U.S. Coast Guard facing Budget cuts At a Time when Drug Smugglers are increasingly turning to the High Seas

Budget cuts at the Coast Guard are coming at an unfortunate time. As the service, like other branches of the military, makes do with less, drug smugglers are increasingly turning to the high seas -- and challenging the Coast Guard's already strained resources.

Officials tell Fox News that drug smugglers are moving some of their operations away from the U.S.-Mexico land border and out into the ocean where it's easier to avoid law enforcement. 

And for U.S. patrollers, that theater is becoming harder and harder to defend.

"As the Department of Homeland Security became more effective at stopping smuggling across the land borders, the cartels shifted some of the traffic to the maritime, so that is why we saw an increase in smuggling by boats," said Capt. Jim Jenkins, Coast Guard commander for Los Angeles and Long Beach.

Casey Hehr, chief of law enforcement for the same sector, told Fox News that tracking the traffickers is like "finding a needle in the haystack." 

The Coast Guard patrols 95,000 miles of coastline, covering 4.5 million square miles of maritime area.

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