The troops will be stationed in the four border states for a year, White House officials said. It is not certain when they will arrive, the officials said.

The troops will join a few hundred members of the Guard already assigned there to help the police hunt for drug smugglers. The additional troops will provide support to law enforcement officers by helping observe and monitor traffic between official border crossings. They will also help analyze trafficking patterns in the hope of intercepting illegal drug shipments.

Initial word of the deployment came not in a formal announcement from the White House — indeed, it was left to administration officials speaking on the condition of anonymity to fill in some details — but from a Democratic member of the House from southern Arizona who is running in what is expected to be a competitive race for re-election.

“The White House is doing the right thing,” the congresswoman, Representative Gabrielle Giffords, said in a statement announcing the decision. “Arizonans know that more boots on the ground means a safer and more secure border. Washington heard our message.”

Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican whose opponent in a coming primary has relentlessly criticized him on immigration, said Tuesday that he welcomed Mr. Obama’s move but that it was “simply not enough.”

Mr. McCain called for the introduction of 6,000 National Guard troops to police the Southwestern border, with 3,000 for Arizona alone. In a letter to Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, two Obama administration officials said that the proposal infringed on his role as commander in chief and overlooked gains in border security.

Calls for sending the Guard to the border grew after the shooting death of an Arizona rancher in March that the police suspect was carried out by someone involved in smuggling. Advocates of the controversial Arizona state law giving the police a greater role in immigration enforcement played up what they described as a failure to secure the border as a reason to pass the law.

Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona, a Republican who is running for a full term, has requested Guard troops at the border but decided not to use her authority to do it herself, citing the state’s tattered finances. The governors of New Mexico and Texas also pleaded for troops.

From 2006 to 2008, President George W. Bush made a larger deployment of Guard troops under a program called Operation Jump Start. At its peak, 6,000 Guard troops at the border helped build roads and fences in addition to backing up law enforcement officers.

Those Guard troops contributed to the arrest of more than 162,000 illegal immigrants, the rescue of 100 people stranded in the desert and the seizure of $69,000 in cash and 305,000 pounds of illicit drugs.

The soldiers will not directly make arrests of border crossers and smugglers, something they are not trained to do.

Rick Nelson, a senior fellow who studies domestic security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that the additional spending could improve security over the long term but that the National Guard deployment was not sufficient for “an overwhelming change that will change the dynamics on the border.”

“This is a symbolic gesture,” he said. “At the end of the day, the face of border security is still going to be Customs and Border Protection, the law enforcement community. It’s not going to be the National Guard.”

Democrats and Republicans who agreed with the move rushed to take credit for it, including Ms. Brewer, who said her signing of the new Arizona law had pushed the administration.

“I am pleased that President Obama has now, apparently, agreed that our nation must secure the border to address rampant border violence and illegal immigration without other preconditions, such as passage of ‘comprehensive immigration reform,’ ” she said.

Terry Goddard, the Arizona attorney general and a Democrat running for governor, released a statement with the headline “Goddard Secures Administration Commitment for $500 million for National Guard, Border Security.” In an interview, Mr. Goddard said, “I think it is a good indication that the administration is taking us seriously.”

But some Democrats were skeptical.

Representative Harry E. Mitchell of Arizona, a Democrat facing re-election in a Republican-leaning district, said it was “going to take much more to secure the border.” He proposed a minimum of 3,000 troops.

Some Republicans said the deployment of the troops should not overshadow the need for a comprehensive approach to the illegal immigration problem.

“Arizona and other border states are grateful for the additional resources at the border,” said Representative Jeff Flake of Arizona. “But I hope that this is merely the first step in a process that culminates in Congress passing comprehensive immigration reform.”

Obama administration officials had resisted sending Guard troops to the border but had never ruled it out. They pointed to a variety of improvements at the border, including a record seizure of drug-related cash and guns, falling or flat rates of violent crime in border towns, and record lows in the flow of illegal immigrants across the border. Analysts give the dismal economy much of the credit for that.

In his meeting with lawmakers on Tuesday, Mr. Obama said improving border security alone would not reduce illegal immigration and reiterated that a reworking of the immigration system could not be achieved without more Republican support.


Carl Hulse contributed reporting from Washington.

    Obama to Send Up to 1,200 Troops to Border, NYT, 25.5.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/26/us/26border.html

War Without Borders

In Drug War, Tribe Feels Invaded by Both Sides

January 25, 2010
The New York Times
By ERIK ECKHOLM

SELLS, Ariz. — An eerie hush settles in at sundown on the Tohono O’odham Nation, which straddles 75 miles of border with Mexico.

Few residents leave their homes. The roads crawl with the trucks of Border Patrol agents, who stop unfamiliar vehicles, scrutinize back roads for footprints and hike into the desert wilds to intercept smugglers carrying marijuana on their backs and droves of migrants trying to make it north.

By the bad luck of geography, the only large Indian reservation on the embattled border is caught in the middle, emerging as a major transit point for drugs as well as people.

A long-insular tribe of 28,000 people and its culture are paying a steep price: the land is swarming with outsiders, residents are afraid to walk in the hallowed desert, and some members, lured by drug cartel cash in a place with high unemployment, are ending up in prison.

“People will knock on your door, flash a wad of money and ask if you can drive this bale of marijuana up north,” said Marla Henry, 38, chairwoman of Chukut Kuk district, which covers much of the border zone.

The tightening of border security to the east and west, which started in the 1990s and intensified after the Sept. 11 attacks, funneled more drug traffic through the Tohono O’odham reservation, federal officials said, and especially more marijuana, which is hard to slip through vehicle crossings because of its bulk.

A record 319,000 pounds of marijuana were seized on the reservation in 2009, up from 201,000 pounds the previous year, along with small amounts of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.

Hundreds of tribal members have been prosecuted in federal, state or tribal courts for smuggling drugs or humans, taking offers that reach $5,000 for storing marijuana or transporting it across the reservation. In a few families, both parents have been sent to prison, leaving grandparents to raise the children.

“People are afraid that if they say no, they’ll be threatened by the cartel,” Ms. Henry said.

If residents of remote villages tried to call the police, she said, help might not arrive for two hours or more.

At the same time, some residents are angry at the intrusion of hundreds of federal agents, including some who stay for a week at a time on bases in remote parts of the reservation. The surge in agents who cruise the roads has meant more checkpoints and tighter controls on a border that tribal members, 1,500 of whom live in Mexico, once freely crossed.

The once-placid reservation feels like a “militarized zone,” said Ned Norris Jr., the tribal chairman, who also says the tribe must cooperate to stem the cartels. “Drug smuggling is a problem we didn’t create, but now we’re having to deal with the consequences.”

Many residents say they live in fear of the smugglers and hordes of migrants who lurk around their homes, and also of being subjected to a humiliating search by federal agents.

The elderly avoid the desert, even in the daytime, because they might stumble upon a cache of marijuana or drug “mules” hiding in desert washes until dark.

“We can’t even go out to collect wood for the stove,” said Verna Miguel, 63, who was traumatized three years ago when a group of migrants forced her to stop on a road, beat her and stole her vehicle.

“We’ve always picked saguaro fruits and cholla buds,” Ms. Miguel said, using such desert products for consumption and rituals. “But now we don’t dare do that.”

Until recently, the reservation’s international border was porous, defended by three strands of barbed wire. Over the last two years, it has been lined with metal posts and Normandy-style barriers to stop the trucks that used to barrel through and head for Phoenix.

Federal officials describe the rise in drug seizures on the reservation as a sign of growing success on what had long been a vulnerable section of border. Barriers and surveillance have forced most of the smugglers to enter on foot rather than in vehicles and spend hours or days sneaking through the reservation, making them more vulnerable to detection, said Agent Robert Gilbert, chief of the Tucson sector of the Border Patrol.

But the large busts, here and elsewhere on the border, are also a measure of the continued trade and profits reaped by the cartels.

“The cartels use the profit from marijuana to purchase cocaine in Colombia and Peru and the ingredients for meth and heroin from other regions,” said Elizabeth W. Kempshall, special agent in charge of the Arizona office of the Drug Enforcement Administration. “So marijuana is the catalyst for the rest of the drug trade.”

The drug smugglers, mainly working for the Sinaloa Cartel, officials said, place scouts for days at a time on mountainsides, with night-vision goggles to monitor movements of the Border Patrol. The scouts communicate with Mexican or Indian guides using cellphones or two-way radios with rolling codes that cannot be intercepted, said Sgt. David Cray of the tribal police force, which has spent major amounts of money on border issues. During the day, the scouts hide in caves or under camouflage.

The Border Patrol has its own spotters and trucks with infrared video cameras that detect heat miles away. The tribe has agreed to electronic surveillance towers that in coming years will make a “virtual fence” across their lands.

Many agents spend their nights “cutting for sign,” a tracker’s term, making slow drives on dirt roads in search of footprints.

One recent chilly night, a Border Patrol spotter detected eight white dots on his screen moving steadily north, not meandering the way cows or wild mules do. With a laser beam he fixed their coordinates at a spot five miles from his mountaintop post.

Two agents in four-wheel-drive vehicles set out over a rutted ranch track, then hiked through half a mile of mesquite, cholla and prickly pear to intercept the group. Six escaped, but two Mexican men were captured with seven burlap packs, each filled with 50 pounds of marijuana that sells wholesale for $500 or more per pound.

For the agents, it was a good night’s work. “This is what we live for, stopping drugs,” said an agent who hiked in shortly after the bust to help bring in the smugglers and the contraband.

But many tribal members see the federal presence as a mixed blessing at best.

Ofelia Rivas, 53, of Meneger’s Dam Village is an Indian rights advocate and a rare border resident who agreed to speak to a reporter. She said that most families in border villages, including her own, had had a relative imprisoned for drug offenses, but that such individuals should not be blamed for the lack of legal jobs. Ms. Rivas has criticized tribal leaders for acquiescing to what she calls an oppressive federal occupation.

Federal law officials praise the tribe for its cooperation, and the Border Patrol has fielded community relations officers to minimize frictions.

Even Mr. Norris, the tribal chairman, said he had been stopped and questioned. “Quite frankly, the people are getting sick of it,” he said of the heavy outside presence. But he added that the smuggling was beyond the tribe’s ability to control.

“I hope in my lifetime we can go back to the way it used to be,” Mr. Norris said, “where people could go and walk in the daylight on our own land.”

    In Drug War, Tribe Feels Invaded by Both Sides, NYT, 25.1.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/us/25border.html