GANGS POSE BORDER THREAT

DEL RIO, Texas - Val Verde County Sheriff D'Wayne Jernigan has dealt
with smugglers and drug gangs for decades, both as sheriff and as a
customs agent.

But in the last year, the risks of drug-fueled terrorism have raised
the stakes to scary levels. Rifles and handguns have been replaced by
rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs, and high-caliber machine guns.

"Now the bad guys have more sophisticated training and better
equipment," Sheriff Jernigan said. "They're better armed and willing to shoot."

This month, Border Patrol officials reported that assaults against
agents all along the border nearly doubled from the previous year.

As President Bush prepares to tour the U.S.-Mexico border this week,
law enforcement officials in counties up and down Texas' 1,200-mile
border with Mexico are coping with issues of national security,
increased illegal immigration, and a growing fear that the drug
cartels are moving upriver and just across the border from here.

Val Verde County, a stony outcrop of sheep and goat ranches and
sharply etched limestone canyons, rests along the Rio Grande 150
miles west of San Antonio.

It's biggest city, Del Rio, and its Mexican neighbor, Ciudad Acuna,
have missed the explosion of drug violence that has enmeshed Laredo
and Nuevo Laredo 180 miles downriver.

But law enforcement officials know it's coming. They've seen the signs.

"We're in a time of transition," said Chief Deputy Terry Simons.

"Our concerns are just how strongly the cartels' sphere of influence
will extend through this county."

Federal investigators have blamed the increasing level of violence
along the border on the bloody turf battle between three violent
cartels, a battle leaving 158 dead and accounting for more than 40
kidnappings in Nuevo Laredo alone.

The FBI has told Congress that the continuing violence centered in
that city stems from the battle between rival smuggling
organizations: the Matamoros-based Gulf cartel, remnants of the
Juarez cartel and Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's Federation, a splinter
group of the Juarez organization.

"We've gathered intelligence that indicates the Zetas, the Gulf
cartel's enforcers, are making an appearance in Ciudad Acuna," Chief
Deputy Simons said. There's also an indication of a presence of
MS-13, a Colombian-born drug gang with tentacles in the United States
that provides muscle for the Guzman cartel.

"To make matters worse, a few months ago we picked up information
that a new order went out from the Zetas that no more drug loads
would be lost," he said. "It used to be that losing a load now and
then was a cost of doing business. Now the Zetas are telling their
people they can't give up a load. They're to fight the cops. ...

"We're caught in the middle until somebody wins," Chief Deputy Simons
said. "It's not just drug smuggling anymore. You have to think of it
as narco-terrorism."

Gangs have ties in U.S.

In a Nov. 17 congressional hearing on border security, Chris Swecker,
FBI assistant director for criminal investigations, testified that
each of the competing cartels has cemented ties to U.S. street and
prison gangs, including the Texas Mexican Mafia, the Texas Syndicate
and Los Hermanos de Pistoleros Latinos, or The Brotherhood of Latin Gunmen.

For the border sheriffs, it is, at best, an uneven battle.

Sheriff Jernigan has 13 deputies to patrol a county of 3,100 square
miles - roughly three-fourths the size of New Jersey. Most of the
county's 45,000 residents live in Del Rio. The rest are scattered
across isolated ranches and small communities, connected to state
highways via gravel ranch roads or private twisting dirt roads. The
deputies also patrol roughly 90 miles of river frontage, including
thick stands of carrizo (cane) and limestone cliffs.

Val Verde County provides each deputy with a military-style automatic
rifle and a vehicle. Deputies supply their own side arm. Each vehicle
- - usually a heavy-duty four-wheel drive truck - is equipped with
water, food, extra fuel, tow straps, a GPS device, a change of
clothes and extra ammunition, much of it paid for out of the deputies' pockets.

In the rocky, isolated terrain, radios frequently don't work and
cellphone coverage fades not far from the city limits.

"When you're out there, driving ... to some call about a man with a
gun, you're by yourself," Deputy Joe Faz said. "The other deputy on
duty has to watch the rest of the county. You can call the Border
Patrol for backup, but you know they're 20 minutes or more away. So
it's just you."

Six months ago, a smuggler's car was seized with a highly
sophisticated communication system superior to anything the deputies
have in their vehicles. And last year, deputies found a modern
baseball-style grenade along a dirt path leading up from the river.
They believe someone running security for a load of drugs dropped it.
Deputies have also gathered information on smugglers armed with an
RPG-7, a shoulder-fired rocket, and white phosphorous grenades.

"What we need is money to put more boots on the ground and give these
guys better training and equipment," Sheriff Jernigan said.

"But this isn't just our fight. ... If border law enforcement doesn't
work, than the rest of the country is going to lose."

Bracing for Violence

That sentiment is echoed all along the border.

"El Paso County sees these types of criminal behaviors more often
than we would like," El Paso County Sheriff Leo Samaniego said. "The
border is so wide open this will be problematic until lawmakers in
Washington, D.C., address these national-security concerns."

Officials on both sides of the border in the El Paso-Ciudad Juarez
area are bracing for an increase in drug violence.

Two weeks ago, gunmen killed two Mexican police officers in Ciudad
Juarez. And earlier in the month, police found the bodies of a former
Interpol chief and his lawyer crammed into oil drums and sealed with
concrete. Both men appeared to have been suffocated with plastic
bags, authorities said.

Ciudad Juarez, a city of 1.3 million, is infamous for its powerful
drug hub controlled by the Juarez cartel, whose No. 2 leader was
arrested Nov. 11, along with other suspects. .

When President Bush visits El Paso this week, said Manuel Mora, the
new FBI agent-in-charge, he will discover that while counterterrorism
remains the top national security issue, drug trafficking remains the
priority and poses the biggest criminal threat for the border city
across from Ciudad Juarez.

"This is El Paso, Texas, and everyone here is vigilant about the drug
problem and the crime that comes with it," said Mr. Mora. "I can't
say that I've seen any of the alarming signs, but that doesn't mean
we're not concerned," he said.

A senior Mexican intelligence official, however, had this sober
assessment: "We're seeing the violence gradually move from the Nuevo
Laredo region up the Rio Grande into the Juarez-Chihuahua area," the
official said. "The war continues. What changes are the battle sites."

Sheriffs Want Help

This year, the sheriffs of 16 Texas counties joined forces to form
the Texas Border Sherriffs' Coalition to lobby state and federal
officials for help. They recently received a $500,000 state grant
from Gov. Rick Perry.

"We know that border violence has escalated in Nuevo Laredo, and we
have heard about activity pushing west towards El Paso County," said
Rick Glancey, interim executive director of the group. "With the
presence of the Texas Border Sheriffs' Coalition, we hope to
intercept those problems before they make a hard push in any direction."

The coalition enthusiastically endorsed a bill introduced Nov. 17 by
U.S. Reps. Silvestre Reyes, D-El Paso, and John Culberson, R-Houston,
which would authorize $100 million to pay the direct costs of
training and equipping additional deputies and pay overtime costs. It
would also direct some funds to build detention beds to house illegal
immigrants taken into custody.

The Homeland Security Department recently addressed another major
complaint of border sheriffs - the loophole in immigration law that
allowed illegal immigrants from nations other than Mexico, known as
OTMs, to be released with a "notice to appear," pending deportation
proceedings.

This month, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced a
temporary stop of the notice to appear - known derisively along the
border as "catch and release" - as part of a new border security
initiative that includes funding for additional Border Patrol agents.

"If they want to fix it, they need to make it permanent," Sheriff
Jernigan said. "The OTMs were coming through in droves from all over
the world. They'd come up to us, asking where to find a Border Patrol
agent. We'd see them later, waiting to hitch a ride along Highway 90.
And no one had any idea of where they were going or what they might
do once they got there."

It's Not Just Drugs

Not all the border concerns stem from drugs or illegal immigration.
In Vega Verde, a neighborhood along the river west of Del Rio that
borders a major smuggling route,thieves come across the river, hit
the homes there and get back to Mexico before deputies can arrive.

"They're taking guns, jewelry, air conditioners, anything they can
get on a raft and get across," Deputy Faz said. "Landowners are
frustrated. And my concern is that people will start taking the law
in their own hands. What's going to happen if residents take up their
hunting rifles against some Zetas bringing a load of dope across?"

Recently, deputies frustrated with the inaction of Mexican
authorities staged an impromptu raid, taking boats across the river
and seizing stolen property.

"The funny thing is, with all this activity on the river, the Border
Patrol never showed up," Deputy Jose Luis Blancarte said. "We're
bringing back TVs and air conditioners and nobody saw it? We don't
have to worry about terrorists sneaking suitcase nukes across the
border. They could be bringing whole bombs, and no one would know."

The border sheriffs say their main concern is the safety of their
residents. "We don't want to be immigration officers," Sheriff
Jernigan said. "We just want to make sure our counties are safe. To
do that we need help, and that help has to come from the federal government.

"My nightmare is that it will take another 9-11 attack to wake up
this country about the vulnerability of the border," he said. "And
some border sheriff is going to have to say it came through his county."