Plastic garbage bags, discarded clothes and deflated inner tubes litter a stretch beside the Rio Grande - debris nonchalantly left behind by drug smugglers crossing the border from Mexico.

Twelve miles away, a sturdy wooden cross marks the spot where Border Patrol agent Jefferson Barr was gunned down in January, allegedly by a drug trafficker.Increasingly, smugglers crossing the border are getting more brazen and more violent, federal agents say. And the frightened voices of border residents are grabbing the attention of top anti-drug officers.

"It has gotten immeasurably worse in the last year, and we are determined to play hardball with international drug criminals," said Barry McCaffrey, the retired general heading President Clinton's drug control program.

McCaffrey, head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, told hundreds of law enforcement officials gathered for a national summit Wednesday to prepare for a long-term fight.

To ensure success, the government must shape a long-term budget rather than putting one together year by year, he said.

Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who was attending the summit along with Attorney General Janet Reno, said that authorities must concentrate on hitting drug-traffickers' pockets.

"When you deny drug traffickers the use of their profits, you create an enormous problem for their organizations," Rubin said.

McCaffrey and Drug Enforcement Administration chief Thomas Constantine on Tuesday visited a smuggling hot spot - Eagle Pass - before heading to the Southwest Border Counterdrug Conference in El Paso.

McCaffrey and Constantine met privately with ranchers living on the Rio Grande border who say the smuggling on their property has increased in the last five years.

One 62-year-old rancher said the trafficking has become "outrageously dangerous," McCaffrey said.

"It's an intimidating environment with gangs of 20 to 40 people crossing this river . . . at night, carrying automatic weapons with massive drug smuggling - heroin, cocaine, marijuana," McCaffrey said.

Many of the ranchers are too scared to be identified, McCaffrey said. They are considering selling their property, and smugglers are interested in buying, he said.

Seventy percent of illegal drugs now come through Mexico since crackdowns have succeeded in the Caribbean and Florida, said Jim Collier, the agent in charge of the DEA office in San Antonio, which covers Eagle Pass.

Drug seizures in Eagle Pass this year are at least one-third higher than they were the same time last year, he said. The majority of the seizures involve marijuana.

The smugglers' growing violence was demonstrated on Jan. 19, when Barr was shot to death while on duty.

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"There was no moon that night. It was pretty dark. We saw four guys coming right at us," said agent Ned Thomas, who was with Barr on patrol near the Rio Grande.

Barr got into a struggle with one of the men and the fight escalated into gunfire, authorities said. The agent was shot just above his badge on his eighth anniversary of joining the federal agency. A suspect is in a Mexican jail.

"Jeff was a good agent. He enjoyed arresting drug smugglers," Thomas said.

One way to crack down on smugglers is to work closely with Mexican officials while increasing technology and manpower along the border, McCaffrey said.

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