SAN DIEGO — While security has tightened at the U.S. border, drug smugglers are increasingly turning to the high seas.
The area where boats were seized off California and the northwest coast of Mexico tripled to a size comparable to Montana during the 2013 fiscal year. Off South America, traffickers over the years have been traversing territory so big the continental United States could be dropped inside of it.
Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel has been loading marijuana bales onto 50-foot vessels as far south as the Mexican port of Mazatlan.
Meanwhile, budget cuts have hit one of the lead U.S. law enforcement agencies on international waters — the Coast Guard. To meet automatic federal budget cuts, it reduced its operating costs by 25 percent in 2013. As such, only a third of suspected drug smuggling boats or aircraft out of South America were stopped last year, the Coast Guard’s top officer, Adm. Robert Papp, said.
