Half a century ago, a network of canals tapping into the Colorado River transformed barren desert into one of the world's richest farming regions. Now another pipeline is threatening to make it America's new cocaine capital.
Federal and local law enforcement officials say the Imperial Valley surrounding this border town of 23,000 across from Mexicali, Mexico, has started to rival south Florida as the nation's main staging area for cocaine smuggling.The problem has become so serious that in early April Sen. Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, met with the area's top law enforcement official, U.S. Attorney Alan Bersin, in San Diego to develop a strategy to stem the flow.
Boxer said she will push for a drug interdiction task force similar to the one formed in South Florida in the 1980s and is asking for National Guard troops to perform administrative duties for federal agents so they can be free to tackle the growing problem.
The border area's reputation for lawlessness has been reinforced recently by a series of violent incidents, some linked to the drug trade and others raising suspicions of such connections.
Across the border in nearby Tijuana, Mexican presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio was assassinated in March. The city's police chief was ambushed and killed last month. A drug-related shootout earlier this year between federal and state police killed three people.
Figures released by the U.S. Border Patrol and U.S. Customs Service show a dramatic shift in smuggling patterns.
Last year, half of the $1.3 billion worth of drugs seized nationwide by the U.S. Border Patrol was confiscated at highway check points north of here and in the rugged and open terrain east and west. Sixty-nine percent of the haul, or 19,000 pounds, was cocaine.
"Ironically, we're not here to stop drugs. We're here to stop illegal aliens," said Don Webster, a Border Patrol supervisor.
"District-wide, the increase has been dramatic," said Gurditt S. Dhillon, acting director of the U.S. Customs Service in San Diego, which controls all five ports of entry along the California border with Mexico, including Calexico.
One-third of all seizures in the district by Customs inspectors last year occurred in the Imperial Valley. So far this year, that figure is up to 71 percent, according to Dhillon.
"Eighty percent of all cocaine caught in the Southwest now comes through here," said Imperial County Sheriff Oren Fox.
Federal officials say the area is experiencing a fallout from stepped-up law enforcement in south Florida, which has forced the drug cartels to look for other routes of shipment.
The remote and rugged terrain stretching 72 miles from the base of the Vallecito Mountains to the Arizona border makes it ideal for nighttime forays into the United States.
Federal officials say isolated landing strips are being set up in the desert, where drugs are flown in, then loaded aboard trucks and into cars to be transported through the port here or to make a run across isolated stretches of the border.
From here, shipments are driven to Riverside, San Bernardino or Los Angeles, where they are broken up to be distributed throughout the country.
Officials say the same Colombian cartels operating in south Florida are operating here, except now they are teamed up with Mexican drug lords. The profile of the "mule," or small-time operator used to carry the drugs, has also changed, say officials.
Recently, Border Patrol agents turned back a vehicle whose occupants abandoned their car and tried to flee on foot back into Mexico. When agents caught up with them on the U.S. side, they found two middle-aged women with two small children.
"We once caught a young family with a 3-month-old baby" trying to smuggle drugs, said Johnny Williams, the Border Patrol's agent in charge of the district.
Agents say runners are often ordinary Mexican citizens who find it hard to turn down anywhere between $2,000 and $5,000 to drive a car across the border with no questions asked.