Whack-a-mole: ICE dive unit in Miami targets drug smuggler ships

Now the drug moles are piggybacking shipments on the hulls of commercial ships. As the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent says in this article, "If you cut off one way for drugs to get in, they will find another way." So why is it that the government keeps trying to stop them?

ICE dive unit in Miami targets drug smuggler ships: "The seven members of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement dive team, formed in 2004 and the only one of its kind in the U.S., were searching for large metal boxes that Latin American cocaine traffickers sometimes weld or clamp onto freighters and even cruise ships to smuggle drugs. The boxes also could be used to hide terrorist bombs or weapons.

ICE agent Dean Lang, assistant chief of the dive team, said the intense law enforcement focus on drug trafficking through Mexico could push some cocaine smuggling operations to U.S. coasts and ports. Miami in the 1980s was a main avenue for cocaine, and U.S. officials don't want a return to the violent "cocaine cowboy" days, when rival drug traffickers battled in South Florida for control.

"If you cut off one way for drugs to get in, they will find another way," Lang said."