TEENS RISK FREEDOM TO EARN BIG BUCKS SMUGGLING DRUGS

EL PASO -- On her first excursion as a drug courier, the 14-year-old
figured she had better come up with a disguise to get through a U.S.
Customs port of entry with a load of marijuana.

With an advance on the $1,500 fee, she bought a fake ID on the streets
of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, had her nails manicured and her hair dyed
blue-black "to look older." She also got a makeover and bought new
clothes, a watch, bracelets, earrings.

Loretta (whose name has been changed for this story) was going for the
young businesswoman look, she said.

Loretta tossed newspapers about the Ford Explorer in which the drug
traffickers had stashed more than 100 pounds of marijuana. She left a
briefcase with a cellular phone inside open on the car floor.

She did not even possess a driver's license.

She is among the increasing numbers of teen-agers being used to ferry
drugs across the Mexico border.

Loretta had run away from her grandmother's home earlier this year. She
said she successfully carried two loads of marijuana hidden in cars
through El Paso-area ports of entry before she was caught -- twice.

The trick to carrying it off was to look natural, she said recently in
an El Paso County juvenile detention center cell.

And she recalled the mundane exchange that makes or breaks most drug
trafficking ventures at ports of entry.

"I drove up, rolled down the window, said: 'American,' " she recalled.

"What are you bringing back?" the Customs official asked.

"Nothing."

"Where are you coming from?"

"Business meeting."

"OK, pass," the official said.

Five tons and counting

The belief that juveniles will be stopped less often and will not face
substantial incarceration are factors that have fueled the rise in use
of juveniles from both sides of the border to smuggle drugs, primarily
marijuana, into the United States.

Last year, 148 juveniles age 17 or younger were caught attempting to
smuggle illegal drugs through El Paso-area ports of entry -- a nearly 50
percent increase over 1998.

At the current pace, the number of teen drug smugglers arrested in 2000
will rise another 25 percent, according to U.S. Customs Service
statistics.

Juvenile drug couriers collared while driving through El Paso-area
ports of entry this year were caught with 5 tons of marijuana -- a load
with a street value of roughly $10 million.

Manny Alvarez, Customs Service assistant port director for passenger
operations in El Paso, said it is not clear how much Mexican and
American drug traffickers rely on juveniles to smuggle drugs across the
border, because no one knows how many teen smugglers bring over drugs
undetected.

Drug traffickers angle lucrative fees to entice couriers, mainly Juarez
residents eager for American cash. Among the couriers are elderly men
in their 70s, pregnant women and families with parents and children,
Alvarez said.

Now, Alvarez said, the use of teens as couriers is a rising trend.

"We've never seen as many juveniles in the past as we are now," Alvarez
said.

The El Paso County Juvenile Probation Department allowed the Journal to
interview teen-agers accused of smuggling drugs, but only if their real
names were not published and their faces not shown.

The youths said it was the cash that smugglers are willing to pay, more
than anything else, that led them to play the dangerous role of
unassuming couriers.

"I felt awkward when they asked me. But you know how they say money
talks? I wanted the money," Loretta said.

Besides, she said: "I'm thinking, what are they going to do to me? I'm
14." She is scheduled to spend four months in a Texas boot camp for
delinquent juveniles.

Good-paying job

Using teens who do not face penalties as stiff as adult couriers is a
cost-effective smuggling method.

A single pound of marijuana has a street value of about $1,000 near the
Mexican border. For a few hundred to several thousand dollars,
smugglers can secret $50,000 or more worth of marijuana across the
border with a teen-ager -- some so young they have never held a job.

The marijuana loads transported by teen-agers caught at El Paso ports
of entry this year have averaged 81 pounds, according to the Customs
Service.

But some loads are considerable. On May 19, 1999, one teen was caught
with 396 pounds of marijuana. On May 27 of this year, inspectors found
330 pounds of marijuana in the care of a 17-year-old Juarez boy.

Loretta, who initially told her Juarez drug connections that she was 21
years old, said she felt like an important part of the scheme. The teen
said she was paid $2,500 for driving a 150-pound load of marijuana on
her second trip.

"I felt, if I make it, I feed the boss, I feed everybody," Loretta
said. "If I don't make it, nobody gets paid."

A fellow El Paso teen-ager at the detention center -- this one a 16-year-
old boy who recently completed nine months of probation -- said he
crossed small loads of marijuana into the border town four times before
he was caught last year with a 26-pound shipment.

He said he was approached in El Paso by a street dealer who offered to
pay $50 for every pound smuggled. Each time, he said, he believed he
smuggled 3 or 4 pounds of marijuana in various cars with Mexican
license plates.

"I never got nervous. Just the last, last time," he said. "The other
times, I was like, 'American citizen,' and they'd ask me, 'Where are
you coming from?' And I'd say, 'Visiting my grandma,' or cousins, or my
girlfriend. I'd just make up something, and they'd let me go."

Stiff penalties

The rewards are greater for Mexican youths because of their country's
poor economy. But the risks are greater, too: Mexican youths may be
sent to Texas state institutions, in serious cases, until they turn 18.


If a Mexican youth is caught with a relatively small amount of drugs,
has a stable family and no serious record of trouble, he or she may be
returned to Mexico under family supervision, said Manuel Torres,
director of intake and court investigations for the El Paso County
Juvenile Probation Department.

One teen, a 15-year-old Juarez youth with a wispy goatee, said he
agreed to drive a Blazer packed with 126 pounds of marijuana across the
border for a $700 fee when he was caught Aug. 3.

He said he planned to use the money to pay for his high school
education, at about $40 a month, because his father, a custodian, could
not afford to.

"I just wanted to pay for it," he said.

Now he faces spending several months in a Texas state institution, far
removed from his family, and he is missing his education in Mexico.

"They (smugglers) show you the money. They say if they catch you,
you'll be out in three days, that you're minors, they can't do anything
to you," he said.

Another Juarez youth, a 16-year-old with a baby face who was caught in
late July while part of a drug smuggling effort, cried quietly as he
worried about his family and how long he would be away from them. He
said he had hoped to help his mother with his fee.

Both boys said they knew other youths who had been caught while
smuggling, as well as teens who had made their deliveries and returned
home with enough cash to buy cars.

Smugglers ask youths who make deliveries to recruit friends, as well.

Drug smuggling in Juarez is rampant, the 15-year-old said, and will
continue as long as there is drug demand in the United States and
lucrative fees for short, risky hops across the border.

"Young people will keep taking the risk," he said.

Torres said that last academic year he visited several high schools in
Juarez to speak to children and parents about the consequences of being
caught smuggling drugs.

"It's exciting, and there's the lure of the money. And they are told
nothing is going to happen to them, that they won't find the marijuana
because the dogs won't find it, it's wrapped up real good," Torres
said. "But the truth is, they are detained. They can remain locked up.
And because it's an immigration violation, they might lose their
passport and won't be able to return to the U.S. ever again."

This year, more than two-thirds of the juveniles caught smuggling drugs
were Mexican citizens.

'It's over, it's over'

For most American juveniles, the lure of smuggling is quick cash.

"I was thinking, if I don't do it, and somebody else does it, that's
going to be money I could have had," said one 16-year-old girl from El
Paso. "And I needed the money."

She said she was offered $2,000 to smuggle drugs across the border in
June.

The original plan called for her to drive a car from Juarez to Kansas
and then fly back.

But at the last minute, the trafficker told her she had to drive a
Lincoln Town Car with Kansas plates to an El Paso parking lot and leave
it there for a pick-up.

The proposition was not risk-free, but she wanted to pay off traffic
fines. At the time, she was working 25 hours a week at a fast-food
restaurant, making $5.20 an hour.

She turned 16 in January and obtained a driver's permit in February.
Four months later, at the request of an ex-boyfriend involved in drug
dealing, she went to Juarez to pick up a car packed with drugs hidden
in the tires. She was paid $200 up front, with the rest of her fee to
be paid upon delivery of the car to its drop point.

She is tall and thin, with black hair and the seemingly worry-free face
of a teen-ager. She said she does not know how Customs officials
suspected her among all the drivers in the lines waiting to cross an
international bridge into El Paso.

She remembered agents surveying the drivers, spotting her and then
walking over. Suddenly nervous, she said she put her hands together,
cracked her knuckles and thought, "It's over, it's over."

Agents found 64.6 pounds of marijuana -- a street value of $65,000.

Since then, she has been sentenced to probation until she turns 18. She
has been under house arrest and has had to wear a monitoring bracelet
around her ankle 24 hours a day.

"I knew the consequences, and a lot of people told me not to do it,"
she said. She has an uncle, the "closest thing I had to a dad," who is
doing time in prison for a drug-trafficking offense.

"I think I was just trying to show how brave I was. But when I got
back, people said, 'You know what, even if you did do it, you wouldn't
have been brave. You would have just been stupid.' "