<DOC>
[108th Congress House Hearings]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:99654.wais]
NORTHERN ICE: STOPPING METHAMPHETAMINE PRECURSOR CHEMICAL SMUGGLING
ACROSS THE U.S.-CANADA BORDER
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE,
DRUG POLICY AND HUMAN RESOURCES
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
APRIL 20, 2004
__________
Serial No. 108-284
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house
http://www.house.gov/reform
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
99-654 WASHINGTON : 2005
_____________________________________________________________________________
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut TOM LANTOS, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN L. MICA, Florida PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
DOUG OSE, California DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
RON LEWIS, Kentucky DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
CHRIS CANNON, Utah DIANE E. WATSON, California
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
NATHAN DEAL, Georgia C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER,
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan Maryland
TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio Columbia
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas JIM COOPER, Tennessee
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee ------ ------
PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio ------
KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
(Independent)
Melissa Wojciak, Staff Director
David Marin, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director
Rob Borden, Parliamentarian
Teresa Austin, Chief Clerk
Phil Barnett, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana, Chairman
NATHAN DEAL, Georgia ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
JOHN L. MICA, Florida WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
DOUG OSE, California LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER,
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas Maryland
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio Columbia
------ ------
Ex Officio
TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
J. Marc Wheat, Staff Director and Counsel
Nicolas Coleman, Professional Staff Member and Counsel
Malia Holst, Clerk
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on April 20, 2004................................... 1
Statement of:
Azzam, Abraham L., Michigan HIDTA Director; Michael A.
Hodzen, Interim Special Agent in Charge, Detroit, MI,
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland
Security; John Arvanitis, Assistant Special Agent in
Charge, Detroit Division Office, Drug Enforcement
Administration; and Kevin Weeks, Field Operations, Detroit
Field Office, U.S. Customs and Border Protection,
Department of Homeland Security............................ 10
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Arvanitis, John, Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Detroit
Division Office, Drug Enforcement Administration, prepared
statement of............................................... 47
Azzam, Abraham L., Michigan HIDTA Director, prepared
statement of............................................... 13
Hodzen, Michael A., Interim Special Agent in Charge, Detroit,
MI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of
Homeland Security, prepared statement of................... 40
Souder, Hon. Mark E., a Representative in Congress from the
State of Indiana, prepared statement of.................... 6
Weeks, Kevin, Field Operations, Detroit Field Office, U.S.
Customs and Border Protection, Department of Homeland
Security, prepared statement of............................ 53
NORTHERN ICE: STOPPING METHAMPHETAMINE PRECURSOR CHEMICAL SMUGGLING
ACROSS THE U.S.-CANADA BORDER
----------
TUESDAY, APRIL 20, 2004
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and
Human Resources,
Committee on Government Reform,
Detroit, MI.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:30 a.m., at
477 Michigan Avenue, Detroit, MI, Hon. Mark Souder (chairman of
the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representative Souder.
Staff present: Nicholas Coleman, professional staff member
and counsel; and Malia Holst, clerk.
Mr. Souder. The subcommittee will come to order. Thank you
all for coming this morning for our hearing on Northern Ice:
Stopping Methamphetamine Precursor Chemical Smuggling Across
the U.S.-Canada Border.
Good morning and thank you all for coming. This hearing
continues our subcommittee's work on the problem of
methamphetamine abuse, a problem that is ravaging nearly every
region of our Nation. It also continues our ongoing study of
drug trafficking and similar problems facing law enforcement
agencies at our border and ports of entry and if I can just
make a couple of comments before going into the thrust of the
meth statement.
In my district in Northern Indiana bordering Southern
Michigan, the meth situation has gotten so bad that many of our
drug task forces will often--I have a number of counties that
the drug task force consists of four people, and they'll spend
the entire morning at one location until the State Police labs,
like the mobile lab we visited when we were here which was kind
of an early one that we saw when we were here in Detroit
earlier, can get there and then they spend the rest of the day
at another one. They can't even get to the regular drug busts.
They can't help the DEA with larger trafficking stuff because
they're so occupied and flooded with a number of meth labs. In
Indiana we've gone from 90 to 1,200 cleanups in 3 years. The
fifth largest in the country.
In Congressman Boozman's District in Northern Arkansas
which was just featured in People Magazine and we're doing a
hearing there in the next 60 days and he has spoken at our
Washington hearing, they're even more flooded.
There was just an article in the Washington Post a week ago
that's happening in North Carolina, in Tennessee, eastern
Kentucky and Indiana. We're having a big problem in northern
Indiana, but also down in the Hoosier National Forest area
where we have these heavily rural national forest areas, but
interestingly even in Indiana, and we saw this first about 5
years ago in northern California, with these huge superlabs.
One of the things we've seen in Indiana and what we're
going to be investigating more today and this is what kind of
triggered the immediacy of this hearing before we get into some
of these others and I'll have some questions related to this,
is that what's in the news almost every night. I did a press
conference Friday morning with the Indiana State Police to try
to expand our cleanup process in Indiana. They had between
midnight and 7 a.m., five additional labs, including an
explosion. About 60 percent are running in southern Indiana,
about 40 percent in northern Indiana. But even in Indiana with
this exponential increase in the meth labs and the first signs
that it's getting into edges--they had a story Sunday, an
explosion in a motel. They've had now 10 cases in Indiana of
labs with problems in--where people rent a room in a hotel,
Holiday Inn Express was one, a Baymont Inn was one and that
type of thing that seems to be a growing phenomenon at the
edges of the cities. In Evansville, Fort Wayne, Southbend, it
hasn't hit the biggest cities yet. It seems to be heavily a
rural phenomenon.
But even in Indiana, what happened is we started with this,
it's kind of a rural, to some degree motorcycle gang, a rural
home cooking network much like we've seen in the last views and
other parts. But then the superlabs start to move in, the price
drops, the purity soars and 70 percent of our meth in Indiana
now is from superlabs and it's coming mostly it appears from
Yakima, Washington and/or up from Texas.
But interestingly, a lot of it's Mexican and California
superlabs. But in discussing where the superlabs were coming,
they said the precursor chemicals were coming across to
Detroit, heading back over to California and then the superlabs
were coming back to Indiana. Which is really an interesting
wrinkle in my State, to the best they can track that, and we're
seeing this in other States.
As what we're going to be focusing on in the next number of
months is a little bit zeroing in on this meth phenomenon which
has really caught the political attention because it's a new
drug. Whenever there's a new drug that hits, you've got to get
control of it at the early stages. Politically in Congress,
there are more Members signing up for the Meth Caucus right now
than there are the overall drug caucus. It's one that's grabbed
their attention because of the news coverage in their areas and
because it has an immediate danger to the cleanup. Let me tell
you one other story that we heard in our Indiana hearing.
In one small town this idiot who was home cooking went to
this big anhydrous ammonia facility in this small town that
distributes anhydrous ammonia to a whole wide area around it.
He was trying to get his stuff out of this big tank and he was
1\1/2\ screws from exploding this tank which would have
instantaneously wiped out a town of 700.
So all of the sudden you're battling not only a drug
problem, but an explosion problem in the nature of endangering
everybody around you at a hotel, in a community, and then not
to mention the environmental cleanup that is incredible. You
can see this from the coke labs down in South America, in the
rivers when you fly over in the Amazon Basin. And now to think
that this is hitting in our own rivers with the home cookers.
But at the same time, it's not the home cookers we're focused
on here in this particular hearing because many of them just go
down to the local grocery store or pharmacy or hardware store
and pick up the stuff. It's the big superlabs because we have
one dilemma we're trying to face in this smaller home cooking
market that's on TV a lot, but our real big problem is people
get introduced to this stuff, get the kick off of it, and these
superlabs then come in and blow the market apart. They're the
big box stores that come in and take out your local
neighborhood pharmacy once it gets going. And you guys here in
this area are one of the battleground areas in working with the
Canadians in how to get control of this stuff because we've
toughened our U.S. laws. So now we have to get a hold of this
so we don't have an explosion that 5 years later we look and
say, hey, this was like crack, why didn't we catch it at the
first end.
Meth is among the most powerful and dangerous stimulants
available. The drug is highly addictive and has multiple side
effects, including psychotic behavior, physical deterioration,
and brain damage. Death by overdose is a significant risk.
Unfortunately, meth is also relatively easy to produce; so-
called meth cooks can create the drug from common household or
agricultural chemicals and cold medicines containing ephedrine
and pseudoephedrine. Ephedrine, pseudoephedrine and similar
chemicals are referred to as meth precursors and these
precursors are the main subject of our hearing today.
The most significant source of meth in terms of amount
produced comes from the so-called superlabs in California,
northern Mexico. By the end of the 1990's these superlabs
produced over 70 percent of the Nation's supply of meth. The
superlabs are operated by large Mexican drug trafficking
organizations that have used their established distribution and
supply networks to transport meth throughout the country. These
organizations have the additional advantage over their smaller
competitors of being able to import illegally, of course, huge
quantities of precursor chemicals from Canada.
The meth traffickers had to start smuggling precursor
chemicals from Canada because of the much tougher chemical
diversion penalties enacted by Congress in the 1990's, coupled
with the effective action by the Drug Enforcement
Administration, DEA and other law enforcement agencies. Through
a series of acts, including the Chemical Diversion and
Trafficking Act of 1988, the Comprehensive Methamphetamine
Control Act of 1996, the Methamphetamine Penalty Enhancement
Act of 1998, and the Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act of
2000, Congress made it far more difficult to obtain large
quantities of precursor chemicals within the United States.
Drug companies and pharmacies are now required to register
large transactions involving cold pills and other precursor
chemical sources, and retail outlets are prohibited from
selling anyone multiple packages of decongestants and similar
medicines. Medicines containing pseudoephedrine are also
required to be packaged in blister packs, which are more
difficult for a meth cook to open and dump into a vat than
larger plastic bottles.
Unfortunately, Canada did not impose these controls on its
side of the border, which made it an attractive source of
supply for meth producers. According to a joint intelligence
report by DEA and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the RCMP,
the amount of pseudoephedrine imported into Canada rose by
nearly 500 percent in 1 year from 1999 to 2000 alone. DEA and
the RCMP believe that a portion of that increase was diverted
to the illicit precursor chemical market in the United States.
In the fall 2000, the Canadian Government finally implemented
new regulations of precursor chemicals, imposing a reporting
requirement and an end user declaration on large transactions.
Questions remain, however, about whether these new regulations
are sufficient to curtail the large-scale diversion and
smuggling of precursor chemicals from Canada.
These chemicals are being smuggled, usually by truck,
across such major border crossings as the Ambassador Bridge
here in Detroit, and the Blue Water Bridge up in Port Huron.
DEA and other law enforcement agencies have identified several
organizations doing this smuggling, many of Middle Eastern
origin. Identifying and stopping smugglers using these bridges
presents a serious challenge for law enforcement; Detroit is
the busiest truck crossing in the United States, while Port
Huron is the fourth busiest crossing and both crossings are at
or near the top in volume of passenger traffic as well. It is
unclear whether U.S. Customs and Border Protection, CBP, which
conducts the inspections of all trucks and persons entering the
United States has sufficient resources and facilities to check
enough vehicles at the Ambassador and Blue Water Bridges for
drugs and other contraband. The task is further complicated by
the recent implementation of two fastpass systems that expedite
border crossings for certain travelers, the NEXUS system for
passengers, and the Free and Secure Trade, FAST system for
commercial trucks. These systems have certainly helped speed
trade and travel across the border, but because they result in
fewer inspections for participants, they may also create a
gaping hole in our security network.
This hearing will give us an opportunity to discuss the
current status of precursor smuggling here in Michigan, and to
explore some possible solutions. We are pleased to be joined by
representatives of four law enforcement agencies responsible
for stopping precursor chemical and other drug trafficking
across the Northern border. We first welcome Mr. Abraham L.
Azzam, Director of the Southeast Michigan High Intensity Drug
Trafficking Area, HIDTA. HIDTA, a program overseen by the White
House Office of National Drug Control Policy, seeks to
coordinate all the anti-narcotics efforts of the Federal, State
and local law enforcement agencies. We also welcome Mr. Michael
Hodzen, Interim Special Agent in Charge of the Detroit Office
of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, which is
part of the new Department of Homeland Security. Mr. John
Arvanitis, is that right?
Mr. Arvanitis. Arvanitis, sir.
Mr. Souder. Arvanitis, Acting Special Agent in Charge of
DEA's Detroit Field Division; and Mr. Kevin Weeks, Director of
Field Operations for the Detroit Field Office of CBP, which is
also part of the Department of Homeland Security. We thank
everyone for taking time to be here today, and look forward to
your testimony.
I also want to thank particularly Mr. Azzam and Mr. Weeks
who we met with before. This is the report that I referred to,
the Federal Law Enforcement at the Border and Ports of Entry
report. When we were here for several days and we didn't hold a
hearing at that time, we used a large number of information and
background in addition to what we learned about the HIDTA when
we were doing the reauthorization of the ONDCP. This focus on
the border lays out the system, border system, some of the
challenges and the need that in order to keep trade moving, we
need to invest adequate resources. But in moving trade, we
can't forget that illegal narcotics, illegal immigration,
terrorism, all those things are very important at the border
too, not to mention even from a trade standpoint with all the
illegal smuggling and copyright violations, that we also have
to make sure we can control trade at the border. We can't just
in moving trucks across the border forget what we're protecting
in our national interest in multiple ways.
One last thing as you are all are pretty familiar, I want
to make sure the record reflects that part of the challenge
here involves Canada. Because much of what we do in narcotics
focuses on the southwest border, but Canada is heavy in meth
precursors, ecstasy and certain drugs that are produced heavily
in northwest Europe. All of a sudden Buffalo and Detroit become
major centers and to some degree upstate New York moving down
to Boston and New York City, become a different mix in our
narcotics question.
We have been over to visit in the Netherlands and also at
Antwerp and Belgium. And we see some of the huge production of
these meth precursors and ecstasy move onto the Belgium side in
addition to the Dutch side, and try to get them to control it
and then it flows through Canada. Canada isn't a producer of
most, as I understand it. If there's any information other than
that, make sure I understand that today too. It isn't the major
producer of much of these precursors, it's the transfer point
coming across from Europe as I understand it. I want to make
sure we get that clear on the record today too.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Mark E. Souder follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Now, I ask unanimous consent that all Members
have 5 legislative days to submit written statements and
questions for the hearing record and that all answers to
written questions provided by the witnesses also be included in
the record. Without objection, it's so ordered.
Second, I ask unanimous consent that all Members present be
permitted to participate in the hearing. Without objection,
it's so ordered. That's to cover us in case any Member not on
the committee comes in.
I ask unanimous consent that the full statement of each
witness be put in the record as well as any supporting
materials that you want to submit.
Our panel of witnesses is composed of four representatives
of the Federal Government, Mr. Abraham Azzam of the Southeast
Michigan HIDTA, Mr. Michael Hodzen of U.S. ICE, Mr. John
Arvanitis of DEA, Mr. Kevin Weeks of the U.S. Customs Border
Patrol. It is our standard practice to ask witnesses to testify
under oath because we're an oversight committee, so I'll ask if
you'll each stand and raise your right hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Souder. Let the record show that each of the witnesses
answered in the affirmative. So we'll now start with the
testimony and we'll start with you, Mr. Azzam. Thank you very
much.
STATEMENTS OF ABRAHAM L. AZZAM, MICHIGAN HIDTA DIRECTOR;
MICHAEL A. HODZEN, INTERIM SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE, DETROIT,
MI, IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND
SECURITY; JOHN ARVANITIS, ASSISTANT SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE,
DETROIT DIVISION OFFICE, DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION; AND
KEVIN WEEKS, FIELD OPERATIONS, DETROIT FIELD OFFICE, U.S.
CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Azzam. Thank you, sir. I might, before I begin, mention
that in the year 2000 we were given five additional counties
that we are now called Michigan HIDTA and these additional
counties include Alleghan and Van Buren in western Michigan,
Kent County where Grand Rapids is, Kalamazoo County, Genesee
County, where Flint, MI is, as well as the four original
counties of Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and Washtenaw. The main
reason these western counties were added was because of the
methamphetamine lab problem which was an emerging problem in
our State back in 1998, 1999 and 2000. Thank you, sir.
Congressman, thank you for this opportunity to testify. Our
HIDTA was authorized by the U.S. Congress and began in July
1997. The Michigan HIDTA Executive Board is the Governing Body.
This is important to note. And this Executive Board has
designed a strategy and crafted initiatives to implement the
strategy. All Michigan HIDTA operations are approved by this
Executive Board and we function within the Policy Guidelines
provided by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, as well
as the agencies involved.
The voting members of this Executive Board consist of eight
Federal Agencies. They are the U.S. Attorney, the FBI, DEA,
Immigration Customs Enforcement, IRS, Transportation Security
Administration, ATF and the U.S. Marshal. Interestingly on the
State side, we have eight voting members. State and local
agencies represented are--the Michigan State Police, the
Detroit Police Department, which is the largest in our State.
We have a representative of the Michigan Association of
Prosecutors, local prosecutors. We have two eastern Michigan
Sheriffs who vote because of the large population in southeast
Michigan. One western Michigan Sheriff to represent their
interest, an eastern and a western Michigan Chief of Police.
These chiefs represent the many, many Chiefs of Police that we
have in the area covered. These are voting members. Now we do
have Ex Officio members and they are the Michigan National
Guard, the State of Michigan Office of Drug Control Policy,
that is the Governor's drug czar for our State. We have the
Michigan Attorney General and we also have a representative of
a community group whose acronym is MOSES, which stands for
Metropolitan Organizing Strategy Enabling Strength. And I've
provided the subcommittee with a written description of our
HIDTA structure and activity.
Sir, the most unique aspect of the Michigan HIDTA, as well
as the 32 other HIDTAs throughout the United States is the
Investigative Support and Deconfliction Center. We call it the
ISC. The Michigan HIDTA ISC is a collective of DEA, FBI,
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, CBP, Customs Border
Protection, the U.S. Coast Guard, the IRS, the Michigan State
Police, the Detroit Police, the Wayne County Sheriff and the
Michigan National Guard. We also have Canada Customs. Two
analysts are present 2 days each week in our Investigative
Support Center. All these agencies provide significant
intelligence resources. For example, DEA has a full group, FBI
has a full group, ICE and CBP have a full group and there are
significant other agencies that I mentioned that who have
personnel there. We also receive frequent visits from the
Canada Immigration and the Ontario Provincial Police. From time
to time the RCMP is also present.
These resources gather, process and disseminate information
and intelligence between Federal, State and local agencies, as
well as the Canada Authorities. Now we do that within the
existing treaties and protocol. Specifically HIDTA hosts the
IBET, International Border Enforcement Teams and ICAP meetings.
These analysts are sent to focus on information for the seizure
of drugs in general and precursor contraband and they are also
available for post seizure followup. Pseudoephedrine has been a
primary target of the ICE and CBP and Canadian analysts for
several years. I believe that the international effort of the
last 2 years has had a dramatic impact upon the smuggling of
Pseudoephedrine in our area. It hasn't stopped, but it ceased
to be so blatant and open. That may be bad. They've gone under.
The Michigan HIDTA has 19 Initiative Task Forces. Several
deal with mid- and high-level investigations involving
pseudoephedrine, methamphetamine, party and rave drugs between
the United States and Canada. DEA's Group 2 deals with followup
investigations of precursors as well as rave drugs and BC Bud
marijuana investigations. Pseudoephedrine continues to be a
primary target.
On a local level, the Michigan State Police with HIDTA
assistance, has a Uniform Division, Motor Carrier operations
and has conducted training for interdiction of drug contraband
on our highways, including pseudoephedrine and other
precursors. The Criminal Investigation Division of the Michigan
State Police has two HIDTA supported Task Forces dealing with
methamphetamine and its precursors. These are the small labs
that you referred to earlier, sir, which incidentally are just
north of your Indiana counties. The Michigan State Police and
DEA, with HIDTA support, has trained 140 local officers to be
Clandestine Laboratory Certified and 60 Certified Site Safety
Officers to deal with the small methamphetamine labs which are
so devastating, and also with the precursors associated with
them.
Michigan HIDTA support comes in many forms, such as funding
for overtime for the officers, equipment, training,
investigative travel and expenses. The Investigative Support
Center with its uniquely collocated intelligence assets has
proven to be a valuable coordinating aid to the numerous
agencies involved in this effort.
I understand you will receive testimony from DEA, ICE and
CBP regarding their excellent efforts against the illegal
smuggling of pseudoephedrine and other drugs. One example is
Operation Northern Star. It's a classic example of intelligence
assets working in harmony with enforcement assets to
successfully conclude an important pseudoephedrine
investigation. I'm proud to say that the Michigan HIDTA program
was instrumental.
That's my testimony, sir, and I wish to thank this
subcommittee for this opportunity and I'm prepared to answer
your questions.
Mr. Souder. Thank you and as I said we'll put the full
statement and supporting materials in the full record.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Azzam follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Mr. Hodzen.
Mr. Hodzen. Good morning, Chairman Souder. I'm honored to
appear before you to discuss the investigative efforts and
accomplishments of the Department of Homeland Security
Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Established in March 2003,
ICE is the Federal Government's newest and the second largest
investigative agency. Through its legacy components, ICE brings
to bear significant expertise, broad statutory authorities, and
innovative investigative techniques. One key mission of ICE is
to disrupt and dismantle organizations involved in the
smuggling of narcotics into the United States. Along with our
counterparts from Customs and Border Protection and in
conjunction with the Drug Enforcement Administration, we have
developed a focused and integrated strategy to combat the
importation of precursor chemicals used to manufacture
narcotics in the United States, specifically ephedrine and
pseudoephedrine.
The production and distribution of methamphetamine in the
United States is not a new problem. For decades, outlaw
motorcycle gangs controlled this criminal industry. However,
the potential for high profit quickly drew others into the
industry, including narco-traffickers from Mexico. As U.S. law
enforcement focused its investigative efforts on domestic
production and diversion, the U.S. Government strengthened
anti-diversion regulations. As a result, the criminal
organization sought alternative means to obtain the precursors
necessary for the production of methamphetamine. Due to the
geographic proximity and the volume of trade with the United
States, Canada inadvertently became a primary source of supply
for these chemicals. Responding to the increase in demand,
legitimate Canadian industries made available large amounts of
pseudoephedrine in tablet form. Sold in the domestic Canadian
market, these tablets were purchased in bulk by criminal
organizations and subsequently smuggled into the United States.
Joint investigative efforts by ICE and DEA produced
valuable intelligence on the structure and methods of operation
of these criminal organizations. In particular, an analysis of
seizures and arrests made in 2001 and 2002 identified a
relationship between the movement of pseudoephedrine from
Canada and smuggling organizations that were moving the product
west.
Between 2001 and 2002, U.S. law enforcement seized more
than 127 million tablets of pseudoephedrine and ephedrine,
including one seizure of more than 42 million tablets in
Detroit, MI and another of more than 21 million tablets in Port
Huron, MI.
The continuous pursuit of these organizations, including
large-scale undercover operations, border interdiction
activities, controlled deliveries, and the analysis of
smuggling trends, has significantly disrupted the flow of
pseudoephedrine from Canada.
A key component to these investigations was the cooperation
provided by the Canadian law enforcement authorities,
especially the assistance provided by the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police and the Canada Border Service Agency. These
agencies have continuously supported U.S. efforts through the
exchange of intelligence and support of undercover
international smuggling operations. For example, these agencies
assisted ICE and DEA in Detroit, MI with an undercover
investigation involving a criminal conspiracy to import 200
cases of pseudoephedrine.
In 2003, in support of law enforcement efforts, the
Canadian government implemented tighter regulations, requiring
licensing and permits for producers, importers, exporters, and
wholesalers of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. Aggressive
bilateral investigation and enforcement action, combined with
the implementation of these regulations has led to significant
results.
For example, pseudoephedrine and ephedrine seizures from
Canada spiked to approximately 127 million tablets between 2001
and 2002. However, after the Canadian Precursor Control
Regulations were implemented, the number of tablets seized
decreased to approximately 11 million tablets in 2003.
Simultaneously, the price of pseudoephedrine on the street
rose. The decline in seizures and the corresponding rise in
street prices suggest the relationship in which the United
States and Canadian efforts are making a difference.
The combined efforts of ICE, Federal Prosecutors, DEA, CBP
and our Canadian counterparts appears to have made a marked
effect on the availability of supply of ephedrine and
pseudoephedrine, making it more difficult for methamphetamine
producers to acquire these chemicals. With the continuous
cooperation of the Canadian Government, the strengthening of
regulations that govern these chemicals, and working closely
with our law enforcement counterparts in this shared mission,
ICE looks forward to an even greater success in fighting the
growing threat of methamphetamine.
ICE continues to evolve to match its investigative
priorities with critical concerns of this Nation. With
continuous cooperation with our counterparts at Customs and
Border Protection and proactive undercover investigations and
intelligence sharing with DEA, we will continue to target the
vulnerabilities that facilitate illegal activity. In
conclusion, I would like to thank Chairman Souder and the
members of the subcommittee for the privilege to testify before
you today and highlight the investigative efforts and successes
of ICE, a premier law enforcement agency. It would be my
pleasure to answer questions you may have.
Mr. Souder. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hodzen follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Mr. Arvanitis.
Mr. Arvanitis. Thank you, sir.
Good morning, Chairman Souder and distinguished members of
the subcommittee. It is a pleasure to appear before you today
to discuss the challenge of stopping methamphetamine precursor
chemicals being smuggled across the United States and Canadian
border and the efforts of the Drug Enforcement Administration
to combat it. My name is John Arvanitis and I'm the Assistant
Special Agent in charge of the Detroit Field Division. On
behalf of Administrator Karen P. Tandy and Special Agent in
Charge, John P. Gilbride, I am particularly pleased to appear
before you today on this topic to discuss recent law
enforcement successes that we believe demonstrate how law
enforcement efforts can significantly impact supply and the
trafficking of a drug.
International efforts were undertaken during the mid 1990's
to control the flow of bulk ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. DEA
Operations Mountain Express I and II targeted the domestic
diversion of pseudoephedrine primarily by individuals and
companies registered by DEA to handle controlled substances and
chemicals. Operations Mountain Express I and II subsequently
resulted in the arrest of 189 individuals and the seizure of
more than 12\1/2\ tons of pseudoephedrine, 83 pounds of
finished methamphetamine and $11.1 million in U.S. currency.
With the success of these investigations and enhanced
regulatory oversight by DEA, methamphetamine producers found it
increasingly difficult to obtain sufficient quantities of
pseudoephedrine within our borders. As a result, they turned to
Canada where pseudoephedrine tablets were available in large
quantities.
In response to the change in pseudoephedrine trafficking
trends, DEA subsequently initiated Operation Mountain Express
III. This operation concluded with the arrest of over 100
defendants in January 2002 and caused other Canadian
pharmaceutical companies to fill the void created by continuing
to sell huge quantities of pseudoephedrine. DEA subsequently
initiated Operation Northern Star, as mentioned earlier,
specifically to combat precursor chemicals moving across the
United States and Canadian border.
On April 15, 2003, the DEA, U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, Federal Bureau of Investigation, International
Revenue Service, along with Royal Canadian Mounted Police,
arrested more than 65 individuals in 10 cities throughout the
United States and Canada. Approximately 108 million tablets of
pseudoephedrine were seized during this investigation. This
quantity of pseudoephedrine could have yielded approximately
9,000 pounds of methamphetamine, with an estimated street value
between $36 million and $144 million, depending on purity
levels.
Operation Northern Star demonstrated that concentrating
resources and investigative efforts in a specific geographic
area of the global chemical trade can make a tangible and
demonstrable difference. This is best illustrated by the
precipitous drop in the amount of Canadian pseudoephedrine
seizures after April 2003. Seizures of pseudoephedrine dropped
from a high of more than 75 million tablets in 2001 to
approximately 26 million tablets in 2003, a majority of which
were confiscated before April of last year.
United States and Canadian law enforcement measures, along
with the newly enacted precursor chemical laws in Canada have
clearly decreased pseudoephedrine availability dramatically. In
addition, Canadian imports of pseudoephedrine have decreased
from 511,395 kilograms in 2000 to 84,634 kilograms in 2003. As
a result, it appears that methamphetamine production is moving
back to Mexico.
Although the DEA's concentrated operations have been
regionally successful, chemical supply shortfalls have quickly
been filled by other sources from transnational organizations
using other countries as transit points for importing chemicals
into our country. Foreign countries that establish and
implement even basic regulatory controls for precursor
chemicals provide the DEA with substantial assistance in
stopping the importation of such chemicals.
The Canadian Health Ministry recently implemented a
chemical control system requiring the registration, licensing
and permits for import and export by Canadian companies, and is
indicative of how regulatory requirements can be effective.
While not as rigorous as provisions in the United States, these
regulations have had a positive effect on the problems
encountered by our country and have made it more difficult for
traffickers to obtain chemicals from Canada. Along with the
improved accuracy of export figures supplied by Canada to the
DEA, authorities now can monitor the legal trade of precursor
chemicals between our two nations and help in our combined
efforts to prevent chemical diversion.
I would be happy also to answer any questions the
subcommittee may have of me.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Arvanitis follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Mr. Weeks.
Mr. Weeks. Thank you and good morning, Chairman Souder. I
personally would like to thank you for allowing me this
opportunity to testify regarding the U.S. Customs and Border
Protection's role in interdicting narcotics at the United
States and Canadian border.
The priority mission for CBP is homeland security. Although
nothing can diminish the importance of detecting and preventing
terrorists and implements of terrorism from entering the United
States, CBP also preserves its collective history of protecting
the homeland by seizing illegal drugs and other contraband at
the U.S. border, apprehending people who attempt to enter the
United States illegally and by protecting our agricultural
interest and the public health from harmful pests and diseases.
In order to uphold these responsibilities, CBP deploys a
layered defense that essentially employs enforcement
strategies, technologies, inspection processes and facilitation
programs simultaneously.
For CBP, success begins with our people and our effort to
achieve one fact at the border. CBP places great importance on
cultivating a highly skilled work force.
The National Targeting Center is the hub for CBP targeting
efforts, setting the standards and defining processes. The NTC
staff includes personnel with customs, agriculture, immigration
and Border Patrol law experience, as well as liaison personnel
from other agencies such as the Transportation Security
Administration, the U.S. Coast Guard, Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, the Department of Energy and the Food and Drug
Administration.
This collocation of enforcement and regulatory subject
matter experts allows the NTC to support field programs and
operations. CBP continues to develop new modules and rule sets
to further enhance targeting capabilities of the Automated
Targeting System [ATS]. Although nationally directed, support
from field locations is critical to the evolution of ATS. Their
expertise in risks associated with smuggling activity and
knowledge specific to the Northern Border trade patterns have
been integrated into ATS targeting rule sets specific to truck
and rail cargo on the Northern Border. This integration
significantly enhances the ability of ATS to be used to detect
unusual shipments that might conceal narcotics or pose threats
to homeland security.
Our CBP and Border Patrol officers are also utilizing non-
intrusive inspection and radiation detection technologies. In
combination with our layered enforcement strategy, these tools
provide CBP with significant capacity to detect and deter
nuclear or radiological materials, narcotics and other
contraband.
There are currently three large-scale imaging systems and
44 radiation portal monitors deployed throughout the Detroit
Field Office area of responsibility.
Close and constant coordination with our Canadian
counterparts is the last layer of our defense that I would like
to discuss. CBP continues to work closely with Canadian law
enforcement personnel, including the Canada Border Service
Agency and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to address the
mutual threat of narcotics smuggling on our shared border.
Our Border Patrol agents work side-by-side with Canadian
law enforcement officers on Integrated Border Enforcement Teams
and Integrated Marine Enforcement Teams. IBET teams are
binational law enforcement entities comprised of Federal, State
and local law enforcement agencies and the RCMP. The teams were
established to facilitate U.S./Canada law enforcement agency
involvement in the disruption and dismantling of criminal
organizations involved in the smuggling of people and
contraband along the U.S./Canadian border.
Now I would like to turn to some successes in narcotics
interdiction that have resulted from our layered approach.
On March 25, 2004, CBP Officers, with the assistance of
Canada Border Service Agency Information, initiated an
inspection that led to the discovery and seizure of 166 kilos
of marijuana and 10,224 tablets of ecstasy entering the United
States via a commercial truck trailer. A large-scale imaging
system confirmed suspicions about anomalous packages commingled
with a commercial shipment. This success is particularly
important because it represents the convergence of several
components of our layered defense; international coordination
and information sharing, technology and skilled officer
personnel.
From April 2001 to May 2003, the Detroit Field Office
affected seizures of pseudoephedrine totaling over 150 million
tablets or the equivalent; however, I will only discuss two of
those seizures this morning. Fifty-seven percent of those
pseudo seizures have been discovered in commercial vehicles.
The largest seizure of pseudoephedrine in Michigan occurred
on April 11, 2001. A tractor-trailer arrived at the Detroit
Fort Street Cargo facility, where the subject stated he was
empty. The truck was taken to secondary for further
examination. Inspectors confirmed that the trailer contained 22
pallets which amounted to 42 million tablets of
pseudoephedrine. The subject was arrested for Federal
prosecution.
The most recent seizure of pseudoephedrine was in May 2003
where inspectors in Port Huron seized an estimated 795 tablets
of a powdered substance that tested positive for
pseudoephedrine. The subjects and the contraband were turned
over to ICE agents for Federal prosecution.
These samples of CBP's interdiction activities along the
northern border illustrate that CBP continues its narcotics
interdiction mission while moving rapidly to improve the
personnel, technologies and partnerships that allow us to meet
the challenges to the homeland security.
Thank you again for this opportunity to testify regarding
our ongoing efforts to interdict narcotics and their precursors
on the U.S.-Canadian Border. I am happy to answer any questions
that you may have, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Weeks follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Thank you all for your testimony. I'm trying to
figure out where to start here. Let me ask a couple of basic
questions before I actually move into some of what we planned
because I'm trying to sort out the broader picture because the
presentation that you're seeming to make today doesn't quite
square with what we were hearing coming in and I want to make
sure I've got the mix right and don't misunderstand.
First, everywhere on our north and south border all of our
agencies deserve tremendous credit for their aggressiveness in
trying to get at the different problems and we need success
stories when we're going after it and we can show that we've
demonstrated success. I don't want to downplay any type of
success that has been made or movement toward success, but
we've got to figure out some basic variables and I'm trying to
figure out how a couple of these things fit.
My understanding from Mr. Azzam's testimony, actually from
all of you, is that you are basically feeling successful with
the possible exception of Mr. Weeks and I wasn't absolutely
clear. First off, there's been some success, if anybody
disagrees with any statement say so and I can clarify.
There's been some success due to the new laws in Canada on
meth precursors.
Mr. Weeks. Well, Mr. Chairman, I think the collective
efforts that have been made among these agencies, along with
the Canadian law that was enacted has had an impact, at least
from an interdiction standpoint. From my perspective, we have
not been seeing the kinds of shipments of pseudoephedrine that
we saw back in early 2003, 2002, 2001.
As you know, Mr. Chairman, we have been performing many
more inspections of truck vehicles. Also since your last visit,
we have actually introduced many more technologies that allows
us to screen more trucks. Our stats seem to suggest that we are
discovering more BC bud that's coming through the border than
any of the other drugs and precursors that we saw earlier, but
I think that there have been a positive effect concerning the
law, as well as the efforts that have been employed, both at
the border and with the investigations.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Arvanitis, if I can ask you a followup and
I want to followup on the BC bud question too. You've raised a
number of other things, so let me first go through some of
them.
You said that Canadian imports of pseudoephedrine have
decreased from 511,000 to 84,000 kilograms from 2000 to 2003
and specifically you said U.S. law enforcement measures along
with newly enacted precursor chemical laws in Canada have
clearly decreased pseudoephedrine availability.
Are you saying you agree that most of this isn't
manufactured in Canada, but that Canada is predominantly
getting it in from the Netherlands and Belgium, is that what
your understanding is as well?
Mr. Arvanitis. Yes, sir.
Mr. Souder. And I haven't heard at any hearing before, have
you heard whether there's been any decline in the production in
Belgium and the Netherlands.
Mr. Arvanitis. No, no, no, sir. I did not mention Belgium
and the Netherlands.
Mr. Souder. But the testimony suggested that most of the
meth precursors that were coming into the United States were
coming in from Mexico. Are we suggesting that Belgium and
Netherlands are now shipping around and down under, or that all
that's being sold in Europe, but we haven't seen a decline
coming out of Antwerp and Rotterdam. I'm trying to figure out
where it's going if it's not coming to Canada.
Mr. Arvanitis. We know, sir, that in calendar year 2003, 85
shipments totaling approximately 420 million tablets of
pseudoephedrine were shipped from the Far East to fictitious
companies in Mexico. We also know that a trend is beginning to
become prevalent to DEA that there are other countries from
that hemisphere that are also shipping directly back to Mexico
bulk quantities of pseudoephedrine indicative of the Mexicans
in and of themselves creating superlabs that produce
methamphetamine and then import it into the United States along
the southwest border.
Recent increases in border seizures of large
methamphetamine is indicative of that trend.
Mr. Souder. And because I am such a strong ally of each of
your agencies, it's hard for me to ask some of the tough
questions, but this is an oversight committee and I need to ask
some of the tough questions. It has been very disturbing as
we're in Iraq and Afghanistan to find out just how difficult it
is in your life to sort through sourcing and identification.
One thing I'm still kind of reeling from which is a very
critical variable that we're working through right now is that
in our most sophisticated labs, for example, in New York City
where we test the drugs to determine origin, then in reality we
can't tell for sure. As I understand it, this is in layman's
terms, what's Colombian, what's Afghan heroin because the poppy
doesn't show. What it is is the process. The Colombians use
certain kinds of processes and the Afghans use certain kinds of
processes.
But if Colombian processes are exported into another
country, the mark on the heroin coming in, it might be
Colombian, but it might be Afghan heroin. And what I'm trying
to sort out here underneath this, first off in the
pseudoephedrine that comes in, is can we tell when you get the
pseudoephedrine, are there marks, are they labeled by a
company, are we confident of what is Asian, what is Mexican,
what is coming through Rotterdam, how definitive is it? You're
just doing the best you can tracing back the trail.
Mr. Arvanitis. To answer your question, sir, I can't answer
that specific question, but that I do know that in large
shipments that are in bottled pseudoephedrine, there is a batch
number and a case number that may potentially be able to lead
investigative efforts to tracking the origin of that
pseudoephedrine. But I can make sure that you get the answer
for your committee.
Mr. Souder. Because ecstasy pills are often marked.
Mr. Arvanitis. Right.
Mr. Souder. And so are other types of pills. I think that
because some of my questions are going to wind up national, I'm
going to leave the record open for 2 weeks to get any
supplementary testimony that seems to elaborate from a Federal
perspective on some of the questions I ask here. I've got to
get what you said today in context because what I'm really
trying to establish here is even just south of here the meth
problem is increasing.
If we seize the precursors, we need to figure out where
precisely the precursors are coming in and what's happening to
what's coming out of those huge factories in Belgium and the
Netherlands and where they're being absorbed, or are they going
across the other direction. We'll sort through and get some
kind of international tracking there. My next question is it's
based on two assumptions. If I understand Mr. Weeks point and
your testimony is that Mr. Azzam said you've broken through
these two big cases which alone constituted almost 40 percent
of the meth precursors that you had confiscated in Detroit in
the last round, in what, was it 2002 and 2003, broken the back
of some of the major organizations, or at least got them. That
is because of increased surges in technology at the Ambassador
Bridge and Windsor Tunnel, also Port Huron?
Mr. Weeks. And Port Huron.
Mr. Souder. That you believe you're actually searching more
than you were before, so it's not that you decline in searches
but that you broke the back of the organizations. You're
searching more and you're not finding things as much and that's
led you to conclude that at those three crossings, at least,
that there's been a decline, or has that led you to conclude
that there's been a decline in Canada as a whole.
Mr. Azzam. Congressman, from my perspective I think what
we're experiencing is the classic displacement phenomenon of
any drug when efforts are placed and pressure is put upon the
traffic, no matter what traffic it is, it displaces and goes
somewhere else. The activity of CBP and the investigative
agencies, so interdiction plus investigation, has made an
impact. What I think is happening is that they have gone to
other methods.
For example, it's quite easy to ship from Europe or the Far
East to South America or the Caribbean or Mexico, very simple.
Very simple. And if that's the easiest course, that's what the
displacement factor does. They'll do it that way. I think there
still is activity on pseudoephedrine, I think from some
indicators that it's existing stocks that were in Canada. The
pressure that the Canadians have put on has caused also some
concern among the traffickers.
Now also keep in mind that the Middle Eastern community was
the one who started the pseudoephedrine traffic and this area
has the largest Middle Eastern community in the area. If you
draw a 50-mile radius from Detroit, which would include Canada,
you'd have the largest population. They also have contacts in
other parts of the world. Canada is active, Mexico has a large
Middle Eastern population, the Caribbean has a large Middle
Eastern population. Europe has a large Middle Eastern
population. These people have their connections, their family
ties as well as criminal ties.
I think it's just a displacement factor myself.
Mr. Souder. By displacement you mean they're now moving
other narcotics, or they're out of the narcotics business and
moving other illegal goods.
Mr. Azzam. No. I think what they've done is gone to other
trafficking routes.
Mr. Souder. Other routes.
Mr. Azzam. Yes, sir.
Mr. Souder. So it's a route displacement to run a drug.
Mr. Azzam. It's not easy to come across Detroit and at Port
Huron any more. It's not easy at all. I think there was some
little activity further up north and now I believe it's moving
to western Canada toward Vancouver and we've heard reports of
stocks in different parts of central Canada and western Canada.
So the border's a little easier there than it is here.
Mr. Souder. Now let me move just to kind of do one more
check. Do you see, other than the small home cookers which are
a whole different market because we can't really reach those
with what we're doing at the border because they're not buying
meth precursors in huge quantity. We might deal with the
pharmacies that they get the stuff from and that kind of thing,
but other than home cooking, has there been any kind of
dramatic rises in the Michigan HIDTA in meth use? I mean, it's
still not the drug of choice. The question is are you seeing a
spike or does it seem to be turning down now?
Mr. Azzam. Well, it depends on what part of the State
you're in. I believe DEA has a better answer than I would have,
sir.
Mr. Souder. OK.
Mr. Arvanitis. Mr. Chairman, I'll address that issue.
Recently we've seen an increase in methamphetamine
investigations, one which I will speak to was a recent seizure
of approximately one pound of methamphetamine that was to be
distributed in the metro Detroit area. Two individuals were
arrested. Based on intelligence, we believe that the phenomenon
is coming east toward the metro Detroit area and it's only a
matter of time before methamphetamine use is seen here in the
community.
I would also like to address your prior question to the
extent that, you know, DEA and ICE have an outstanding working
relationship with our colleagues across the way in Canada, in
Windsor. I frequently interact with my RCMP counterparts there.
There is an informal sharing of intelligence as it relates to
investigations that potentially could come into the metro
Detroit area for potential distribution to other, you know,
core cities within the United States to include
pseudoephedrine, BC Bud, any of the contraband that's being,
you know, imported into Canada eventually for distribution into
the United States.
I'd also like to add that DEA recognizes the sovereignty of
Canada. It's not DEA's policy to impose our will on any
sovereign nation, however, that a strong chemical control
program must also have a strong regulatory and enforcement
component. Those two aspects working hand in hand together with
one another will result in a successful destruction and
dismantling of, you know, significant organizations importing
pseudoephedrine into Canada for eventual importation into the
United States and eventually getting it to the Mexican
superlabs on the west coast.
Mr. Souder. Now, I think I should say as well we've been
very pleased with the RCMP cooperation, but I don't think we
have to say what our opinion necessarily is of inside Canada,
which is a sovereign nation, and it can make these decisions.
RCMP has been very critical themselves of their current
government at this point and their willingness to enforce and
control a lot of these things. They're very frustrated in their
court process, they're very frustrated with some of their
political leaders and they've even had their law enforcement
prosecutors across the country right now objecting to their
national policy, so it's not all sweetness and light on the
other side of the border. They're having a big internal debate
there, where we have a concern about our sovereignty and
protecting the United States is what we do at our border and
how we deal with that.
Now let me see if I can still distill fundamentally what
you're saying. You believe that much like the phenomenon that I
was describing in Indiana, that in this case you're looking
at--that the meth phenomenon started in the home cooker labs to
a large degree in western Michigan, started to move in
typically to cities of about 40,000, then into places like
Kalamazoo, to some degree, and then you start seeing it move
toward the larger cities in the State.
Mr. Arvanitis. Yes, sir.
Mr. Souder. And that when it moves to the larger cities in
the State, it's not so much a home cooker phenomenon, it is a
large organization, trafficking organizations move in, realize
they have a new drug of choice so to speak?
Mr. Arvanitis. Yes, sir.
Mr. Souder. And that in that drug of choice that's coming
in, you don't believe that the system that's hitting Michigan
is coming with precursors that are crossing at Michigan at this
point and going the other direction. You believe it's coming up
predominantly from west southwest, or do you see some of this
coming Miami and through the Caribbean and up?
Mr. Arvanitis. No, sir. We only saw that in that one
specific case that I referenced to you and it was coming from
the western part of the State to the metro Detroit area.
Mr. Souder. Are you confident that when they see the
pressure at Detroit, they don't move up to Sault Ste. Marie and
come down that way.
Mr. Arvanitis. I cannot address that answer for you, sir,
at this time.
Mr. Souder. Has anybody ever spot-checked?
Mr. Weeks. We have been employing, as I mentioned in my
earlier remarks, more inspections up in Sault Ste. Marie
because of the remote location, you know, it would certainly be
a question in our minds as to whether or not that kind of route
would be a preferred route. But we have worked closely with our
Canadian counterparts up in the Sault with respect to sharing
Intel and doing special operations where we are examining
commercial vehicles more intensely. That's certainly not the
kind of volume as we experience in Port Huron and in Detroit,
but based on what we have examined and inspected in the Sault,
we have not seen any evidence that is a route that they're
using.
Mr. Souder. And it's not attractive for moving large
quantities. I mean we had the famous bomber who moved all the
way across and came down over at Port Angeles, but the Canadian
side really doesn't lend itself to huge trucking shipments
going all across on the Canadian side of the border and trying
to come down far west.
Did you have anything you wanted to add to that.
Mr. Arvanitis. No, sir.
Mr. Souder. That while we're still in kind of the generic
overview, you mentioned BC Bud. Is BC Bud coming across from
Vancouver, or are you talking about Quebec Gold or just that
type of hydroponic marijuana.
Mr. Weeks. I can't address the actual origin but because of
the THC content. It's been tested and, you know, it has the
characteristics of BC Bud and we have seen a rise in the number
of discoveries of seizures over the past 3 fiscal years and, in
fact, we're going to, at least I'm projecting that we'll have
more seizures poundage-wise this fiscal year than we've had in
the past and again that's certainly a result of the number of
stepped up inspections and screenings with the large x-ray
imaging system that has been able to at least display anomalies
that would show up with what would seem would be legitimate
commercial shipments. And because of those kinds of
capabilities that we now have that we didn't have years ago,
we're making those kinds of discoveries in large quantities. So
we still run into some of the personal use in the passenger
vehicles and to some extent smaller quantities in those kinds
of vehicles, but there's now commingling of large BC Bud
shipments in commercial loads. Those kinds of discoveries are
now being made and we see a growth in that area and so I make
that comparison in terms of a rise in the BC Bud seizures
versus the decline fairly rapidly in the pseudoephedrine area.
Mr. Arvanitis. Also, Congressman, DEA, I'd like to add, has
an outstanding working relationship with all aspects of ICE
here in the Detroit area. Frequently the border seizures that
do actually take place, coordinated efforts between the
agencies, as well as other State and local entities within
Michigan, as well as outside of Michigan are utilized to
conduct controlled deliveries and attempt also to disrupt and
dismantle organizations from point of origin all the way to
distribution, as well as subsequent seizure of their illicit
gains from their drug trafficking activities.
Mr. Souder. I want to go back to another question with Mr.
Azzam.
Mr. Azzam. Yes, sir.
Mr. Souder. In the organizations that you were discussing,
and you said you believe they may have switched their modes of
transportation--or where they come in with their loads. Have
you seen the Middle Eastern organizations interconnecting with
the Hispanic organizations, Mexican or Colombian.
Mr. Azzam. Well, that phenomenon I think was always
prevalent in the cocaine traffic and heroin traffic. The
transition is not going to be that difficult, but what we have
seen is that in western Michigan we have a large migrant worker
population because of the agricultural nature of that part of
the State and hidden within that group are known traffickers
that already have established routes.
For example, Mexican marijuana that comes to Michigan comes
that way and it's very simple. Once the use is established for
methamphetamine for them to bring up meth from the superlabs,
that's a very simple thing. That's not the Middle Eastern
population. The Middle Eastern population does have the
connections in California, as well as Mexico to somehow arrange
for pseudoephedrine, no matter if it is displaced out of
Michigan.
Mr. Souder. So, in other words, they may not be bringing it
in to this State at all, but they're based here arranging a
shipment to come into one of the Caribbean nations from western
Europe theoretically.
Mr. Azzam. Could be, very easy.
Mr. Souder. To move across?
Mr. Azzam. They did it with heroin, they did it with
cocaine and they can do it with pseudoephedrine.
Mr. Arvanitis. I think you saw that as an underlying theme
in Operations Mountain Express and in Northern Star that there
was a relationship between the Middle Eastern brokers, if you
want to call them that and the Mexican organizational
operatives on the west coast. You know, like any organization,
if you have a root, somebody will exploit it. If the Middle
Eastern community here has the capabilities of funneling
illicit proceeds back to a point where a trafficking group
wants to get it, they will find a way to get along with them
and put their illicit means through there.
I don't think you can ever say that law enforcement will
successfully disrupt and dismantle the entire relationship
between the Middle Easterners and potential Mexican and
Colombian traffickers operating in this country, sir.
Mr. Souder. How does meth differ as it moves through
Michigan than say cocaine and heroin.
Mr. Arvanitis. As I have earlier stated, we have not seen a
major movement of meth into the metro Detroit area, except for
the mom and pop laboratories that we've encountered on the
western part of the State, so that phenomenon has not come to
fruition yet here in this State.
Mr. Souder. So it's less than 8 percent of the drug use
would you say?
Mr. Arvanitis. I couldn't give you a figure, sir.
Mr. Azzam. That's pretty good.
Mr. Souder. Let me review any of these questions that you
think definitely need to get into the record, the ones I
haven't covered.
I want to make sure because I used to be a staffer. I want
to make sure that since I've been out doing everything from
dinners to everything else for the last couple of weeks, that I
make sure we get into the record some of the key questions
here.
Mr. Weeks, in your testimony, 57 percent of the precursor
seizures have been in commercial vehicles. Does that mean 43
percent have been in passenger vehicles? What would be the
other alternative to commercial vehicles?
Mr. Weeks. Well, again, you know when we talk about
vehicles, we could actually group into that buses, personally
owned vehicles. That would be the other category that I did not
capture in my earlier remarks.
Mr. Souder. In the passenger vehicles I presume that's not
the split of volume, and you mentioned personal use just a
little bit ago. Do you think most of the non-commercial
vehicles are heavily personal, or many dealerships, or are they
using multiple wheels.
Mr. Weeks. Are we talking pseudoephedrine specifically?
Because I believe my personal use----
Mr. Souder. I thought that the 57 percent was----
Mr. Weeks. My personal use remarks----
Mr. Souder. Precursor chemicals.
Mr. Weeks [continuing]. Was related to the marijuana
earlier.
Mr. Souder. I thought that the 57 percent was precursor.
Mr. Weeks. The 57 percent is certainly related to pseudo.
When we were talking about BC Bud, that's when I referenced the
personal use.
Mr. Souder. Are 43 percent, you're saying 43 percent of the
precursor chemicals are coming in non- commercial vehicles?
Mr. Weeks. Non-commercial vehicles, correct.
Mr. Souder. So what would be a typical individual bringing
precursor chemicals? I mean, I don't quite understand.
Mr. Weeks. Well, they're much smaller. I mean, we can be
talking 300 or 400 tablets versus literally thousands.
Mr. Souder. So who would he be heading to distribute to.
Mr. Weeks. Well, we wouldn't necessarily follow the
investigative stream lead. We would turn that over to ICE.
Mr. Souder. OK, well, let me ask Mr. Hodzen then.
If somebody's, you know, I'm used to thinking in terms of
this is a major shipment. I know in marijuana you get
freelancers, you get sometimes--in fact, the last time we were
here, snared a new vehicle that was coming across because they
had seen another similar vehicle move through just with a
similar type story, seized it, the sides of the car were
packed, so that was probably a multi-run group coming through
that were going to connect up on the other side.
In precursor chemicals, how does this work? Are they doing
a similar type thing, or are we talking freelancers who may be
dealing with 10 home cookers heading to the west side of
Michigan, could he be coming across to head down to Fort Wayne?
We have a big Canadian pharmacy business going.
Mr. Hodzen. The bulk shipments come in the commercial
vehicles coming over from Canada due to Northern Star and the
legislation happening at about the same time. The
investigations prior to the legislation and through the
legislation with RCMP, DEA, they had suspects linked to the
pharmacies right there in Canada, the executives of companies.
After the arrests and the take downs of that and the
legislation, we seemed to--the commercial vehicle smuggling of
pseudo and ephedrine go down to the point where we haven't had
a commercial load of pseudo or ephedrine come in in 2004 yet
into the big ports.
We are seeing more mail. We're seeing more mail come
through the mail service, DHL, etc. And in those instances,
they could be coming--we're seeing, like I said, more mail.
Certain organizations might be taking smaller loads with
multiple passenger vehicles and making larger loads once in the
United States because of the crackdown at the border from
Customs and Border Protection has gotten so--they've gotten so
good at what they do. Their technology has gotten so good that
their machinery and their expertise, they're stopping the big
loads of commercial shipments, so whether it's through the mail
in small amounts, through passenger vehicles in small amounts,
they could be gathering it once they're in the United States
for subsequent transportation to the west.
Mr. Souder. You said a couple things there that intrigued
me. Are you doing anything to what's really exploded, I mean
this is a side subject, but it's not a side subject and I'm
wondering how you relate to this because it so closely relates
to pharmaceutical sales.
In Fort Wayne we're not far from the Canadian border, so
they're running bus trips up to get every kind of
pharmaceutical under the sun at these dramatically cheaper
prices. And I noticed last week for the first time ads up for a
Canadian pharmacy storefront in Fort Wayne that will sell it
directly and there are constant ads on television saying order
directly over the Internet.
Are we looking at this on precursors and how does this
interrelate?
Mr. Hodzen. Absolutely. ICE had an operation where we were
targeting these companies that were selling over the Internet
and they were literally using the inbound transportation to get
it to Mexico. They're coming inbound from Dallas. These
shipments, some of them were coming from Hong Kong, freight
shipments to Dallas coming inbound, going through to Texas to
get into Mexico. Our intelligence and our investigations
started cracking down on these organizations that were doing
this primarily through the Internet, so there are ongoing
investigations related to that.
Mr. Souder. Do we track smaller scale type operations? Is
there a monitoring system at all on what's sold through the
pharmaceutical trade? You probably take a tip that somebody was
doing it and you'd monitor it, because it would be a great way
to hide.
I mean, we just did a hearing a month and a half ago on
OxyContin in Florida and one of the disturbing things was that
the Florida newspaper seemed to have more information on,
bluntly put, seven doctors who were flagrantly abusing the
OxyContin than the law enforcement agency did. They've been
scrambling to catch up, and some of them were being monitored,
but the fact was the newspaper exposed them and then the
government went after them. Huge amounts of OxyContin was
available through tracking and are we watching this phenomenon
because it would be a great way to hide an operation because
the number of dollars has to be phenomenal right now that are
moving in the pharmaceuticals.
Mr. Arvanitis. Yes, sir.
Mr. Souder. I know the use of illegal drugs is a focus of
the director right now.
Mr. Arvanitis. DEA mandates that under its regulatory arm
that a DEA Form 486 is completed by any importer of any
Schedule 3, 4, 5 and List 1 chemicals which would include
precursor chemicals. That DEA Form 486 must be completed 15
days in advance to the transportation of that shipment. Three
copies of that form are attached in there. One copy is provided
to the importer, one copy is provided to DEA Headquarters and
one copy is provided to ICE. That form would serve as a
mechanism to be able to track suspicious rogue companies
importing, you know, whether large or small, frequent
pseudoephedrine or chemicals into this country for potential
use in the production of methamphetamine or any other
contraband.
Mr. Souder. Let me go back to Mr. Weeks. In the NEXUS
system, have you had a substantial increase in the number of
passengers enrolled at Detroit or Port Huron who were under
NEXUS? Do you have the actual figures.
Mr. Weeks. I don't have the actual figures, but we have had
a substantial growth since we launched that program. And as you
know, I want to address the concerns that you reference in your
remarks. NEXUS, as you know is you know essentially a program
designed for commuters that utilize the border crossings on a
regular basis, although we encourage anyone to apply. And of
course these are individuals are rated both by the Canadian
Government and the U.S. Government to ensure there isn't any
evidence of criminal activity.
Having said that, you know, it isn't just a free card
across the border without at times being subject--you're always
subject to an inspection and, in fact, there is a random factor
where there is an automatic selection made for individuals that
are enrolled in the program to be sent to secondary for a
further and more intensive inspection. There's always a CBP
officer in the booth that depending upon body language or any
other anomalies that they may, you know, observe during that
short interaction, they can override that system and they can
send those individuals or individual over to secondary for an
examination.
So I understand the concern, you know, concerning the
program, but we have found that we have rarely found a
violation for those that are in the program. Does it mean that
an honest Joe couldn't be recruited? No, it means that they can
be, but it also means that we are randomly and selectively on
occasion sending those individuals for a more intensive
examination when they cross.
Mr. Souder. Has it been the expansion in the fast system as
well?
Mr. Weeks. Oh, yes, it has been, although we have noticed
here it's primarily those suppliers and those companies that
are engaged with the automotive industry which is the largest
user of this crossing and most of those companies that are in
the Fast Free and Secured Trade Program are automotive related,
although we are certainly trying to extend that to other users.
Mr. Souder. One of the Canadian centers who was a plant
manager near Scarborough, Ontario told me my GM plant in Fort
Wayne that makes the Silverado and one other pickup, it's the
largest pickup plant in the United States, 100 crossings at
Detroit in each pickup. Amazing. Partly for union reasons they
do 60/40 in their trucks which really moves the border.
We heard at a hearing we did in upstate New York and one in
Vermont from a panel member of Canadian trucking companies and
they said they would be amenable, and we heard this also at
Niagara Falls, Buffalo, to significantly increasing the
penalties for violations of a fast system or NEXUS system. In
other words, if you're going to get extra privileges, that
there's also other extra penalties for abusing those
privileges.
Do you support something like that?
Mr. Weeks. Well, you know, the penalty today, if we found a
driver, for example, if in fact after the investigation was
concluded that the driver was the rogue individual in the
entire process, that person would be excluded from the program.
That has devastating impact on that driver's ability to
continue to carry loads for that company or for the trucking
firm that's involved. I don't know necessarily, you know, that
a monetary penalty is necessary. Exclusion from the program is
what we would do today.
Mr. Souder. We're probably going to look at for the
companies themselves, not just the exclusion, but, in other
words, because particularly in tight bridge areas and tunnel
areas like you have here in Detroit or at Buffalo, Niagara
Falls, it is a real privilege to be able to do this.
Mr. Weeks. Sure.
Mr. Souder. And the other thing as we got into this, have
you caught anybody on fastpass with materials at this point on
the fast system?
Mr. Weeks. I mean, we have found a few, very few
violations.
Mr. Souder. How do they play pass the buck? In other words,
wouldn't it always be fingered to the driver or somebody put
this in my truck that I didn't know, or often the person that
has the tractor is different than the company that owns the
trailer, where was the trailer loaded? How do we--because this
seems to me the vulnerability in the system.
Mr. Weeks. One of the activities that CBP takes on is we
send a cadre of individuals that are familiar with the fast
security protocols to the company under the threat that if, in
fact, they don't have the proper controls in place, then they
could be excluded from the program. That gets their attention
very quickly. And we've had at least one or two occasions of
companies that do business through the Michigan crossing of
that activity and that seems to work very well.
I mean, certainly there is perhaps finger pointing, you
know, in any kind of scenario, but we make it clear through a
post-seizure, a post-discovery basis to ensure that the
controls are either in place or improved to ensure that they
don't find themselves in a violative status, you know, in terms
of subsequent shipments.
Mr. Souder. So even if it was a driver for a major shipper,
even if you decided it was the driver, the company would also
have additional pressures?
Mr. Weeks. Because we have to look at the entire supply
chain, you know. We can't necessarily just attribute it to the
driver. Something happened and we have to review the entire
supply chain before we are satisfied that there--all those
vulnerabilities have been addressed.
Mr. Souder. Do you still use drug sniffing dogs.
Mr. Weeks. Yes. We have actually increased the number of
canine teams which would include the narcotics detector dogs.
Mr. Souder. Has the narcotics detector dog stayed roughly
the priority? I sit on the Homeland Security Committee too and
I understand that terrorism and weapons of mass destruction is
the highest priority, but in Congress we're having a big
battle. Just like the administration is and 1 day whatever's
the current crisis is the highest of the day, but then if you
miss one of the big terrorists, then that was the thing. I
mean, we're all struggling with this because in the Coast
Guard, for example, if they miss fisheries, the fishery
industry collapses. If they're pulling back in to protect the
Cook Nuclear Plant on western Michigan and two sailboat people
die and that's on the news that week, then it will be what
happened to search and rescue. That we have more people dying
because of narcotics than we do quite frankly from terrorism
right now and some of us are very concerned that your agents on
the border can only do so many things simultaneously when you
have long lines and everybody rustles to get through and
hollering at you because of trade.
There is probably not going to be a bomb dog and a drug dog
at the same vehicle and the question is, are you keeping the
drug dogs in the rotation or are we going to get squeezed out
of this mix as we're looking for other things? I just want to
know are you keeping the number of narcotics dogs roughly the
same?
Mr. Weeks. Yes. Our growth have been in the area of the
bomb detector and chem-bio teams. However, we have the same
number of canine teams that we've always had. Those dogs are
actively working at the land border as well as at the Detroit
Airport and, you know, one of the I think observations that I
would make is because of our successor in narcotics
interdiction, that tends to be an elixir for our officers and
so, you know, it actually balances the scorecard in terms of
our mission. It is expansive. It's a fairly, you know,
expansive mission, but, you know, we're not going to compromise
any of our mission with regard to border enforcement, whether
it's in the area of homeland security, looking for terrorists
or weapons or narcotics and I might add pests that may endanger
our agriculture. One of the benefits of this merger is to have
a much larger staff that's more sensitive to every one of these
areas versus the sort of stove piping that we had in the past.
Mr. Souder. Yeah. I want you really focused on the
narcotics and the terrorism, but you let one bad soybean in
here.
Mr. Weeks. It could have a devastating impact on our
economy.
Mr. Souder. I mean that's the challenge we face because all
politics are local as well as international.
Mr. Weeks. Sure.
Mr. Souder. With that, I'm going to leave that subject.
Anything else you want me to make sure I got on the record? We
may send you some written questions in addition.
When you were talking about the violations, what kind of
violations have you actually found of the NEXUS and the Fast
Pass?
Mr. Weeks. I believe they were in the narcotics area and I
believe it was marijuana that we found.
Mr. Souder. Large loads?
Mr. Weeks. No, they weren't large loads.
Mr. Souder. Anything else any of you want to add?
Mr. Azzam. There is one thing, Congressman. The HIDTA
Program not being aligned with the law enforcement agency does
provide I think an important function. For example, even though
we only have nine counties in Michigan, our investigative
support center is a combination of all the agencies here and
others working together on a daily basis to support the line
people so that if Chief of Police in Ontonagon, MI needed a
service, he could call the Center and they would take care of
it for him.
The combination of agents that are working there, CBP, ICE,
DEA, FBI, it's incredible. You can't tell the difference who's
who when they're working at that Center. That is the one point.
The second point is on behalf of my colleagues to my left,
you've mentioned earlier that the emphasis is on the southwest
border and that's very true. During my long career being a
native Detroiter and having worked around the world with DEA
and other law enforcement agencies I've been associated with,
they do an amazing amount of professional work with a fraction,
a mere minuscule fraction of the resources devoted to the
southern border. These agencies are constantly understaffed,
yet their production has not failed at all. And I'm talking
about all the ones next to me and others that are not
represented here and it's been a frustrating factor for me for
47 years in law enforcement and I know it is for those young
men next to me who are involved with this activity every day.
Mr. Souder. Well, let me tell you the dilemma that I have
as somebody who's a strong supporter of these categories. We've
tried to steadily increase the dollars, but here's the
challenge that I have and this is just the way life works on
this squeaky wheel. We don't have enough funds to cover
everywhere. What I see is that everybody is working hard. Some
people, like in any organization are a little more effective
than other people, even if they have the same resources. I'm
not going to argue there aren't effectiveness and challenges.
But I know others have really been trying to move more to the
north border and as you heard in my opening statement, we've
had dramatic movement of resources to the north border, partly
because just like wherever you have large communities of any
group, and in this case Arab Americans, this is a huge center.
It means there are more places for bad guys to hide among them,
just like you mentioned in migrant workers, it's a place for
bad Hispanics to hide among. And even in my district coming
down to Angola which butts up to a little high school there in
a rural area, has 23 languages, including a teacher who speaks
Farsi because there are so many people of Middle Eastern decent
there.
Now the challenge we have is that theoretically it would be
somewhat easier for terrorists to move in the north though.
Whether that holds long-term, Bahamas are certainly vulnerable
right now coming up the east side. So we've moved more to the
northern border and the question is has there been a drug nexus
as well. Well, BC Bud is part of it, the high THC marijuana,
ecstasy and meth precursors. But to some degree, like anything,
when you're successful what you're in effect telling us today
is that we've made it difficult in the north border, it's
pouring in the south border. We've been down there on the south
border and I'll tell you, they have tons of agents, they're
stacked up compared to here. But compared to the number of
people pouring at the border, the Canadians themselves, for all
my criticism of the Canadian Government, they have much better
order in their country, so that we don't necessarily have to
worry on a given case. And we're making progress in Mexico
under President Fox. I don't want to downgrade the progress and
I don't want to make any statement too inflammatory. At the
same time you, generally speaking, don't have to worry about
which side the RCMP is on when you work on a case jointly with
them and that it has been a problem for the southwest border.
When we had our hearings down at Oregon Pithe and over by
Douglas, I mean, you can just see. I mean, it isn't one, it's
hundreds of people massed to make a run. All along the border
you can see the milk containers. If they're black colored, it's
drugs. If it's clear, it's water and literally they've had to
close down hiking trails in these national parks because
they're pouring through. It's not even safe because there are
shootouts over turf and that kind of stuff and when we're
dealing with limited funds here, if the meth problem is also
moving back that direction, we've got to figure out how to be
efficient in the prioritization.
Mr. Azzam. Yes, sir.
Mr. Souder. So I understand your concern as somebody who's
in the north not the south. Interesting we were having this
argument in the Homeland Security subcommittee because Dave
Camp's from Michigan and I'm there, and my closest friend there
is John Chavy from Arizona and he's hollering at the northern
guys that have been transferring resources off the south
border, that the south border's becoming a bigger problem, even
with meth and if that's the case, then some resources are going
to have to be reshifted not to the north border but to where
the problem's increasing.
To some degree this is a classic example in any type of
thing. Do a good job, you lose your funds for a while, until it
gets to be a big problem again and we move it back because the
last time I checked, nobody wants a tax increase.
And if I may make a brief political statement, by the time
John Kerry gets his head pounded in, any tax increase he ever
proposed it will back people up for a while again. That it's
just a tough business and I'm one who's advocating more for the
north. I live in the north. I understand those challenges. I
was impressed for the first time here that you're being very
aggressive at it and also the RCMP is. I'm worried at that soft
drug trend in Canada may expand our problems. That in my
opinion, Peter Jennings commentary, this kiss-up promotion of
ecstasy on national television, who knows how this is going to
ripple through our system because Canada already doesn't
control that process very well.
Scott Burns testified at another one of our hearings that
he didn't believe Canada was enforcing it and the Office of the
National Drug Policy Control has been up there very concerned
about their lack of enforcement of the precursor laws, as well
as their marijuana and ecstasy laws. And if Canada slides
toward, as they seem to be, not the law enforcement side, but
the political side, sliding toward the Mexico situation where
Mexico is at least trying to stand up and battle a little bit.
So we could see that pressure on the north and those of us in
the north are raising that concern partly to make sure we don't
abandon our resources if Canada, in effect, goes soft on
narcotics here, that we don't suddenly have it hit our borders
all across the place.
Mr. Azzam. Well, Congressman, there's no doubt that John
Walters, the Director of ONDCP and my ultimate boss is very
critical of the Canadian policies. From a local level what
we've noticed and what I've heard as reported on the media is
that some of that laxity over there has become self-
destructive. Apparently there's a greater percentage of drug
use among the young people on the Windsor side than on the
Detroit side. I think they will come to the right conclusion
eventually. If one goes to the Netherlands and walks the
streets of Amsterdam, they understand what it's like to have
liberal laws. I won't expand on that. Anyone who has been there
knows what I'm talking about.
The other point that I wanted to make, I understand that
Homeland Security had designated $380 million for intelligence
fusion and I would suggest that if they were to take a look at
the 33 HIDTA Investigative Support Centers and see how they're
structured, that the mechanism and the platform is there. All
they need to do is expand upon it and probably save a good deal
of money. All the agencies are there. The resources are there.
They're working very hard. They're working for their ends.
HIDTA is, for example here we have 60 people there. Only
four of them are HIDTA employees. The rest belong to the
agencies involved. There's some areas there that I never could
understand why they haven't exploited. We're there, we've been
there, we've worked out the kinks. You know, it runs pretty
well. The agencies get along famously. As I say, you couldn't
tell the difference between an FBI analyst, and a DEA analyst,
or an ICE analyst, or a CBP analyst.
Mr. Souder. Let me raise this to you as you look at this.
It's a little off the meth subject, but it's also kind of
regionally looking at Detroit. I'm one of the persons who's
skeptical of this and I'm skeptical for a different reason I've
expressed my concerns to Mr. Bonner at ICE, and I've expressed
my concerns multiple times to Mr. Mackin, who's the Drug
Intelligence Coordinator there and Asa Hutchinson in the whole
system in the Homeland Security subdivisions, but particularly
how ICE investigations are handled. And you heard me talking
about how the border side is handled, which is more Mr. Bonner.
I support the concept of how we're trying to move. All of us,
even though I find it infuriating to watch any of the September
11 hearings, we already knew what our problems are in domestic
and international merging. It's a question of how we do it. We
know we're not really fully merged yet in our agencies
domestically. But here's the challenge that some of us have.
I'm concerned that a terrorist incident that kills 50
people will result, or even 200 people will result in a panic
when 20,000 people a year are dying from narcotics. It will
result in a panic and diversion of resources, partly
politically driven, that will pull them off of the drug case.
So that all of a sudden every dog hitting at the border is a
bomb or a chemical bio dog, that the officers themselves know
that if they fail, their careers are over.
If anything remotely is true to terror--I thought your
elixir comment was really interesting. Because if you look 365
days for a terrorist, 24 hours a day for a terrorist and never
find a terrorist, you become lulled. And unless you have
something in there, which I thought the elixir was a great
explanation of that, not to mention that the drug money, as
we've just seen now with ETA is tied in directly with the
terrorists and many cases that's child prostitution, selling
human beings. I mean, how are they going to fund their
operations?
But as we look at this homeland security question, I'm
worried that, for example, we could nail people at the border
and then all of a sudden the ICE Division, the Investigation
Division of the Homeland Security gets all diverted over to
chasing this and won't follow through. We've been trying to
keep the pressure on, get assurances, but I'm telling you from
the political side. You get it up to where there's 1,500 dead
in one incident and you're going to see a movement in pressure
on your agency that you won't believe from Congress and from
everybody else that says find these guys, particularly if it
comes between now and the election.
And the pressure, which is said as a Republican, the
pressure is overwhelming and I'm worried that the fusion
centers could get diverted into this too. On the other hand,
they've done what you talk about in New York.
Mr. Azzam. Yes, they have.
Mr. Souder. In New York. It's an excellent center and New
York's a primary target and to the degree that what I think
will happen is that narcotics nexus and the drug nexus are the
same. It's there. But some of us are very concerned and say
that if the FBI focuses more directly on the terrorist threat
and the DEA on the narcotics threat, then Homeland Security has
to have some of both. We have to have some continuity in this
and not play what I term little kids playing soccer where
everybody's running to the ball of the moment and it doesn't
look like a soccer game, it looks like a little herd going
through. And we're doing that right now and we've got to be
careful. We don't even do that in certain drugs from time to
time.
Mr. Azzam and then Mr. Hodzen.
Mr. Azzam. Before you get that, the Investigative Support
Center next door to you right now is doing both. The FBI
components are working principally on terrorism. The rest of
them are working on drugs. And I told the Attorney General of
the United States this and I'll say it again. There's about 3
percent difference between a terrorist and a drug trafficker, 3
percent. And if you're doing a good job in one area, you're
doing a good job in the other. If you have good anti-narcotic
procedures in place, good anti- narcotic intelligence, you will
get involved with terrorism. And if you're doing a good
terrorism job, there's very little difference between the two,
in my opinion.
Go ahead.
Mr. Hodzen. Since 2001, the big pseudo cases that we've had
commercially in the Detroit area, Port Huron area, of the 16,
13 of them were accompanied with controlled deliveries or
undercover operations related to coming into the border. This
is since 2001.
When I first got here a couple of years ago, we only had
like 35 agents. We've gone up quite a bit. And in that, our
drug group has actually enhanced. Our drug group, along with
the DEA, they're out all the time. We have different groups. We
have a joint Terrorism Task Force Group that works hand in hand
with the terrorism issue. When a drug call comes, the drug
group comes and they go out with the DEA and State and locals,
if necessary. There's not really a mixture and running back and
forth. We have different groups that focus. If you had a
singular office with a few agents, you'd have that. We've built
up. We're working great. I know we've heard this, but it's an
unbelievable relationship we have in the Detroit area with law
enforcement, DEA, CBP, HIDTA, everybody gets along great and
you need that.
But as far as the drug pursuit faltering, I say it's quite
the contrary. Like I said, every time we have the opportunity,
the drug groups goes to go on with a controlled delivery,
undercover meetings, it doesn't stop at the border. And when a
terrorism related call comes in, we have joint Terrorism Task
Force agents that will go out with the FBI, do interviews and
investigate that and on many days we have many different things
going on. But the drug group is focused and it has enhanced and
it will continue to enhance.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Weeks.
Mr. Weeks. Mr. Chairman, I can appreciate the concern of
some of the political realities that you've mentioned, but, you
know, speaking from a field perspective as a field manager in
overseeing interdiction efforts at the border, quite frankly I
don't believe that we would have been able to make as much of
an impact in the interdiction mode if we didn't have the growth
that we experienced along the northern border, both at the
ports of entry and between the ports of entry.
As you know, the Border Patrol has increased in numbers and
are working more closely with the folks at the port of entry
where we have, you know, an active and a very assertive group
here in Michigan. But with the technology, with the new
resources that have been given to us, perhaps as a result of
September 11 has had a byproduct and that is our capabilities
are much more tighter with regard to interdicting illegal
drugs, narcotics, precursors, illegal aliens. I mean, we just
see an uptick in activity based on the growth that we have.
So I understand the issue of focus, but, you know, we have
underscored and resonated the message to the officers that, you
know, it's a priority mission, yes, with regard to terrorism,
but at the same time we have this broader traditional missions
that have been brought to bear in terms of many other concerns
that you've expressed this morning and that certainly we have a
concern of, you know, going forward. But I believe we're in a
better position today to make an impact at the border from an
interdiction standpoint.
And I might add and join the colleagues that I know that we
don't have an investigative component in CBP, but we still work
very closely with ICE and with DEA and other investigative
agencies that will come to the border and take those
interdictions that we make and turn them into investigations
and controlled deliveries. Of course, we then bring that
information back to the officers because they like to hear the
conclusion of some of the work that they do at the border too
and it has been a very successful model.
Mr. Souder. Anything else?
Mr. Arvanitis. I would like to add one other thing,
Congressman. In this community DEA plays a unique role. It has
an outstanding relationship with my partners at the table, but
also with the FBI. We participate in having a seat at the table
and the JTTF strategy. We also are strong proponents of the
fact that intelligence drives enforcement, OK, and the key to
that statement is that amongst all these people who sit in this
community, that we communicate with one another, share the
intelligence so that we may be able to make a successful impact
within the community, as well as in Canada and any other
countries that these cases are taking us to.
As I said earlier, our relationship with RCMP is
outstanding. My relationship with my colleagues there is
outstanding. If there's a case, an issue, it's usually remedied
by a phone call or by lunch on the Canadian or the U.S. side.
You know, in all the offices that I've worked at and I have
not worked in as many offices as Mr. Azzam, former DEA agent
has worked, I've never seen a relationship amongst Federal and
State law enforcement entities in a community such as that here
in Detroit. And that's all I'd like to add.
Mr. Souder. Well, I thank you all for your testimony today.
It's been very enlightening as we try to zero in on meth which
is a diverse topic. I forgot to ask you something. If you can't
answer this question, that's fine.
Have you seen meth to the degree you have it here coming
through, and you mentioned western Michigan, anything from
Yakima and tri-cities, Washington, Georgia, either of those two
places?
Mr. Azzam. Not that I know of.
Mr. Arvanitis. No, sir.
Mr. Azzam. Not that I know of.
Mr. Souder. I'm more skeptical about how we're going to
make sure that in the short-term, because I believe narcotics
here can become so interrelated financially with the terrorism
that we're going to see it, but I think there's a number of
phenomenons that we have to be very vigilant. I understand that
we gain and the official position is that we don't need to
spend more money, we need to spend it more efficiently because
we're going to get this combined effort that makes it more
efficient.
Some of us are a little concerned that what's happening is
not structural, but personnel driven. In other words, you have
two former DEA directors in key positions in the Department of
Homeland Security which will not necessarily be true in the
future. That we had to force, bluntly put, the Administration
Office of Narcotics Control, which Roger Mackin has in his
subpart and that's because the current Speaker headed this
narcotics committee and is committed to narcotics. It wasn't
because I introduced the bill because I'm a real powerful guy,
but somewhat of a mosquito compared to the President of the
United States.
That it took the Speaker to basically demand that in the
bill to make sure that narcotics were even in the Homeland
Security Bill. That Secretary Ridge was initially resistant.
But there's an amazing thing that happens and that is the word
elixir wouldn't fit here, but there's an amazing thing when
you're trying to accumulate funds is that if the money moves to
certain issues, then everybody wants to move to that issue. And
you've seen this in narcotics between 1989 and 1990, you
couldn't put enough money into narcotics and then when it goes
and everybody wants to get into the narcotics business and then
when the money starts to dry up, everybody wants to go where
the next thing is and terrorism was the thing for a while.
Then all of a sudden they realized, well, what about
terrorist attacks, how do we maintain our system, so all of a
sudden there's mission creep and you get the narcotics thing
back into it. The Attorney General realizes that, wow, I just
lost a couple of my big divisions. Maybe narcotics is a bigger
part of the Attorney General. So you get the Attorney General
at the table a little more interested in narcotics than he was
in the very beginning because he lost a big chunk of the
terrorism part. And what's going to be the relationship long-
term in the cabinet of the power of the Department of Homeland
Security which is a far bigger agency now and the Attorney
General, and that I believe that there is a strong consensus
but not as formed on narcotics.
There is 100 percent consensus that when we're hit by a
terrorist attack, that we need to do something. What we do in
the times in between is that we gradually lull asleep and then
we get hit. But I'm firmly convinced we're going to get hit
again. My personal opinion is we've got them sidetracked over
in Iraq and Afghanistan and we're buying time and meanwhile
you're getting more lane systems set up, we're getting better
examination systems, more trained agents, more people up and
we're going to be better able.
For example, we're now actually going to follow college
students who come in and check them to see if they went to
college. I mean, we had the son of the Chinese CIA director and
we lost him. And he never showed up to school. We don't know
whether he's still here or not because we had so many that INS
couldn't possibly; they get these forms in from the
universities, they have them stacked up, there was no way we
had the personnel to sort them through and then at the same
time the university stopped sending them in because they knew
INS didn't do it and it's like, man, what's the point of the
system.
So we're getting up to speed, but we have zero tolerance
after September 11. You will not know what hit your agencies.
I'm just trying to tell you. That's why I'm trying to put up
some firewalls. We miss another terrorist attack, you will not
know what hit your agencies.
My prediction is if it's a big one, half of DEA will be
diverted. National Parks Service will be diverted because
everything political will run to that because there's nothing
more scary than a one-time random hit that could be anybody.
Rather than the steady kind of thing that you guys do with
everyday and if we don't have some firewalls to protect our
system from running to the urgency here, that's why I'm
interested in hearing it, it's great to hear that in fact it's
working because in New York City it seems to be working, here
it seems to be working, but you haven't had the test yet. What
happens if we get hit.
Because partly, and this is the dilemma, maybe by all the
coordination we can avoid getting the hit and that's our thing.
So I just want to protect the narcotics portion of it. But I
and some of the others have actually been some of the problem
in how much we allow the mergers because I'm trying to make
sure that there's actually money designated for narcotics and
that Homeland Security doesn't take all the narcotics money and
Frank Wolf in the appropriations process, has been pretty good
with this too.
Anything else?
Mr. Arvanitis. No, sir. Thank you.
Mr. Souder. Thank you. The subcommittee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:20 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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