Explore "Border Guard" by Don Whitehead on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Customs agents in the Laredo Tenth Customs Agency District -- which includes the 2,000 miles of border and Gulf coastline from New Mexico into part of Louisiana -- spend much of their time battling the smuggling of narcotics and marihuana from Mexico.
Federal officers estimate that the business of peddling narcotics to addicts grosses at least a half billion dollars a year for the underworld, and the total may be much more. No one actually knows the amount of narcotics which is smuggled successfully into the United States. Some Customs agents estimate that law enforcement officers seize less than 10 per cent of the total. One agent said, "If I thought that I was getting ten per cent of the total being smuggled, then I could sleep well at night."