Drug smugglers turn to northern border

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Part I: Guarding America's border

Second of three parts

HAVRE, Mont. - The "Ghost of Sin Ojos" is an illusive figure known all too well to the Border Patrol agents who prowl the rolling plains here under the big Montana sky, a shadowy visitor dressed in black with no eyes who moves unseen over a strip of land along the Canadian border known as the "Hi-Line."

"I've never personally seen the ghost," said Border Patrol Senior Agent Larry D. Shields as he guided his four-wheel-drive vehicle along a dirt path near a barbed-wire fence that separates the United States and Canada. "But there's no doubt he's out here."

There's also no doubt that the ghost has company, an elusive and growing number of drug smugglers, crossing from Canada into the United States -- in trucks and cars, on snowmobiles and horseback, in airplanes and on foot -- carrying a mountain of illicit drugs, including a new and potent hydroponically grown Canadian marijuana known as "BC bud."

Using night-vision optics and global-positioning systems to navigate the desolate and often-rugged terrain, the smugglers seek to fulfill a growing demand in the United States for drugs -- particularly the high-grade marijuana that sells for up to $6,000 a pound -- 10 times the price of Mexican pot.

Illicit drugs such as BC bud have become a billion-dollar industry for Canadian smugglers, and their spread into the United States was inevitable, law-enforcement authorities say.