The Latin American Port Security Advisory Program seeks to stop illegal drugs at their points of exit rather than before they enter our country. To do this, the Office of International Affairs has stationed Customs inspectors, known as advisors, at ports in high-threat source and transit countries.

The advisors have strong inspection backgrounds with at least a year's experience on a contraband enforcement team and the ability to speak, read, and write Spanish fluently.

The Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 requires the president to identify which drug-producing or drug-transit countries pose the greatest threat to the United States. President Bush identified 23 such countries, 14 of which are in Latin America. Of these, Customs advisors are currently working in Guatemala, Ecuador, and Costa Rica, all three major transit routes for drugs destined for the United States and Europe. Plans are underway to send two advisors to Venezuela, and the American embassies in Mexico and Panama have also expressed interest in hosting advisors.

Source countries smuggle cocaine and heroin into Ecuador and Guatemala primarily by truck, in shipments of legitimate cargo. That cargo is then loaded onto ships at major seaports, hidden in compartments in ocean-going vessels, or concealed inside containerized, perishable bulk cargo like fruit or flowers. And there's always the ever-popular human method: drug couriers on flights from Ecuador and Guatemala.

Frank Castillo, an inspector from Houston, has served as the advisor in Ecuador since September 2001. Working in the Narcotics Affairs Section of the American embassy in Quito, he helps to establish effective counter-narcotics cargo inspection teams at the seaports of Guayaquil -- South America's busiest Pacific seaport -- Manta, and Esmeraldas. He trains the Ecuadorian National Police to develop more effective cargo-screening techniques, including manifest review and cargo examinations.

"Our CSI"
The Guatemalan project was the first long-term port security advisory project. Leo Garcia, a senior inspector from Eagle Pass, Tex., has been the advisor there since the program began. Garcia works with local authorities to get narcotics out of U.S.-bound commercial shipments. The American embassy in Guatemala extended his work to El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and occasionally, Mexico.

Part of Garcia's assignment is to analyze the physical features of border infrastructures to find out how and where to tighten them. He helps the Guatemalan drug-enforcement police develop better cargo-screening and - examination techniques, proper use of contraband-detector tools, and more effective manifest-review methods. Garcia is credited with starting an extremely successful anti-smuggling unit that has been the basis for developing other such projects on an advisory basis.

"You could almost think of this program as our 'CSI.' The seaports of this region have traditionally been poorly managed, and their containers are seldom inspected. That makes these ports vulnerable to drug smuggling, and it also makes them easy staging areas for attacks against the United States. But our presence here, as U.S. Customs officers, has made a difference," says Garcia.

Carlos Fontanez, a supervisory inspector from San Juan, P.R., is the advisor for the port program in Costa Rica, which started this past July. As with the programs described above, Fontanez works closely with the Costa Rican police, customs officials, and port-security personnel to improve narcotics interdiction at Caldera, Limon, and Moin seaports; Juan Santa Maria International, Tobias Bolanus, and Daniel Oduber International airports; and Peñas Blancas and Paso Canoas land ports.

All three port-security programs are based on the premise that border defenses work best when they are "layered," that is, when selectivity criteria are applied, and examinations occur, at the foreign ports of export as well as at our own ports of entry.

As CSI does in the area of counter-terrorism, so the Latin American programs are doing to prevent the export of narcotics. In Guatemala, for example, officials trained by our advisors have seized more than 10,000 kilos of cocaine. In Venezuela, where a port security program is being developed, more than 2,000 pounds of cocaine were found within weeks of our advisors' arrival.