The US Coast Guard conducts these three major Maritime Law Enforcement missions often simultaneously with its other major missions such as Search and Rescue, and often with the support of the US Navy. As US Navy leaders recently stated “Navy ships are assisting in Coast Guard missions for peacetime operations in this hemisphere. The Navy supports counter-drug operations on a daily basis, and remains available to assist the Coast Guard during periods of crisis, such as mass migrations, major search and rescue operations or other significant maritime events.”³⁸ (Indeed, Navy ships were deeply involved in this decade in supplementing the Coast Guard in Cuban and Haitian migrant search and rescue and interdiction and in assisting Coast Guard rescue and recovery efforts after general major air disasters.) As noted earlier, there is also domestic legal authority for the Coast Guard to request assistance from the Navy and other Federal agencies in performing its duties, and there are even exceptions allowing use of other military forces in law enforcement, in cases of extra-territorial actions and with prior approval of the Secretary of Defense or the Deputy Secretary of Defense. For example, in October 1996, such an exception was made to allow US Marine Corps backup to a Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment boarding a merchant ship off Bermuda carrying 83 violent illegal migrants.³⁹

　

　　In the specific area of counterdrug operations, the US Navy supports the Coast Guard as lead agency for Detection and Monitoring. With their advanced radar and communications systems, Navy ships and aircraft are vital information collection and tracking assets for drug interdiction.⁴⁰

　

　　The US Navy currently provides continuous presence of two vessels in the Caribbean and normally one in the Eastern Pacific dedicated to counterdrug operations. Although the US Navy does not have law enforcement authority, and the Coast Guard has the lead in Interdiction and Seizure and Arrest, Navy vessels can also serve as interdiction and seizure and arrest assets by embarking Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachments (LEDETs). LEDETs typically deploy on Navy vessels for 6-7 weeks. The LEDET program averages about 35 deployments a year onboard US Navy frigates, destroyers, and cruisers. The main operating areas for these deployments are the Transit Zone areas in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific. Overall, LEDETs from US Navy platforms average 100 boardings of suspect vessels a year.⁴¹ LEDETs from Navy ships this decade have also conducted tens of thousands of searches of ships suspected of violating UN embargoes on Iraq and former Yugoslavia.⁴²

　

　　The US Coast Guard, in turn, has in the post-Cold War period increasingly cooperated with and supported the US Navy and US regional Commanders-in-Chief through peacetime engagement international operations. In the law enforcement area, the Coast Guard has had the lead role in cooperative programs and law enforcement training of maritime forces, particularly in Caribbean States, including organizing and training (with Canada) a coast guard in Haiti and, more recently, deploying a support tender to the Caribbean to train regional coast guards. There is even an. informal working relationship with the Cuban Border Guard to facilitate migrant interdiction and counterdrug operations across the Florida Straits. The US Coast Guard has also developed a working relationship in fisheries enforcement in the Bering Sea with the Russian Federal Border Service.⁴³ The US Coast Guard provides extensive training in US Coast Guard facilities and through overseas Mobile Training Teams (MTT). Since 1986, over 5000 MTTs have deployed in. 65 countries. The US Coast Guard each year trains 2000 personnel overseas through MTTs and 300 personnel at its schools in the US. In addition to the traditional deployments of Coast Guard ships with US Navy forces in the annual UNITAS exercises in the Caribbean and South America, recent years have seen Coast Guard units increasingly active in US overseas peacetime engagement deployments. This is not surprising, given that a majority of the world's “navies” are closer in size and mission to the US Coast Guard than to the US Navy. Also, Coast Guard “white hull” ships--with their prime missions of humanitarian search and rescue, safety, and law enforcement--are often more acceptable and their presence a less sensitive issue to other nations (for example, in Haiti in 1994, US Coast Guard ships were able to continue contacts after US Navy ships had been turned away.) So in recent years, at the request of US regional Commanders-in-Chief, Coast Guard cutters have forward deployed to the Mediterranean, Baltic, and Black Seas, the Persian Gulf, and to join US Navy forces in the annual CARAT exercises in Southeast Asia. In recent months, the Coast Guard deployed a cutter, for the first time since World War II, with a Carrier Battle Group.⁴⁴ Also, Coast Guard port security units and aviation units have deployed to Turkey, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and South Korea. In the Pacific region, in the Philippines the US Coast Guard has conducted an initial assessment for a US aid project on waterways management, and is transferring a patrol boat to the Philippines. In September 1999, the first student from Singapore attended the US Coast Guard National Search and Rescue (SAR) school, and the US Coast Guard is conducting a joint SAR course at the Civil Aviation Center in Singapore. The Coast Guard is conducting a maritime needs assessment for Vietnam as a follow-on to bilateral exercises. A Coast Guard MTT recently visited Japan to assist their containerized inspection efforts. And twenty six regional states have personnel who have attended Coast Guard training courses in the US, or have received MTTs. Of particular note, last year the US Coast Guard responded to migrant smugglers from the PRC targeting Guam for landings by deploying additional assets (a High Endurance Cutter, a C-130 aircraft, and an additional patrol boat and buoy tender) to supplement the normal Coast Guard assets (a patrol boat and buoy tender) in the forward Pacific region. In this Guam operation, over 18 smuggling ships were interdicted, and 1100 migrants returned.”⁴⁵