Fusion centers key to efforts to combat drug violence, officials say

ALBUQUERQUE — Top-level Obama administration officials in Albuquerque today said they are beefing up the country’s efforts to squeeze the drug flow from Mexico to keep the violent drug cartel turf wars from spilling over onto U.S. soil.

Violence in Mexico is reaching alarming levels, with over 6,000 drug-related murders reported in the country, a federal report released this week shows.

And one way of keeping the violence at bay, officials said, is to choke the flow of money and weapons from the U.S., into Mexico, where the drug cartels receive them with open arms.

But at the heart of what Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and other officials rolled out today as a new Southwest Counternarcotics Strategy is a stress on greater cooperation among an alphabet soup of federal, state, local and tribal agencies.

And that means a greater emphasis will be placed on the nation’s growing network of fusion centers. Napolitano acknowledged as much.

“From the Homeland Security department standpoint, we intend to use the fusion centers as our major connect with law enforcement, not exclusive but major in the sense in sharing information, getting information out and receiving information from,” Napolitano said.

Fusion centers are little-known facilities over the country — there are 70 currently, including in New Mexico — that have popped up over the past half decade or so.

Fusion centers put representatives of federal, state, local and tribal agencies in the same place where they and their respective agencies share tips on everything from terrorism to suspected drug trafficking and public health emergencies.

Supporters describe fusion centers as an antidote to “siloing” of information, a practice often said to have contributed to the intelligence breakdown leading up to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

But as the fusion center movement has grown into a national trend, it also has drawn concern from civil liberties groups. The ACLU submitted a report in mid-2008 that was critical of fusion centers and spoke of “overzealous intelligence gathering, the expansion of uncontrolled access to data on innocent people, hostility to open government laws” and “watching and recording the everyday activities of an ever-growing list of individuals.”

Napolitano was not asked Friday and did not discuss the ongoing debate – often conducted below the public’s radar – on how to strike the balance between supporting national security and protecting civil liberties.

But she said that the new counternarcotics strategy unveiled Friday will require “growing the concept of fusion centers.”

“If you have people together, who work together, who know each other, who have access to each other’s databases, access to information sharing to the greatest extent possible — it facilities law enforcement,” Napolitano said.

Already Napolitano’s department is beginning to send more of its intelligence analysts to work at various fusion centers around the country.

“One of the things we want to have a greater capacity for out of Washington is not just the gathering of intelligence but the analyzing of intelligence,” Napolitano said.

It is unclear whether New Mexico had gotten its own Homeland Security intelligence analyst, but as of last summer, it had not gotten any officers from the federal agency. New Mexico’s All Source Information Center, or fusion center, began operating in September 2007.

Narcotics “phenomenon”

Napolitano and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder were in Albuquerque Friday to meet with the 21-member advisory council impaneled by Napolitano to give advice on issues affecting homeland security. The council, which Napolitano swore in Friday, met at the University of New Mexico.

One of the big issues confronting the country is the flow of narcotics from Mexico, officials said.

“The secretary has asked us how to come up with concrete examples on how to fight against that phenomenon,” Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Alan Bersin, known more informally as the U.S. border czar, said Friday.

He told the Albuquerque Journal in a story that ran Friday that the U.S. will tighten border checks for people heading south and will muster more border resources in an effort to halt the flow of American guns and cash of the cartels.

That is resulting in the first-ever inspections of southbound rail shipments into Mexico, and the increase of the number of inspections of southbound vehicles should help meet that goal, Napolitano said Friday.

Bersin said new southbound border checks had already seized tens of millions in drug cash and about 1,000 weapons.

Federal officials also hope to roll out nationally a program that is up and running in select cities and counties. It would give law enforcement authorities at local jails across the country access to an immigration database to help pinpoint individuals who may be potential risks.

Meanwhile, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said there would be greater efforts toward prosecuting money launderers.

“Money and weapons are clearly as important to the cartels as the drugs,” added Gil Kerlikowske, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

The roll-out of the strategy didn’t go over well with everyone.

“Success in winning or combating the drug war should not solely be defined by number of drugs seized, or the number of arrests and incarcerations of those involved with drug trafficking organizations and drug cartels,” said Bill Piper, director of National Affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance.

“Success in combating drugs and drug use should be defined by the number of people entering substance abuse treatment programs, the number of successful drug prevention programs being implemented, and the reduction in the number of people harmed by drugs and drug use.”

The U.S.’s efforts at addressing border security and drug trafficking come at a time when Mexico is taking the fight to the drug cartels like never before under the direction of that country’s president, Felipe Calderon.

“It’s one of the best times to engage the country’s southern neighbor,”  said advisory council member and former U.S. ambassador to Mexico Jim Jones.

“A trust has been created,” Jones said.

For anyone who views the council as merely window dressing, former presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Gary Hart had a different take Friday.

“I’ve served on a number of commissions and committees,” said Hart, an advisory council member. “Most of them are pretty lackluster, more or less a formal way to bring in people from the outside. I’ve checked into it. This is meant to be, and is going to be, a very active advisory council. I had dinner with the secretary last night and she made it very clear that she takes the role of the council seriously, and invites the ideas from those who are participating, both about how the department can improve its mission and new ways of doing things.”