Border Trouble: Key Drug Enforcement Office Understaffed

Washington, June 15, 2010 -- A Justice Department review has found that a multi-agency drug intelligence center in El Paso, Texas, assigned to monitor illegal drug trafficking, suffered from "several significant weaknesses" -- including unstaffed key offices and important information that agencies never shared.

In one instance the failure to staff a maritime interdiction office may have prevented monitoring of drug traffickers into the United States. The Justice Department's Inspector General examined the El Paso Intelligence Center, known as EPIC, which is led and funded by the Drug Enforcement Agency but is made up of 21 different agencies and stationed near one of the flashpoints on the U.S.-Mexican border.

The review comes as issues of illegal immigration and violence on the southwest border grow in importance, fueled by Mexican drug trafficking organizations fighting for control of drug transshipment routes into the United States. EPIC was established in 1974 and provides information on drug smugglers, illegal immigration and weapons trafficking to law enforcement agencies across the United States.

The Inspector General review found EPIC to be "highly valued" by its partner agencies, including the DEA, FBI, ATF, Customs and Border Protection and the National Guard. But it said, "we identified several significant weaknesses that have prevented EPIC's operations and programs from being as effective as they could be."

According to the review, EPIC had key interdiction offices unstaffed at times for over 9 months. The report issued on Tuesday said that "lack of agency participation caused EPIC's Fraudulent Document Unit to be unstaffed and therefore unable to serve users from December 2007 to January 2009, and EPIC's Air Watch program was unstaffed for approximately 9 months of 2007. In addition, EPIC did not maintain a consistent level of staffing and support to sustain its participation in a maritime intelligence group."

The review said, "Because EPIC is the agency with the strongest information gathering capability for certain maritime drug smuggling corridors to the United States, the failure to fully staff and support this group likely hindered drug trafficking interdiction efforts."