Coast Guard refocusing missions toward western hemisphere, arctic.

• Author: Tadjdeh, Yasmin

The Coast Guard faces a future of expanded missions around the globe that will force it to reposition much of its fleet to the Western Hemisphere and Arctic region.

Adm. Paul Zukunft, commandant of the service, said he expects to increase the Coast Guard's presence in the Western Hemisphere by 35 percent.

"The Navy has more fires than it can attend to. As the Navy repositions to the Pacific and there are other demands in the European theater as well, I am repositioning my forces," he said in January.

When the Navy's USS Kauffman ends its deployment this September, there will be no more Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates patrolling the Western Hemisphere, Zukunft said. Coast

Guard forces will be needed to combat transnational organized crime networks, secure borders and safeguard commerce in the waters surrounding North, Central and South America as well as parts of Oceania, stated the service's Western Hemisphere strategy released last September.

The transnational crime issue has been simmering for years, but has come to the forefront recently, Zukunft said.

"Today, eight of 10 of the most violent nations in the world are right here in our backyard in the Western Hemisphere," he said.

Many of these issues manifested themselves over the summer when the United States faced alarming numbers of unaccompanied immigrant children entering the country illegally, he noted. The source of the influx was largely parents in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador attempting children out of their home countries where violence, unemployment and poverty are rampant, he said.

The situation is grave for those looking to escape the turmoil in these countries, Zukunft noted. One in nine children born in Honduras today will be murdered before his 21st birthday, he said.

In order to stymie the flow of unaccompanied minors, the root causes --violence and poverty--must be addressed, he said.

The Coast Guard is taking an "offensive" approach to tackle transnational organized crime, and using its status as a member of the national intelligence community to gather information, Zukunft said.

However, he lamented that the Coast Guard doesn't have the resources to stop all the networks. The service has intelligence on 80 percent of the illegal flow--including human trafficking, illegal drugs and illegal fishing --in the Western Hemisphere but not enough resources to stop all of it, he said.

"I [only] have enough interdiction platforms to go after 20 percent of that 80...