A report says the Border Patrol and federal land management agencies are doing little planning together.

The Arizona Republic

WASHINGTON - Federal agencies must better coordinate efforts to battle drug smuggling and illegal crossings along the nation's remote borderland frontiers with Mexico and Canada, congressional auditors warn in a new report.
"In Arizona, there has been very little coordination or planning between the Border Patrol and land management agencies, even as border agencies' staffing levels have increased in recent years," the General Accounting Office said in the report.

The Border Patrol is responsible for protecting the borders. But the report noted that 820 miles of the about 2,000 miles of border the United States shares with Mexico are on federal or tribal lands that include national parks, forests and wildlife refuges.

Much of the report's focus is on Arizona, where 240 or of the 375 miles of border shared with Mexico are managed by the U.S. Forest Service (53 miles), the Bureau of Indian Affairs (70 miles), the Fish & Wildlife Service (65 miles), the Bureau of Land Management (17 miles) and the National Park Service (35 miles).

Because Border Patrol strategies since the 1990s have concentrated additional patrol resources in populated areas, much of the cross-border illegal traffic has shifted to more remote federal lands in Arizona, the report noted.

Evidence of these shifts as documented in the report includes:

Seizure of more than 100,000 pounds of marijuana, 144 grams of cocaine and 6,600 grams of methamphetamine on the Tohono O'odham Nation in 2003, compared with 65,000 pounds the year before.

Confiscation of 19,000 pounds of marijuana by the Bureau of Land Management on BLM property in Arizona - primarily Ironwood Forest National Monument northwest of Tucson - in fiscal 2003, up from 2,600 pounds the year before.

Rising numbers of illegal immigrants caught on Interior Department land in Arizona within 100 miles of the border, going from 51 in 1997 to 113,480 in 2000.

The entry into the United States of an estimated 200,000 illegal immigrants through the National Park Service's Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in 2001.

Estimates that as many as 1,000 illegal immigrants cross the Fish & Wildlife Service's Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge each week.

The report refers to the rising number of illegal immigrants who have been dying while trying to cross these remote regions illegally.
And it points to increased dangers that the shifting illegal activity poses to law enforcement officers, federal agency employees, residents and visitors to national parks, forests, wildlife refuges and tribal nations.

GAO auditors who visited Arizona said officials of these other agencies acknowledged "they were unprepared for the increased illegal border activity on their lands," and reported enforcement activities with the Border Patrol often continue to lack coordination.

In addition, the GAO noted that these agencies' efforts to get more federal funding and law enforcement personnel are sometimes disregarded because they are viewed by budget officials "as more in keeping with the border security mission of the Border Patrol."

As of May, the Border Patrol had not issued detailed plans to ensure interagency coordination occurs, the GAO said.

Officials from the departments of Homeland Security, Interior, Agriculture and Justice reviewed a draft of the report and generally agreed with the GAO's conclusions.

The Office of Management and Budget, too, has concurred in large part.

The agencies are working to address the concerns, said Michael Dino, an assistant director of the GAO based in Los Angeles.