Robert Christian Billar Drug Crimes Law Blog on Lawyers.com

Phoenix drug trafficking and immigrant smuggling has been a huge problem on the border for many years.

Mexican cartels, corrupt as they are, are allowed to operate in Mexico without much interference from the police there. These actions, of course, affect many of the Border States in the U.S, including Arizona. In fact, Arizona is the busiest illegal gateway into the United States. Attorney General Terry Goddard is doing something about it. He recently testified in Washington that Mexico and the United States need to collaborate more to confront cartels that smuggle drugs and immigrants into the U.S. and guns and money into Mexico.

Goddard, one of several law enforcement officials who testified before a Senate subcommittee on drugs and crime, said drug violence in Mexico won't be contained there unless its government succeeds in its war against cartels.

"It is in the interest of the United States to assist Mexico in that effort and to step up our own law enforcement activities to dismantle the criminal organizations operating across the border," Goddard said in his prepared remarks.

His idea? To target the leaders of trafficking groups. He said that traffickers usually turn to legitimate businesses for assistance, such as weapons dealers who sell guns to rings that sneak guns into Mexico. They also use money wire transfer businesses to help move smuggling money.

His prosecutors have seized $17 million in wire transfers flowing to Arizona (mostly through Western Union) that were payments to smugglers just in the past four years alone.

"Western Union is by far the largest provider of illicit money-movement services, so it is the source of valuable information about illicit money movements and has been the focus of interdiction efforts aimed at criminal proceeds in transit," Goddard said.

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