What do you think Lawmakers told border crime getting out of hand?

[THE GREATEST GODDESS JILL]

Along the newly fenced Mexican border, dangerous and heavily armed groups are increasingly smuggling people as well as dope — and U.S. border investigators must dedicate more time to dismantle their organizations, according to a Government Accounting Office report released to Congress Thursday.

Though Congress has increased the Border Patrol to an all-time high of 20,000 officers, a small cadre of specialized federal investigators assigned to Immigration & Customs Enforcement devotes 16 percent of its time to probing the netherworld of border smuggling. And some border specialists have gotten stuck shuffling detainees instead of pursuing criminal leads, according to the GAO report presented Thursday to the U.S. House's border subcommittee.

Zetas branch out
The U.S-Mexican human smuggling business generates billions, but ICE agents have never managed to seize more than $17 million a year in smugglers' assets, Richard M. Stana, director of the GAO's Homeland Security and Justice Issues office, told the committee. He called those results "tepid."

A decade ago, 90 percent of Mexicans and other would-be illegal migrants crossed into the U.S. without using so-called coyotes, Stana said. But with a new wall and twice as many border agents, they increasingly use professional smugglers. That has meant higher prices charged by the smugglers, which attracted organized crime gangs to a business once dominated by less-violent operations rooted in migrant communities.

On the Texas border, the Zetas, the vicious former enforcers of the Gulf Cartel narcotics smuggling organization, have branched into the human smuggling trade.

"As we've done more to secure our borders, alien smuggling organizations have increasingly become more bold, violent and dangerous," subcommittee chairman Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, said Thursday. "Particularly troubling is the potential for these organizations to smuggle terrorists into our country."

Signs of sophisticated, highly armed and well-financed smuggling operations and related kidnapping and extortion rings have emerged in all U.S.-Mexico border towns, as well as large cities like Houston and Phoenix.

In Arizona, a pre-dawn battle between human smugglers and gangsters killed 21 people on July 1 in the Sonoran desert south of Nogales.

In Houston, agents rescued 11 immigrants held at gunpoint in a house by one violent group of coyotes in 2009 and later dismantled a network of 14 illicit transportation companies used by smuggling rings.

Inspiration from Arizona
The GAO report suggests the U.S. government look to Arizona for inspiration on how to disrupt smugglers' financial networks. At the hearing, Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard described how he's worked to cut off money to criminal groups, successfully targeting used car lots, money transfer agencies, travel agents, drop houses and other businesses linked to smuggling and money laundering.

In an interview, Tre Rebstock, an ICE agent who is president of the local officers' union in Houston, said agents would "love to see more resources" for smuggling operations across the Southwest.

"Anyone in investigative work will tell you 'Follow the money' anytime you want to know what's going on," he said. "I would love to see them track these people by their money. No one likes to be separated from their money."
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/7120928.html