By Alicia CruzSenior writer
TheBlackUrbanTimes
U.S., Mexico to begin crackdown on smuggling by rail
Drug smuggling by rail (train) has gone undetected for far too long, police say, but the U.S. and Mexico officials are talking about changing that. In 2008, U.S. customs officers in the border town of Nogales, Ariz., seized more than 650 pounds of marijuana on three different trains in just one week. Recently, they had seized about 1 1/2 tons of marijuana.
Smugglers have "been very opportunistic, and they have very good intelligence," said Scott Carns with Duos Technologies, a Florida company that has sold security systems to railroads and the government for use on the border.
This is how it goes: while trains idle on side tracks in Mexico waiting to be loaded with legitimate cargo and shipped to the U.S., drug smugglers conceal everything from Marijuana to Cocaine above the trains axles or behind false undercarriages made from plywood.
In the event that a smuggler cannot find a spot to hide his stash, he creates one. Smugglers have been known to weld a false wall in a train car. Then, they tag the car where the drugs are stowed so that the dealer in the U.S. can spot the car and remove the drugs.
Thousands of pounds of drugs arrive in the U.S. by freight train every year. Now the federal government says it's time American rail companies cracked down on their Mexican business part
ners to keep the drugs from reaching the border.
Though drugs shipped by rail represent a mere fraction of the drugs seized along the Mexico/U.S. border it did little to prevent the Justice Department from suing Omaha, Nebraska based Union Pacific in order to collect $37 million in fines for drug seizures made on its trains.
"Failure to comply with reasonable security measures leads to vulnerabilities that are simply unacceptable," the agency's acting commissioner, Jayson Ahern, said when the lawsuits were filed.
Union Pacific says it has cooperated with Customs and Border Protection by donating border inspection buildings to the agency and providing K-9 training for government inspectors among other things.
Thousands of pounds of drugs arrive in the U.S. by freight train every year. Now the federal government says it's time American rail companies cracked down on their Mexican business part
ners to keep the drugs from reaching the border.Though drugs shipped by rail represent a mere fraction of the drugs seized along the Mexico/U.S. border it did little to prevent the Justice Department from suing Omaha, Nebraska based Union Pacific in order to collect $37 million in fines for drug seizures made on its trains.
"Failure to comply with reasonable security measures leads to vulnerabilities that are simply unacceptable," the agency's acting commissioner, Jayson Ahern, said when the lawsuits were filed.
Union Pacific says it has cooperated with Customs and Border Protection by donating border inspection buildings to the agency and providing K-9 training for government inspectors among other things.
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