Finally the truth

Tucson, Arizona | Published: 04.26.2009

If you're not a criminal, you don't need to worry about the much-discussed spillover of violent crime from Mexico's drug wars.

That's the unanimous opinion of 10 Southern Arizona law-enforcement officials interviewed by the Arizona Daily Star in the last two weeks.

"The average individual has nothing to fear in regard to what has happened," said Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada.

"Generally speaking," Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik agreed, "it's criminals killing criminals."

While police officials are increasingly cautious because of the paramilitary and violent nature of the Mexican drug cartels, most doubt there will be cross-border spillover of the war between drug cartels and the Mexican government that has claimed thousands of lives in Mexico during the last two years.

"Spillover crime would be bad for business," Douglas Police Chief Alberto Melis said. "And they're businessmen."

Conspicuously absent are the mass killings that have defined the Mexican drug wars. The two cities called Nogales offer a stark example: Last year there were a record 116 homicides in the Mexican city, but in its Arizona sister city there were none.

Some crimes have escalated in Southern Arizona: home invasions targeting traffickers, kidnapping of people involved in the smuggling. But nearly all perpetrators and victims in the surge are involved in smuggling.

These types of crime — not a new surge in cartel-war violence — have been cited as evidence of a spillover in recent congressional hearings and news reports.

For example, The New York Times reported on March 22 that rising home invasions in Tucson show a spillover of violence from Mexico's drug wars. But Tucson Assistant Police Chief Roberto Villaseñor said that's not so.

"The arrests we've made on home invasions, not one of them is an active cartel member from Mexico," Villaseñor said. "The majority of them, upwards of 90 percent of them, were local criminals."

Still, Southern Arizona police welcome the attention paid to border-related crime, even if some of the concern seems exaggerated. That's because it means money.

"I've told my people let's put in for everything we can because we have to ride the wave," Estrada said. "Finally, some recognition and some funding is coming down here to the border." Santa Cruz County crime

In the early-morning hours of April 11 west of Nogales near Bartolo Canyon, two or three masked men dressed in black and carrying AK-47-type assault rifles stole $500 from a group of 19 illegal immigrants.

Reports of armed robberies such as this one have risen in Santa Cruz County from three in 2007 to 10 in 2008 — and eight through the first quarter of 2009, Estrada said.

Santa Cruz County has seen the residual effects of drug cartel activity in Mexico for years in the form of armed robberies and assaults among criminals, Estrada said.

But, he said, "The drug war pushed it up to a higher level. It added more gas to the fire. It added another ingredient to what was happening along the border and that was an increase in violence and competition."

In Pima County, home invasions have increased. The Pima County Sheriff's Department reported 56 in 2008, up from 39 and 44 the previous two years, said Lt. Michael O'Connor. In Tucson, 34 home invasions were reported from Jan. 1 through April 24, 2008, compared with 33 for the same period this year.

The robberies and home invasions share two characteristics. One, direct links to the drug cartels are tenuous; and two, nearly all of the victims are either criminals or people being smuggled.

So far, the chance of criminals hitting the wrong house is very low, O'Connor said. More than 95 percent of the home invasions they investigate are bad guy on bad guy, he said.

Some neighborhood-association presidents in Tucson said they have seen increasing violence in their areas. But despite occasional rumors of connections to Mexico, it is connected to local gangs.

"We do see a lot of violence, a lot of shootings, a lot of drug violence," said Beki Quintero, president of the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association. "We really don't know if that's a direct cause or link" to violence in Mexico, she said.

The assertion that law-abiding residents are safe but that police need more resources to fight the increasing threat from the drug and people smugglers can seem contradictory.

"We walk a fine line in that we agree this is a serious problem, the influx of narcotics, the effect of the cartels in a general sense on our community," said Villaseñor of the Tucson police. "We also don't want to portray it that we have these hordes of invading cartel members attacking our community members, because that's not the case." Spillover contingencies

While law enforcement largely discounts the danger to average residents, it is nevertheless mounting precautionary defenses.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security had local law enforcement make contingency plans last year in the case of a spillover.

The perceived threat of Mexican drug cartels has escalated in the last two decades as they've become what many label paramilitary organizations. The National Drug Intelligence Center has identified the cartels as the top organized-crime threat in the United States.

That, say officials, is what makes it necessary to prepare.

Tables have turned since Nogales, Ariz., Police Chief William Ybarra was a rookie in the 1980s.

"Back then, we had the training, we had the bulletproof vests, we had the armament, we had the communications and numbers," Ybarra said.

"It's turned. They have the high-caliber military weapons, they've got the unlimited cash flow to buy bulletproof vests.

"They have grenades; we run from grenades."

During the April 20 Senate committee hearing in Phoenix on border violence, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., compared the Mexican drug cartels to Islamic terrorist organizations and warned that the cartels have the money, the weapons, the networks and the "utter disregard for human lives" to mount an attack.

Arizona Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl and Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer have requested that the National Guard be sent to the border because of the violence.

But Mexican drug traffickers are unlikely to cross the border with guns blazing — the sort of attack that soldiers on the border could stop, said former Douglas Mayor Ray Borane, who served as a border-issues aide to former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano.

"They want to depict the situation as one where you could be literally invaded," he said. "That's unreality."

If the Mexican drug wars spur violence in the United States, Borane said, it likely will come in the form of a phone call from a Mexican drug trafficker telling an associate in some U.S. city to go after another U.S. drug dealer.

"The Army can't stop the telephone call to Phoenix," he said.

The real deterrent for the cartels is fear of U.S. law enforcement and prison time, said Lee Morgan, a retired U.S. Customs agent long stationed in Douglas.

"Our law enforcement system is honest and it works. In Mexico it's mostly corrupt," he said.

That doesn't stop border police chiefs from worrying.

"If we didn't take it seriously, we would be fools," said Sahuarita Police Chief John Harris. Bolstering cops on border

Melis, the Douglas chief, has seen little violence of any sort in the quiet border town. There have been no reported murders for several years, and Melis doesn't expect that to change — even as drug-cartel violence surges on the other side of the line.

"I'm concerned because it's my job to be concerned," Melis said. "It's my job to worry about things so others don't have to."

One possible benefit to the special attention to border violence is money, border experts and law-enforcement officials said.

Like so many police chiefs along the border, Melishopes to get federal money to bolster his force from 37 officers to 42.

He's not alone.

Villaseñor, the assistant Tucson police chief, said problems connected to drug trafficking aren't new, or even caused by the Mexican drug wars, but Tucson police will accept help fighting them.

"We need assistance with that," Villaseñor said. "We never turn our nose up at any assistance."

Ybarra, from Nogales, called federal funds paramount to their work and said he sees increased attention on border violence as an opportunity for more funds.

"Without the federal government's attention and involvement and commitment, there is no way we could handle this on our own," Ybarra said.

Dupnik used the Senate hearing in Phoenix to pitch an idea for a task force to slow the flow of guns, cash and ammunition south into Mexico.

"We don't get a chance to talk to the people who are in control of our government and our country," Dupnik said. "It was a tremendous opportunity."

Miguel Levario, an assistant professor of history at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, says he thinks news reports are exaggerating the threat from Mexico for an age-old reason: Fear sells.

"The New York Times is one example I've been using," Levario said, citing the March story from Tucson headlined 'Mexican Drug Cartel Violence Spills Over, Alarming U.S.' "They use that headline, then they say in the article that we can't really link the drug violence we're seeing in the cities to the violence in Mexico."

Borane, of Douglas, agreed.

"The media can make or break an issue. They keep using the word spillover, spillover. It's so trite. They keep putting that issue in the minds of the American public," he said.

Here is what Southern Arizona police officials said about the perceived spillover of violence from Mexico's drug wars:

Tony Estrada, Santa Cruz County Sheriff.

Santa Cruz County has not seen the gruesome attacks common in Mexico.

"We are not having the beheadings and putting people in acid and doing the killing, we are not seeing that violence, it's not to that level," Estrada said. "But, it's here. It's a spillover."

"We have had this spillover for years," Estrada said. "Anything that results in these crimes as far as I'm concerned is a spillover. It's a result of what is being orchestrated on the Mexican side to move these drugs, to move these people."

But he says it's not impacting ordinary citizens.

Larry Dever, Cochise County Sheriff

There are more bandits ripping off loads of people and drugs in the county and they don't hesitate to use violence to further their cause.

"In that sense, I guess you could say it's spillover," Dever said "As far as the execution-style stuff going in Mexico and the running gunbattles in the street that they have on a regular basis, we haven't seen any of that yet."

Clarence Dupnik, Pima County Sheriff

Dupnik calls the perception of a spillover of violent crime media-produced.

That's not to say there's not fallout from the activity in Mexico, he said.

"All the drug trafficking violence that we have in this country is somehow mostly related to Mexico. So, did it spill over here? How did that all evolve? That's a difficlut question to dissect with any specificity. But spillover recently? No."

Ritchie Martinez, of the Arizona Department of Public Safety and the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task force

Martinez says one of the dangers of the surge of violence in Mexico is the degree to which law enforcement officers are targeted there, or even seem to be involved as attackers.

"Most of those assassinations or rip-offs in Mexico, those people are dressed up like military or law enforcement," he said.

The targeting and apparent involvement of law enforcement may make it more likely that criminals with connections in Mexico target police in the United States, he said.

"We're looking for any indications of threats to police officers," said Martinez, who is a criminal intelligence analyst supervisor for DPS. "It's a much more threatening environment in law enforcement."

Donna De La Torre, retired director of field operations in Arizona for Customs and Border Protection

De La Torre, who oversaw Arizona's eight ports of entry for 12 years until retiring in 2007, said there has always been an element of danger at the ports, but it has only rarely come to fruition.

"We always prepared for it. It didn't seem to be the more organized, systematic, brazen determination that we see right now on the border. It would emerge here, it would emerge there. Everyone always had to be on their guard."

Ray Borane, former mayor of Douglas and adviser to Gov. Janet Napolitano on border affairs

Borane, who grew up in Cochise County, follows Mexico closely. He's observed the federal government's increased efforts to stifle drug cartels but noticed that local efforts against the cartels are hit and miss.

"I really don't know how succesful they're going to be in Mexico… That thing has grown into such a monster that it's going to take plenty to dismantle it over there.

"You never know who you're dealing with" in Mexico, Borane said. "That's what makes it so difficult. You never know if you're dealing with somebody who's sincere in dealing with the problem."

He noted that flare-ups of conflict tend to occur where officials are making a sincere effort to stifle criminals. That makes life dangerous for Mexican municipal officials.

Borane said many of the mayors and police chiefs of Agua Prieta, Sonora, have lived in Douglas while in office.

"They'll tell you it's for the education of their children, but it's really for their safety."

making a big brew ha ha

Arizona's governor and two U.S. senators urged the federal government on Monday to send hundreds of additional troops to secure the porous Mexican border, along which ruthless drug cartels are waging bloody turf wars.

The violence has gained high-level attention in both the United States and Mexico in recent months, amid concerns that it is bleeding into U.S. border states.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer asked for 250 more National Guard troops to secure the desert state's border.

"We need additional National Guard ... if we don't secure our border ... we are at ... risk," the Republican governor told a Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs meeting in Phoenix.

President Barack Obama visited Mexico last week and pledged to help President Felipe Calderon in his fight against the cartels, who killed 6,300 people in Mexico last year.

Obama's administration recently announced additional funding and federal agents to curb border crime, and has said it is considering plans to send troops, probably National Guard reserves, in case of a broad outbreak of violence.

Arizona Senator John McCain, a Republican defeated by the Democrat Obama in the November 2008 presidential election, also called on Washington to allocate additional resources including troops to the border.

"Additional federal action is urgently needed, and failure to do more puts at risk the security and safety of our citizens each and every day," McCain told the hearing.

Senator Jon Kyl, another Arizona Republican, said resources including Border Patrol check points on highways and greater resources for the justice system in the state were also needed. "It is a whole system that needs to be properly resourced," he told Reuters before the hearing.

Brewer wrote to Defense Secretary Robert Gates to request additional troops earlier this year, but the request was denied. The state has 150 troops deployed in support roles, she said.

In 2006, former President George W. Bush sent National Guard troops to the border states as part of a temporary operation to boost security. The operation ended last year.

running things?

Eight Mexican law enforcement officers were killed Saturday in a brazen attack on a police convoy transporting an important drug suspect to a prison in western Mexico.

Gunmen killed four federal police officers, two federal investigative agents and two prison employees in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the transfer, the Public Safety Department said.

"They fulfilled their duty with professionalism, commitment and dedication," the department said of the fallen officers.

The assailants have not been identified, but the department said the attack appeared to have been an attempt to free a top lieutenant of the Beltran-Leyva cartel named Jeronimo Gamez, who was arrested on the outskirts of Mexico City in January.

Gamez was taken from Mexico City to an airport in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit, and from there was being transported overland to a prison in the state capital, Tepic.

Police said gunmen in three vehicles opened fire shortly after the police convoy left the Nayarit airport.

Gamez and eight other suspects were successfully delivered to the prison.

Prisoners in Mexico are often transported in convoys of regular SUVs, pickups or buses accompanied by heavily armed officers. Federal police do have armored trucks for prisoner transports, but it was unclear whether such vehicles were used in the Saturday convoy.

Prosecutors say Gamez is a cousin of Arturo Beltran Leyva, one of Mexico's most powerful drug lords.

They have accused Gamez of acting as Beltran Leyva's representative in negotiating drug deals with Colombian traffickers.

More than 10,650 people have been killed in drug violence in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon sent out 45,000 troops in 2006 to directly confront the traffickers.

the real enemy is the mexican government

Thousands of soldiers have smothered drug violence in Mexico's bloodiest US border city but police corruption and complaints of rights abuses could hurt their early successes.

Drug killings have plunged by 80% in Ciudad Juarez, a desert city on the border with Texas, since President Felipe Calderon sent in 10,000 soldiers and federal police at the start of March, the state attorney general's office says.

After taking control of city police forces in one of Mexico's biggest operations in years, masked and camouflage-clad soldiers now stand guard outside banks and supermarkets and patrol the streets in convoys.

But with such a large army presence, complaints of human rights abuses are growing and there are signs that ruthless drug hitmen driven out of the city are taking their turf wars further south in Mexico, stretching President Felipe Calderon's nationwide army-led crackdown.

The Zetas, the armed wing of the Gulf drug cartel, are trying to muscle in on smuggling routes in the western state of Jalisco and killed a state prosecutor this month, police say.

In Ciudad Juarez, people who lived in fear of encountering decapitated bodies dumped on streets or hung from bridges are emerging from their houses and the local economy is showing signs of life.

"Things are improving. It was so chaotic before," said waitress Diana Castaneda, referring to the 1,600 drug killings in the city last year. "People are coming again from El Paso."

In another boost to Calderon's more than two-year-old drug war, police caught a leader of the Juarez cartel, Vicente Carrillo Leyva, in Mexico City on April 1.

Calderon, a conservative who took power in late 2006, is staking his presidency on stemming the drug violence that killed 6,300 people last year and is worrying Washington.

US President Barack Obama will visit Mexico this month, and is sending high-tech gear and hundreds more agents to the border to fight the smuggling of drugs, weapons and cash.

Despite the sharp fall in murders, Ciudad Juarez residents worry the violence will return if troop levels drop.

Major troop deployments in other drug hotspots such as Tijuana, across from California, have given brief respites from the mayhem, but murders have escalated as soldiers moved elsewhere to fight the cartels on other fronts.

Women mistreated

Reviving old concerns about rights abuses in the drug war, Mexico's human rights commission accuses soldiers and federal police of committing abuses by clumsily targeting women and children in house raids and at military checkpoints.

"I saw how federal police opened a woman's shirt and checked her bra (for drugs) in the middle of the street, in front of many people and surrounded by armed soldiers," Gustavo de la Rosa, a Ciudad Juarez-based human rights commissioner for the surrounding state of Chihuahua, said.

At other checkpoints, soldiers have held up traffic to search groups of school children and their mothers, leaving many crying, de la Rosa said.

Federal police officers and an army spokesman consulted by Reuters denied any wrongdoing. "There are some colleagues doing bad things, but they are few. Most of us are dedicated to protecting our citizens," said one federal policeman.

But local used car dealers say federal police started running protection rackets as soon as they arrived last month.

"They asked for the vehicle papers and told us they were going to confiscate them if we didn't get a thousand dollars together within an hour," said a salesman who declined to give his name because of threats from police about the incident.

Endemic police corruption is a big problem for Calderon's drug war as cops openly aid traffickers and work as hitmen.

Mexico's army is seen as mostly uncorrupted by cartels and federal police are better paid and better equipped than the country's often overweight and incompetent patrol officers.

Calderon's government has promised to cleanse police forces and eventually take the army off the streets, but federal police have faced constant corruption allegations.

In early 2007, federal cops were caught on police cameras extorting money from tourists at road checkpoints in Tijuana.

"What's missing is a social policy," said Hugo Almada, a sociologist in Ciudad Juarez, pointing to poor education and a lack of employment prospects. "Ten thousand soldiers and police can have a temporary impact on crime, but not on the social reality. We may win a savage war and gain an empty victory."

Kidnappings, armed robberies and disappearances of young women are still going on right under soldiers' noses, carried out by small gangs working out of cars, said Daniela Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for the Chihuahua attorney general's office.

to serve and to steal

A former South Tucson Police Lieutenant who pleaded guilty in January to embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from the department, was sentenced to 33 months in federal prison today.

Richard Garcia admitted to stealing $560,000 from the South Tucson Police Department between 2004 and 2007. He said it was to feed a gambling habit.

In May, FBI agents served search warrants at South Tucson City Hall, STPD, and Garcia's West side home.

Garcia was the second highest ranking officer in South Tucson, when the department fired him last June.

He has 30 days to either report to the prison directly or come to federal court and be remanded into custody of the federal marshals.

going home

U.S. immigration police deported a former drug cartel kingpin to Mexico, where he was wanted on charges related to organized crime and drug trafficking, authorities said on Friday.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said federal agents in El Paso, Texas, handed Jose Manuel Garza Rendon, 56, to Mexican authorities at a bridge over the border with Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, early on Friday.

Garza Rendon, a high-ranking member of Mexico's Gulf cartel, was deported after serving a nine-year sentence in federal jail in west Texas for conspiracy with intent to distribute marijuana, the agency said in a news release.

Mexico's attorney general informed the agency that Garza Rendon had been wanted in Mexico since 2002 for organized crime, attempted murder and possessing firearms used exclusively by the Mexican army.

Curbing drug cartel violence is a top concern for authorities in both the United States and Mexico, where warring traffickers killed 6,300 people last year.

The U.S. government announced plans last month to help Mexican authorities combat the gangs south of the border, as well as stepping up efforts to choke off the southbound flow of U.S. guns and smuggling profits to the cartels.

Garza Rendon was one of 11 men named in the Mexican arrest warrant. Among the others is Osiel Cardenas Guillen, the boss of the Gulf Cartel who was extradited to the United States last year to face drug charges, U.S. immigration said.

Goddard issues dire warning at border meeting

State Attorney General Terry Goddard warned of "gunfights in the streets of Tucson" if the U.S. doesn't get a handle on well-funded, highly organized Mexican drug cartels that have ramped up violence along the border.

"The cartels are totally integrated, with arms-, money-, drug- and human-smuggling all a part of their business operations," Goddard said Tuesday after a three-hour, closed-door meeting with 60 law enforcement officials. "On the U.S. side, there has been a fractured response. This (meeting) will give us a more effective response."

Tuesday's meeting in Tucson involved high-level representatives from local, state and federal agencies, including the State Department, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Homeland Security.

Officials were short on specifics, but agreed it was helpful to meet face-to-face with others seeking to stop drug- and human-smuggling going north across the U.S.-Mexico border and the flow of cash and weapons going south.

The meeting was convened by U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, who called it "a milestone."

Sahuarita police chief John Harris said he believed that now that he has met the other actors in the border-control effort, it will be bring more effective cooperation in the future.

As an example of the utility of the meeting, Pinal County officials learned they could turn over an expensive drug-disposal problem to the federal government, Harris said. As local police confiscate increasing amounts of drugs, especially bulky marijuana, they have discovered it is expensive to get rid of it. They learned Tuesday that the Drug Enforcement Agency will take it away.

More typically, it is local agencies that have to bear the costs of border enforcement, which is officially a federal responsibility. Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall said the U.S. Attorney's office has dumped a large number of drug cases onto county officials, costing taxpayers and overloading local officials.

One small remedy on the way is additional resources coming to federal prosecutors that will allow them to stop dumping cases involving smaller amounts of drugs onto local court systems.

"Hopefully that will ease up on the cases that we had to prosecute that should be in the jurisdiction of the United States' Attorney's office," Cochise County Attorney Edward G. Rheinheimer said.

Giffords said the nation is beginning to focus on border security and "this is an opportunity to capture the nation's attention as bills move through Congress" that would bring more resources to the border.

Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik noted for the first time in memory, a president of Mexico, Felipe Calderon, appears to be serious about battling drugs.

Giffords said pending legislation might bring more technology to the border but did not talk about comprehensive immigration reform.

Harris and others said the spillover of violence from the border is already occurring, with a border-related shooting within a mile of Sahuarita in the past two years. Chases have caused damage and injury and cost law enforcement agencies resources throughout the region.

Another new program that may help reduce border violence is an overall economic aid program for Mexico that might help stabilize the country's reeling economy and which includes a program to help border officials inspect vehicles entering their country and detect guns and money.

David Johnson, Assistant Secretary for the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, said that pilot program is only operating in the Rio Grande area across from Texas, but may develop into a way to slow the flow of guns and cash headed south in other areas.

President Felipe Calderón of Mexico, during an official visit to London, said his country and the United States would work as partners in the fight against violent drug cartels but would not conduct joint military operations against them. Sharing of intelligence will continue, he told reporters, but American forces will not be conducting raids with their Mexican counterparts on Mexican soil. Mexicans have expressed alarm that the presence of more American soldiers at the border would adversely affect their country’s sovereignty.

upping the ante

Try to bring a refrigerator into Mexico in the back of your pickup, and you are almost certain to get stopped by Mexican customs officials.

Stick a couple of AK-47 rifles in your trunk, and chances are you'll whiz right through.

Now Mexico is owning up to its leaky border as it launches a new program to monitor vehicles entering the country. The goal is to weigh and photograph southbound cars and trucks, in hopes of snaring more gun smugglers.

As the Obama administration promises a crackdown on the illegal U.S. weapons trade that supplies the drug cartels, Mexico is acknowledging shortcomings on its side of the 2,000-mile border.

"Security concerns require a customs overhaul," Alfredo Gutierrez Ortiz, who oversees border checkpoints as director of Mexico's tax collection agency, said in an interview Wednesday with The Associated Press. "Today, passenger vehicles really enter without being inspected."

Mexico checks only 10 percent of the 230,000 vehicles that cross the border each day, according to the federal Attorney General's Office. By weighing cars to see if they are unusually heavy, and running license plate numbers through a database of suspicious vehicles, the government hopes to catch more hidden contraband.

The United States has long weighed and checked the license plates of northbound vehicles, but the technology is new to Mexico, which is installing it at all customs checkpoints. It was introduced last week at Matamoros, across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas, and should be added along Mexico's border with Guatemala by year's end.

Such a systematic effort would be a big improvement: Inspections are now mostly determined by lights that randomly flash red or green. Frequent travelers say it is rarely red.

Inside Mexico, strict gun control laws prohibit sales of weapons with calibers higher than a .38 handgun. Even to buy those, citizens must get permission from the Defense Department.

North of the border, however, the cartels simply pay straw buyers to pick up weapons at gun shops, gun shows or flea markets, then resell the arms to smugglers.

The ATF says it has traced up to 95 percent of guns seized at scenes of drug violence in Mexico to U.S. commercial sources. These weapons are increasingly higher-powered, including .50 caliber Barrett rifles and ammunition that can pierce the armor of Mexican soldiers and police.

"A year ago, we never saw those guns going south into Mexico," said Tom Mangan, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. "Now we refer to it as one of the weapons of choice."

Mexico's modernization effort coincides with President Obama's pledge to dispatch nearly 500 more federal agents to the border, along with X-ray machines and drug-sniffing dogs, both to stop the spillover of Mexico's drug violence and curb gun smuggling. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder will be in Mexico Thursday to reinforce the U.S. commitment in talks with their Mexican counterparts.

Experts are skeptical about their chances of slowing the weapons supply. Gun runners easily smuggle thousands of weapons in small numbers at a time, taking them apart and hiding them in suitcases or even inside televisions and DVD players. These weapons wouldn't necessarily be detected by weight.

"If the car has no criminal record, and is apparently legal, it will not necessarily be stopped and checked," said Georgina Sanchez, a gun trafficking expert with the Mexican think-tank Collective for the Analysis of Security and Democracy.

Smugglers also can avoid checkpoints entirely, carrying weapons south along the same desolate corridors that bring drugs and migrants north.

And while cartels get most of their high-caliber assault rifles from the U.S., they are turning to Central America for other military-grade weaponry such as grenades and even the occasional rocket launcher.

"You're seeing truly military-type guns, like grenade launchers," Mangan said. "They're not coming from the U.S. The hand grenades that are being used, you're looking at that stuff migrating up from Central America."

Experts also agree that the Mexican military, which is often outgunned by traffickers, has not been a significant source of weapons despite the potential for corrupt soldiers to sell out to the cartels.

Many of the cartels' grenades and other heavy weapons could be leftovers from Central America's civil wars, Mangan said.

Mexico has seized more than 2,702 unexploded grenades since the start of President Felipe Calderon's term in December 2006, compared to 59 during the first two years of the previous administration. Grenades have been traced back to the militaries of many countries, from South Korea to Spain and Israel, Mangan said.

Gutierrez acknowledged that the new system will not be as effective on the southern border, where many communities straddle the frontier and residents regularly bypass official crossings.

"We need to address the breach - everything that doesn't go through customs - because that's the biggest problem in the southern border," he said.