MALIBU, CALIF. -- On a starry night in the hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean north of Los Angeles, a two-man California National Guard special forces surveillance team sets up a sophisticated night scope. Their mission is to search the horizon and the waters below for an increasing number of Mexican drug traffickers offloading multi-ton loads of marijuana--and sometimes illegal immigrants--on remote U.S. beaches.

"These service members are the eyes and ears of federal law enforcement here," said Lt. Kara Siepmann, of the Guard's National Drug program. When asked about what specifically they are looking for, one of the surveillance team members said, "We're looking for blacked out vessels and any suspicious activity we can find, any unusual boats coming through the area." 

Used to smuggle drugs from Mexico, this panga boat was captured near Huntington Beach, Calif., in August 2011. The faces of the three men being arrested have been obscured at the request of the HSI.

The soldiers work quietly and in the dark, aware that the Mexican traffickers have their own spotters here watching out for U.S. law enforcement personnel. "They don't want to land where the National Guard or the Border Patrol are looking for them," said Siepmann.

Turning fishing boats into drug boats
In the last few years, law enforcement officials said they have seen a considerable spike in smugglers loading drugs or immigrants onto boats in Mexico's northern Baja Peninsula, then motoring north to offload their illegal cargo along a 300-mile-long stretch of California beaches, sometimes within sight of the many luxury homes on the coastline. 

Courtesy of HSI/ICE

Used to smuggle drugs from Mexico, this panga boat was found in California's Ventura County in January 2012.

Related: Debate rages over Mexico 'spillover violence' in U.S.

Federal agents said this is the latest smuggling technique employed by Mexico's notorious Sinaloa drug cartel, headed by that country's most-wanted criminal, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. The boats are small, open-hulled commercial fishing boats called pangas, which are commonly found in the inshore waters of Mexico and Central America. 

With their low profiles, the pangas are hard to spot in open water, but they can carry a large payload. Sometimes these 30- to 40-foot boats will have as many as four outboard engines, allowing them to outrun most vessels used by the authorities.

"The trend is pretty much going straight up," said Lt. Stewart Sibert, the captain of the US Coast Guard Cutter Halibut, which patrols in search of Mexican smugglers near the California coast. 

"The past few months have been very busy for us," he said. "We caught more drugs in these past two months than in the past two years."

According to arrest statistics reported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, there were 183 known "events" in fiscal year 2011 along the California coast involving the maritime smuggling of drugs or immigrants, up considerably from the previous three years. During the first seven months of this fiscal year, there have already been 113 such events as the numbers climb even faster than last year.

"We're seeing four and five tons of drugs come in per run and we're seeing dozens of runs. It's almost one or two per week at this point," said Sibert.

A dangerous trade heading north
Law enforcement officials have argued the rise in maritime smuggling is a direct result of their crackdown on smuggling operations along the U.S. land border with Mexico. As they first interdicted smuggling boats headed for beaches in southernmost California, near San Diego, they began to see the traffickers moving farther north to drop off their loads, which are then distributed across the country.

Related: Patrolling 'smugglers' alley' by air along the Rio Grande

"As we stop them in one area, they’re trying to go around us. We're sort of leapfrogging up the coastline," said Sibert. Recently, an abandoned panga and a hidden marijuana stash were found near San Simeon, Calif., more than 300 miles from the Mexican border.

"They go far out to sea to try to evade interdiction efforts along the border," said Claude Arnold, the special agent in charge for ICE Homeland Security Investigations. "They typically go 100 miles out or farther due west, and then they come north," to reach the U.S. coastline.

While the panga boats are considered relatively stable when used for fishing in calm inshore waters, officials said, they can be quite dangerous in rougher waters offshore, especially if they are overloaded with drugs or illegal immigrants. The boats rarely have adequate safety equipment and authorities speculate that many may have been lost at sea, along with their passengers.

Courtesy of HSI/ICE

Used to smuggle drugs from Mexico, this panga boat was found on California's Leo Carrillo Beach in August 2011.

"It's a direct indication of these criminal smuggling organizations' complete disregard for human life. They are driven by profit and nothing else," said Troy Matthews, of the U.S. Border Patrol in San Diego. "You'll have somebody driving the ship who is not necessarily highly-trained. You'll have poorly maintained vehicles that will break down and subsequently they are loitering out at sea for days."

A border security threat
As they find more boats on the beaches and make more arrests, U.S. authorities are learning more about how the smuggling operation work, and the degree to which they are coordinated with land-based trafficking operations.

"We've seen some pangas that run directly up onto the beach and upload their cargo," said Sibert. "And then we've seen some that will come in and transfer their load to recreational boats that look less suspicious and try to run them directly into the marinas and yacht clubs."

Many times the panga boat operators will land at night on remote beaches near roads or a highway where they met by other members of the smuggling group. "There's usually an offloading team that will have a rental boxcar, U-Haul, or something of that nature to take the payload and transport it to a stash house where an organization begins the distribution process," said Arnold. 

A particular concern voiced by many U.S. authorities is the potential national security threat these boats and smugglers represent.  "They're just as willing to smuggle perhaps a weapon of mass destruction as they are a load of narcotics," warned Arnold.  "And they're just as willing to smuggle a terrorist as people coming here to work."  

To coordinate their interdiction efforts, federal, state and local law enforcement officials have formed a coastal-area task force. "As they adapt, we will adapt, and they'll continually try to find new ways to get contraband and people into the country, and we're going to be right there nipping at their heels," said Arnold.

Authorities conceded, however, that so far they are seeing no let-up in the Mexican maritime smuggling trade, and, in fact, are actually seeing bigger drug loads on boats now than in recent years.

"It's a huge challenge," said Matthews, from the U.S. Border Patrol. "It's an immense geographical area that we have to cover. There is not only single agency that can cover it by itself."

This country of canals and tulips is also famous for "coffee shops" where joints and cappuccinos share the menu. Now, the Netherlands' famed tolerance for drugs could be going up in smoke.

A judge on Friday upheld a government plan to ban foreign tourists from buying marijuana by introducing a "weed pass" available only to Dutch citizens and permanent residents.

The new regulation reins in one of the country's most cherished symbols of tolerance — its laissez-faire attitude toward soft drugs — and reflects the drift away from a long-held view of the Netherlands as a free-wheeling utopia.

For many tourists visiting Amsterdam the image endures, and smoking a joint in a canal-side coffee shop ranks high on their to-do lists, along with visiting cultural highlights such as the Van Gogh Museum and Anne Frank House.

Worried that tourism will take a hit, the city's mayor, Eberhard van der Laan, is hoping to hammer out a compromise with the national government, which relies on municipalities and local police to enforce its drug policies.

Relaxing outside The Bulldog, a coffee shop in downtown Amsterdam, Gavin Harrison and Ian Leigh of Northern Ireland said they hoped the city wouldn't change.

"I think it's going to be a shame for Amsterdam, I think it's going to lose a lot of tourists," Harrison said.

Leigh said he had been visiting Amsterdam for a decade and had noticed the erosion of tolerance over the years. "It's taking a step back," he said.

Weed fairy and others celebrate cannabis and protest for legalization

Coffee shop owners have not given up the fight. A week ago they mustered a few hundred patrons for a "smoke-out" in downtown Amsterdam to protest the new restrictions.

A lawyer for the owners, Maurice Veldman, said he would file an appeal against the ruling by The Hague District court, which clears the way for the weed pass to be introduced in southern provinces on Tuesday.

If the government gets its way, the pass will roll out in the rest of the country — including Amsterdam — next year. It will turn coffee shops into private clubs with membership open only to Dutch residents and limited to 2,000 per shop.

The Netherlands has more than 650 coffee shops, 214 of them in Amsterdam. The number has been steadily declining as municipalities imposed tougher regulations, such as shuttering ones close to schools.

Stringer / Reuters

An employee of coffeeshop "Easy Going" weighs weed in Maastricht April 27, 2012.

But the new membership rules are the most significant rollback in years to the traditional Dutch tolerance of marijuana use.

The government argues that the move is justified to crack down on so-called "drug tourists," effectively couriers who drive over the border from neighboring Belgium and Germany to buy large amounts of marijuana and take it home to resell. They cause traffic and public order problems in towns along the Dutch border.

Such issues do not exist in Amsterdam, where most tourists walk or ride bikes and buy pot for their own consumption.

The weed pass "doesn't solve any problems we have here and it could create new problems," said city spokeswoman Tahira Limon.

Many Amsterdam residents agree.

Barring tourists from coffee shops will only drive them into the hands of street dealers, warned Liza Roodhof, unwinding with a friend at an Amsterdam cafe that caters to artsy types.

"If you make it so that tourists can't buy weed in a coffee shop, then they're going to buy it on the street. So you add more problems than you solve," she said.

Her friend Nina Fokker, an actress, also worried about what the ban portends for the Netherlands' image as an open-minded society.

Tolerance "is something beautiful, it has something special, it has something that's authentic about the Netherlands," she said.

It is not just hardcore pot heads taking a toke in the city. Limon said 4 million to 5 million tourists visit Amsterdam each year and around 23 percent say they visit a coffee shop during their stay.

Therese Ariaans of the Dutch tourism board said it was hard to judge the effect on tourism — it could reduce visits from people wanting to smoke pot but increase tourists previously kept away by Amsterdam's seedy side.

"If the result is that there will be fewer visitors to the Netherlands we would regret that," she said.

Amsterdam argues that the reasons coffee shops were first tolerated decades ago are still relevant today — they are well-regulated havens where people can buy soft drugs without coming into contact with dealers of hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine.

Coffee shops also are banned from serving alcohol and from selling drugs to people under 18.

The government in The Hague said Friday there would be no exceptions to the new rules.

"Amsterdam will also have to enforce this policy," said Job van de Sande, a spokesman for the Ministry of Security and Justice.

The conservative Dutch government introduced the new measures saying it wants to return the shops back to what they were originally intended to be: local shops selling to local people.

However the Dutch government collapsed this week and new elections are scheduled for September. It's unclear whether the new administration will keep the new measures in place.

Coffee shop lawyer Veldman called Friday's ruling a political judgment.

"The judge completely fails to answer the principal question: Can you discriminate against foreigners when there is no public order issue at stake?" he asked.

Coffee shop owners in the southern city of Maastricht have said they plan to disregard the new measure, forcing the government to prosecute them in a test case.

Back in Amsterdam, Leigh hoped the weed pass was a marketing stunt to drum up business.

"It's a recession," he said. "Maybe it's a publicity stunt as well — get people to come over in a mad rush before it happens."

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U.S. Border Patrol agents and Mexican drug traffickers fought a gun battle across the Rio Grande in south Texas, authorities said Friday, the latest of a spate of cross-border shootings.

The Border Patrol said gunfire erupted Wednesday after agents confronted smugglers loading bundles of marijuana into two vehicles on the banks of the Rio Grande west of Roma, Texas, a town about 250 miles south of San Antonio.

The agents opened fire after smugglers fleeing in a vehicle attempted to run them over, the Border Patrol said. Armed traffickers on the Mexican side of the river then shot at the agents, who returned fire into Mexico, the Border Patrol said.

"Our agents had a posed threat," Rosalinda Huey, a spokeswoman with the Border Patrol's Rio Grande sector told Reuters. "They're trained to deal with that situation," she added.

No agents were injured by the gunfire and it is unclear whether any smugglers in Mexico were struck by bullets, she said.

Agents subsequently recovered nearly two tons of marijuana, with a value of more than $3 million. No arrests were made.

The shooting came during one of three raids in the area Wednesday, said NBC Station KZTV.

One investigation in nearby Rio Grande City resulted in the seizure of 2,800 pounds of marijuana worth about $2.2 million when agents followed footprints to the entrance of an underground storage bunker, KZTV said. In another incident Wednesday, agents checking a vehicle driving without headlights ended at a home near Rio Grande City where agents saw several people flee. Three suspects were nabbed and agents found 1,400 pounds, or $1.1 million worth, of marijuana in an underground bunker, KZTV said.

Huey said traffickers opening fire on agents was "just another tactic" as they sought to move drugs across the U.S. border, where additional agents, equipment and infrastructure have contributed to tightening security in recent years.

"Obviously, they've gotten more desperate," she said. "They're going to use more tactics to avoid apprehension or seizure of their narcotics."

The same stretch of the Rio Grande -- Rio Bravo in Mexico -- recorded one other shooting incident involving Border Patrol agents since October 2011, Huey said. No injuries were reported.

Last year agents engaged in gunfire with suspected drug runners near the south Texas town of Abram, according to news reports. In a separate incident, a West Texas road crew in Hudspeth County, east of El Paso, also came under fire from Mexico. And in September 2010, U.S. citizen David Hartley was fatally shot while riding a personal watercraft on Falcon Lake, which straddles the Texas-Mexico border.

This article includes reporting by Reuters.

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