Drug-running planes are skipping from Mexico to south Texas like stones skipping the waters of a pond. It's an elaborate ruse to fool the radar of U.S. drug enforcement agents. A confidential report recently delivered to Attorney General Richard Thornburgh by federal drug agents describes the technique.
A smuggler will fill his plane with drugs in northern Mexico and fly to a Mexican airstrip near the U.S. border. The pilot approaches low so it appears on radar that he is coming in for a landing, but once below radar he skims over the airstrip and heads across the border.All that the radar has "seen" is a plane that took off from one Mexican airstrip and landed at another, and that's not the business of U.S. drug agents.
Once in U.S. territory, the pilot goes through the same motions. Still beneath the radar, he heads for a known American landing strip, preferably a quiet one where no one is around to get suspicious. He skims over it and then gains altitude until he registers on the radar again as a plane taking off.
Anyone following him on radar will assume the flight originated in the United States. He flies on to a clandestine airstrip and drops his cargo.
The south Texas geography makes it a welcome mat for drug smugglers. The land is flat and mostly deserted.
"Air and land smuggling has been described by the Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol as `rampant' in this district, with air smuggling perceived as the primary interdiction method of major traffickers operating in this area," the report says.
Smugglers can pick from isolated airstrips and urban runways. Some 125 airfields serve Houston alone, according to the report. And if a drug smuggler is bold enough, and creative enough, he can stash his cargo on airliners flying from drug-producing countries right into Houston Intercontinental Airport.
The smugglers who don't fly commercially can use the stone-skipping method, or they can simply cruise across the border below the radar ceiling and toss the booty out the window at a drop site without ever having to land. With commercially available homing devices, the report says, a pilot can "drop his cargo with accuracy almost anywhere in south Texas."
The smart smuggler times his flight during busy travel hours so he can get "lost in the crowd" of legitimate planes filling the radar. Night trips are tougher, but modern technology is keeping up with the demands of drug smugglers with the money to buy toys. Night vision goggles are the gadget of choice for the late runs.
Sometimes, with a lot of work, our feds get lucky. A few years ago, according to the report, a Colombian drug lord unwittingly hired DEA agents to set up a reception point near McAllen, Texas.
His plan was to deliver 100,000 pounds of marijuana and 5,000 pounds of cocaine from Colombia. But the DEA closed in when the first shipment of marijuana arrived. The agents got the pot - but not the drug lord. He is still a fugitive.
For all the small successes noted in the report, there is a tacit admission that the smugglers still have the upper hand in south Texas.