Video Transcript:

GLORIA PENNER (Host): As Mexico continues to battle the drug war raging south of the border, Mexican officials are working on a plan to crack down on guns being smuggled into the country. Beginning this fall, all vehicles crossing into Mexico from San Diego will be screened by a beefed up Mexican customs inspection team. KPBS border reporter Amy Isacson is here to tell us about these changes. Welcome Amy.

AMY ISACKSON (KPBS News): Hi Gloria.

PENNER: So, we mentioned guns. Is that the kind of contraband that is being smuggled into Mexico from the United States?

ISACKSON: Guns, large guns - machine guns - are a big concern, as well as cash going south. Drug smugglers will bring their cars up north and, as I've been told, the cars don't go back down south empty. So guns and cash, but also other kind of contraband that's not necessarily as dangerous. But things like pirated DVDs, not necessarily coming from the U.S., but other countries especially China. Goods that taxes need to be charged on. And one question that that raises, especially here on the border, is there's such a cross border flow, people who live in Tijuana coming up here to shop, and their dollar amount that they're restricted to of bringing goods back to Mexico is very low. And traditionally, customs enforcement officers have sort of looked the other way and there's kind of this border tradition, but now this brings into question, with this beefed-up enforcement what's going to happen? Are people going to have to be charged these taxes?

PENNER: Am I right that the prime motivator, however, are the guns and the cash the drug cartels use?

ISACKSON: The customs and officials that I've spoken with say both. They say it's guns and cash, and they say it's also to collect this VAT tax, the value added tax, on goods brought into Mexico.

PENNER: Alright, so we're going to see inspection of all vehicles going into Mexico. The Mexicans are going to do the inspection. What kind of inspection will they do?

ISACKSON: What they're going to do is you will drive up, because traditionally everyone gets the red light or the green light. But now you will drive up and an arm will come down and you will be stopped. The car will be weighed, there will be a sort of scan taken of the car, and they'll correlate the weight of the car with the scan to make sure for the type of car that it is, it isn't overweight. They'll also be checking the license plate against a database of stolen cars, or cars that police have on their radar screen for some reason. And there's actually, there's question from authorities on both sides of the border about how effective the system will really be to go after guns and cash, because the way that drug cartels traditionally smuggle guns south in vehicles is a few at a time, and those don't weigh much. And you can pull them apart into pieces and hide them in certain areas of the car. So the question is, is a scale really the way to be able to track those guns?

PENNER: Well I have another question. I mean, how long is this going to take, when you're doing this with each car that's coming in?

ISACKSON: And that's the big question. And that's part of what's delayed this, what's called seave, going into effect on the border here in San Ysidro, is that Mexican government said that the check would take eight seconds and that it wouldn't cause traffic. But they're ruling this out along the border and in other cities where they've ruled this out, its taking more like ten seconds. And Caltrans did studies here and said there's a ten second wait for each car crossing the border. They're an estimated, I believe, between forty and fifty thousand cars that cross southbound to Tijuana everyday. If every one of those cars waits for eight seconds during peak hours of traffic, the traffic jams could be two, three hours long. And that's taking into account the people that just ditch out to say I'm not even going to wait in this.

PENNER: Is it going to help that they've doubled the number of border inspectors?

ISACKSON: I would imagine that more man power allows them to screen people more quickly. Here in Tijuana, San Ysidro, and Otay Mesa, there were forty customs agents and now there will be eighty-eight.

PENNER: Now, what I also read was that they are going to have new customs inspectors on the border. Why are they doing that?

ISACKSON: They just replaced their entire staff of seven hundred customs inspectors with fourteen hundred new inspectors. They say that these new people are younger, they're educated, seventy-one percent I believe have university degrees, and part of it is to create a more educated, better trained force, according to Mexican customs officials, but I believe also part of it is to root out corruption within customs. And this isn't the first time that we've seen this. Back when president Fox, shortly after he came into office back in 2001, he fired forty-six customs supervisors. And I believe it was in 1991 we also saw a massive firing of people.

PENNER: Well thank you very much, Amy Isackson.

ISACKSON: Thank you.

PENNER: Joining me to talk about the impact of Mexico's screening program along the border are JW August, managing editor of 10 News, and John Warren, editor and publisher of San Diego Voice & Viewpoint. Welcome to both of you. OK, so let's talk a little bit about what these changes in the border inspection might mean to tourism and commerce. Its already suffering with the violence of the drug cartels. Could this totally devastate Baja's economy, John?

JOHN WARREN (San Diego Voice & Viewpoint): It will come very close to devastating it. We have somewhat of a twenty-five percent reduction in terms of business already there. And when you look at the backup and the number of people going across, and the extent to which the tourism is down which has been so important, there is a very great amount of concern in terms of how people are going to survive.

PENNER: But it's necessary obviously, JW, I mean somehow we have to stop guns and cash going into Mexico.

JW AUGUST (10 News): They have to bite the bullet. It's a painful bullet to bite, but they have to do it because its got to end somewhere and I guess the governments taking their stand here, the Mexican government.

PENNER: Right, but I don't think that the U.S. is inspecting the cars going into Mexico, is it?

AUGUST: Sporadically.

PENNER: This is going to be strictly a Mexican version of inspection.

AUGUST: Well this is a Mexican affair. But the U.S. side also sporadically does checks. Particularly after some incident. They'll set up road blocks and do checks as cars go south.

PENNER: Well the fascinating part is that, you know, there's concern whether the way that this system works is going to be efficient. I mean, our system isn't all that efficient is it, John? How can we expect Mexico's system to be more efficient to get those cars inspected.

WARREN: Well historically we've never been concerned about cars going south. And I guess that's one reason why we don't have one of the fast lanes, if you will, in terms of going into Mexico. But now that our Caltrans people on this side of the border have taken a look, and they see that this eight to ten second delay per vehicle could give us a backlog up to Chula Vista, say, two and a half miles up 805 and 5, now we're concerned economically on this side as well.

PENNER: We are? Why on this side?

WARREN: Well, we're concerned because people come across to shop from Mexico, and if we have this backlog going in, then those very same people coming out to spend money are going to be victimized going back in. So they're caught on both sides. They wait to come out, and they wait to go back in.

PENNER: So what might be the option? I mean, is there any option to doing these border inspections?

AUGUST: Not at this time. They're planning a couple things right now. Maybe, you know you go over some of those bumps as you get to the light, they're going to knock some of those speed bumps out. But that's very cosmetic, its not going to be very much help long-term. They actually need more lanes heading south, and that's going to take a long time for them to do that.

PENNER: What is this going to mean though to Mexico, to have more economic devastation because of the border inspections?

AUGUST: My concern is the underground economy is suffering now and it will suffer even more, and I think there's going to be some problems with political unrest. People, if you're not making money, and you can't feed your kids, and your life is not that good, there's no jobs up north, the border fence is working, what are you going to do?

PENNER: What do you do? I mean, if there is unrest south of our border, what does it mean to us?

WARREN: Well, this is part of the reason we've gotten involved in terms of this whole gun issue, because we've already seen incidents of the violence from the war with the cartels spilling over onto this side of the border both here, in terms of San Diego, and also in Texas. And so there's question now is not just a Mexican affair, its a U.S. affair. And we want to contain it before it expands. And our containment is of greater concern than the impact of these new measures on the Mexican economy.