JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: U.S. Immigration officials are mounting a new drive against people who smuggle illegal aliens into the country. Scores of arrests were made Wednesday. CNN's Charles Zewe is in Phoenix, Arizona with the latest -- Charles.</s>CHARLES ZEWE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Judy, here in Phoenix, they call it Operation Denial. The Immigration and Naturalization Service says this is a new effort, an intensified effort, to crack down on the smuggling of humans into the United States, mostly from Mexico. Concentration is on the Sky Harbor Airport here in Phoenix and at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas, where 100 Immigration and Naturalization Service agents are sweeping through the airport. Today, in the first hours of the sweep, they arrested nearly 100 people here in Phoenix along, many of them bound for Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas and points on the East Coast. They were brought to the airport by guides known as coyotes, people who spirit them across the border and then into the United States, where they are put on buses -- or in this case, planes -- for trips to other parts of the country where they slip into the population. Immigration Service officials are also saying they are concentrating on so-called safehouses in the Phoenix area and near Las Vegas, safehouses that have been the scene of a great deal of violence in last few months, where four people have been killed in connection with smuggling activities here in Phoenix alone. Officials says they hope they stop upwards of 80 percent of the illegal smuggling at airports in Phoenix and Las Vegas. But at the same time, they know that tens and thousands of people try to get across the U.S. border every year. And they know that while they may stop lot of people from getting in to the U.S., hundreds if not thousands more will be successful. Charles Zewe, CNN, live, Phoenix, Arizona.</s>WOODRUFF: Thank you, Charles.
Immigration Service Cracks Down on Illegal Border Crossings