Drug Smuggling

White House drug czar John P. Walters charged Sunday that the government of President Hugo Chavez was facilitating the rising flow of drugs from his nation to Europe and North America through a lack of enforcement. The public criticism by Walters, who heads the Office of National Drug Control Policy, was unusually harsh for the Bush administration, which has tried to steer clear of provoking the fiery Venezuelan leader.

The off-road enthusiasts were revving their dune buggies and all-terrain vehicles Saturday morning when a brown Hummer suddenly cut into the campground. The man at the wheel, a suspected drug smuggler, was heading to Mexico, fast. U.S. Border Patrol Agent Luis Aguilar, the only person in the way, threw a spike strip in front of the car. The Hummer sped up. "It looked like the man swerved and hit the agent intentionally," said one witness.

It seemed a sweet deal: A free vacation to South America. All expenses paid, and a hefty cash bonus. Just bring a parcel back home to Europe. "I thought I had no worries," said Vera Scheerstra, recalling when her boyfriend in the Netherlands suggested the trip. "I was stupid -- and in love, I guess." For the Dutchwoman, it has turned into a life-transforming experience -- but not in any constructive sense.

Honduran and U.S. authorities seized at least 4.6 tons of cocaine on a boat in the Caribbean Sea and arrested six of the vessel's crew members. Honduran Navy Cmdr. Juan Pablo Rodriguez said Saturday that the cocaine was found on the Honduran-flagged Eclipse about 100 miles off the Honduran coast, in a joint operation with the U.S. Coast Guard. The area is near the Nicaraguan border. Rodriguez said the officials were still searching the boat.

A Canadian immigrant living in Newport Beach was charged in federal court Monday in one of the largest Ecstasy-smuggling busts in the region, authorities said. Alexandru Sabau, 37, was taken into custody Friday by agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after being intercepted near his apartment in the 9000 block of Residencia. Sabau was arrested as he arrived to meet with an informant to finalize a drug trade, authorities said.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Tuesday opened the second front in his campaign against drug violence, sending 3,300 soldiers, sailors and federal police to the troubled border city of Tijuana. Tijuana and surrounding communities are a key battleground in the drug cartels' fight to control smuggling routes to the United States. Their bloody rivalries left more than 2,000 people dead in Mexico last year.

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon) introduced a bill Thursday to pardon two former Border Patrol agents convicted of shooting an unarmed drug smuggler who fled across the Rio Grande after they stopped his van with 743 pounds of marijuana. Former Texas-based agents Ignacio "Nacho" Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean were sentenced to 11 and 12 years, respectively, after being found guilty of assault with a dangerous weapon, defacing a crime scene and violating the smuggler's rights.

Stretched thin from fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military has sharply reduced its role in the war on drugs, leaving significant gaps in the nation's narcotics interdiction efforts. Since 1989, Congress has directed the Pentagon to be the lead federal agency in detecting and monitoring illegal narcotics shipments headed to the United States by air and sea and in supporting Coast Guard efforts to intercept them. In the early 1990s, at the height of the drug war, U.S.

Seven of the largest tunnels discovered under the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years have yet to be filled in, authorities said, raising concerns because smugglers have tried to reuse such passages before. Among the unfilled tunnels, created to ferry people and drugs, is the longest one yet found -- extending nearly half a mile from San Diego to Tijuana. Nearby, another sophisticated passageway once known as the Taj Mahal of tunnels has been sitting unfilled for 13 years, authorities say.

A random check of a car at the U.S.-Mexico border in San Ysidro this week led to one of the state's largest heroin seizures and will cause the drug to be far scarcer in Southern California in the coming weeks, authorities said. The narcotic is perhaps the most difficult to intercept, officials say, because it is often trafficked in small quantities that are easy to conceal.