David Pellerin/Caller-Times Fireman Apprentice, James Campos keeps on eye on a private vessel while Petty Officer Kenneth Jenks pilots the boarding craft in the Gulf of Mexico. Several USCG officers are on board inspecting the vessel. More Photos »

Funding hobbles drug war

Arrests over water prove elusive

By Jeremy Schwartz

Under galaxies of stars, the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Key Biscayne skimmed along the invisible line separating Mexican water from that of the United States, looking for drug runners, as it does every night that it patrols.

On the radar, the Key Biscayne's captain, Lt. John Pierce, spots a blip speeding north, a small sport fishing boat that it quickly overtakes.

As it approaches the boat, Pierce calls out over a megaphone to the crew: prepare for boarding.

Six Coast Guard members, armed with pistols and wearing bulletproof vests, pile into an inflatable speedboat carried by the cutter and zip over to the boat, where they pull themselves on board.

Still searching

"The main thing we're here to do is look for drugs coming across the border," said the ship's executive officer Bob Borowczak. "Intel says the lanchas (speed boats) have drugs, but we haven't seen them for awhile. They also say there are drugs on shrimpers, so every time we board a shrimp boat we look for drugs."

But it has been a dry few years for the crew of the Key Biscayne, based in Corpus Christi. Except for the 558-pound cocaine bust of a Lithuanian oil tanker bound for the Port of Corpus Christi in June 2000, the Key Biscayne has yet to make a drug bust in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Key Biscayne, one of four cutters and 20 small boats in Coast Guard Group Corpus Christi patrolling the southern area of the Gulf, makes three, three-day trips per month looking for drugs and fishing violations.

Petty officer Kenneth Jenks, the navigator of the inflatable Zodiac Hurricane, waits in the choppy waters a few dozen feet from the boat his comrades are searching. Like most of them, he is optimistic that the crew will make its bust soon. But he's realistic about the odds.

"It's like looking for a needle in a haystack," he said. In one of the nation's prime smuggling corridors, drug busts have become a staple of daily life in South Texas. But while most of the drugs are caught on area highways by Border Patrol and other agencies, drugs also pour northward by air and sea.

One big bust

In the past two years, Coast Guard vessels from Port Isabel to Port O'Connor have seized 798 pounds of marijuana and 859 pounds of cocaine, most of which came from the oil tanker bust. Border Patrol checkpoints in South Texas can seize that much in a week.

"Here, we try to do what we can," Pierce says. "But the technology is just not here and that's because the Coast Guard can't afford to put it everywhere."

Pierce, who was previously stationed in Florida, says Coast Guard units off the Florida coast and in the Caribbean see a far greater chunk of Coast Guard funding and technology.

Coast Guard operations in Texas get about a fourth of the funding of states such as Florida and California, from where Coast Guard boats do drug interdiction in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean.

Since Sept. 11, the local Coast Guard's mission has been diverted somewhat to security for the Port of Corpus Christi. While drug interdiction patrols haven't stopped, there are fewer of them, officials said.

Nationally, 75 percent of the Coast Guard's assets are now directed at patrolling the country's ports.

Gulf connection

But drug enforcement agents say there is little doubt the Gulf of Mexico is being used as a thoroughfare for narcotics, as smugglers try to bypass both the border and the highway checkpoints of the U.S. Border Patrol. How much is coming up, say veteran drug agents, is impossible to know, but the Gulf of Mexico is considered a less attractive option than land, which they say smugglers think is easier to penetrate.

One modus operandi, agents say, is to take the drugs up on a small speedboat and drop it off north of the Sarita checkpoint on the Padre Island National Seashore. From there, it is picked up and walked or driven to the highway.

"They have little boats, and they're fast," Pierce said. "Without the better technology that the Coast Guard doesn't get at the same rate as other services, it's tough to see them at night."

No results, no funding

Pierce said the Coast Guard can't afford to put drug-catching technology everywhere like they do in more successful areas, such as off the coast of Florida.

"Because this area hasn't produced big results, it hasn't gotten the better technology," he said.

Lt. Rick Wester, a Coast Guard spokesman in Washington, D.C., said most of the Coast Guard's drug enforcement efforts take place far out to sea in the Caribbean and Pacific. By the time drugs approach American shores, he said, loads have been broken up, making them harder to find and their capture less significant.

"We try to interdict boats while they still have the large loads," Wester said.

Wide-open sea

Activities in the Gulf of Mexico are dwarfed by those on the Pacific Ocean, from where the Coast Guard has seized 80 percent of its drugs between October 2000 and May.

During its three-day patrols of the Gulf, the Key Biscayne boards several shrimp boats, looking for drug and fishing violations. It's on the lookout for boats heading north. The sport fishing boat caught Pierce's attention because it was headed north after dark.

But the cutter can only board a tiny fraction of the hundreds of boats that are on the water. Especially at night, the sea is dotted with lights from shrimp boats, and the Key Biscayne's radar screen is illuminated with blips representing vessels.

As part of each boarding, Coast Guard members wipe the surfaces of each part of the boat with special tissues the size of Clearasil pads. The swipes, as they're called, are returned to the cutter where Borowczak enters them into an experimental ion scan machine that tests for drugs.

Tech tools

The $25,000 machine is one of eight being used by the Coast Guard on a trial basis. Eventually, Borowczak hopes, his crews will take the portable machine with them on all boardings.

On this night, Borowczak gets a hit for methamphetamine from a swipe taken from the fish hold. But he has doubts. It would be strange for a shrimp boat to hold large amounts of meth in its fish hold, and the machine has been known to give false positives.

"We get a lot of hits for personal use cocaine on the shrimp boats," Borowczak said.

The machine has yet to aid in a major bust.

This night is no different. Before calling the crew to tell them to make a more detailed inspection of the fish hold, Borowczak runs a second test, which comes up negative.

"The bottom line," Pierce said. "Is this is just a big ocean."

Contact Jeremy Schwartz at 886-3618 or schwartzj@caller.com

November 20, 2001