US raids hit Mexican drug cartel

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[size=+1]US raids hit Mexican drug cartel[/size]
More than 300 people have been arrested in a series of drug raids targeting a Mexican drug cartel operating in the US, American officials have said.

The two-day operation, which involved thousands of police officers in 19 US states, is the latest aimed at the cartel known as La Familia.

It was part of Project Coronado, which has led to almost 1,200 arrests over four years, officials said.

The US attorney general said the cartel had been dealt a "significant blow".

La Familia is based in the western Mexican state of Michoacan.

It has been accused of carrying out bloody attacks on Mexican security forces.

LA FAMILIA
  • Previously believed to answer to Gulf Cartel, listed as separate group in March 2009 government report
  • Combines code of violence with idea of protecting people in Michoacan from outsiders
  • Also involved in counterfeiting, extortion, kidnapping, armed robbery, prostitution, protection rackets

Announcing the arrest of 303 suspected cartel members on Thursday, Attorney General Eric Holder described the gang as demonstrating "an incredible level of sophistication and ruthlessness".

He said the raids had disrupted the cartel's operations, which "stretch far into the US".

"This operation has dealt a significant blow to La Familia's supply chain of illegal drugs, weapons and cash flowing between Mexico and the United States," he said.

Mr Holder said he believed the Mexican government was doing a good job in combating cartels, although there was scope to do more.

"They face a problem of almost unimaginable dimension," he said.

In the course of the two-day crackdown, US police and FBI agents seized $3.4m in cash, 144 weapons and more than 100 vehicles, as well as stashes of methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana.

"These are drugs that were headed for our streets, and weapons that often were headed to the streets of Mexico," Mr Holder said.

FBI Director Robert Mueller said La Familia had transformed in recent years "from a drug cartel to a sophisticated criminal organisation".

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/americas/8321190.stm

Published: 2009/10/22 17:18:23 GMT

© BBC MMIX
 
Justice Department announces 300 drug arrests

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/10/22/drug.arrests/

By Terry Frieden
CNN Justice Producer

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Justice Department on Thursday announced 300 additional arrests in a four-year operation that it says produced nearly 1,200 arrests and seizures totaling 11.7 tons of illegal drugs.


Authorities look through seized property after a drug raid at a house near Atlanta, Georgia, on Wednesday.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced the wrap-up of Project Coronado, which resulted in arrests in 15 states in the past two days.

Holder said the operation targeted the distribution network of a major Mexican drug trafficking organization known as La Familia. About 3,000 federal agents participated in the investigation and raids, officials said.

"This unprecedented, coordinated U.S. law enforcement action -- the largest ever undertaken against a Mexican drug cartel -- has dealt a significant blow to La Familia's supply chain of illegal drugs, weapons and cash flowing between Mexico and the United States," Holder said in a news conference. Watch Holder announce the arrests »

Michele Leonhart, acting chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said the cartel was known for specializing in the trafficking of methamphetamine and for its brutal violence, including beheadings.

Authorities said the arrests made Wednesday and Thursday occurred in California, Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Washington.

Dozens of arrests occurred in the Dallas, Texas, area where agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives filed charges against cartel members believed to have illegally purchased and shipped high-powered firearms to the cartel, which was based in the Mexican state of Michoacan.

U.S. officials vowed to indict cartel leaders and extradite them to the United States. One leader, Servando Gomez-Martinez, was indicted in New York on Thursday. He remains at large, and is presumed to be in Mexico.

A senior law enforcement official involved in the operation, who asked not to be identified, said he was certain the latest crackdown on La Familia would affect the methamphetamine market in the United States for months. "It'll make a difference not only because of how hard we hit 'em, but where we hit 'em," the official said.



Another official said during the course of the investigation that labs run by La Familia had been discovered in Atlanta, Georgia, and San Jose, California.

To date, Project Coronado has led to 1,186 arrests in 44 months. During that time, agents seized $32.8 million in U.S. currency, and about 1,225 kilograms (2,700 pounds) of methamphetamine, 2,000 kilograms (4,409 pounds) of cocaine, 13 kilograms (29 pounds) of heroin and more than 8 tons (7,200 kilograms) of marijuana.
 
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jPhKs-imo8u5oVvfoJPyq8UlAIhAD9BGEAEO0

Largest US sting on drug cartel arrests 300-plus
By ELLIOT SPAGAT and SEAN MURPHY (AP) – 28 minutes ago

OKLAHOMA CITY — In the largest single strike at Mexican drug operations in the U.S., authorities arrested more than 300 people in a sting that demonstrates a young cartel's vast reach north of the border.
The tentacles of "La Familia" extend coast to coast and deep into America's heartland, with arrests announced Thursday in 38 cities from Boston to Seattle and from St. Paul, Minn., to Raleigh, N.C.
Drug deals went down in Oklahoma parking lots, suppliers were advised to weld drugs into tire rims for transport, and in the Dallas and Seattle areas, dozens of children were removed from houses where authorities found drugs, guns or cash derived from drug sales.
Perhaps more than any other cartel, La Familia projects a Robin Hood image. The Drug Enforcement Administration said the group is "philosophically opposed to the sale of methamphetamine to Mexicans, and instead supports its export to the United States for consumption by Americans."
Mexican police say the gang uses religion and family morals to recruit. The gang has hung banners in towns saying they do not tolerate drug use, or attacks on women or children.
One of the gang's alleged recruiters, detained last spring, ran drug rehabilitation centers, helping addicts to recover and then forcing them to work for the drug gang or be killed, according to Mexico Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna.
La Familia is rarely mentioned in the same breath as the handful of other Mexican gangs that control the flow of drugs into the United States, fueled by Colombian cocaine suppliers. The Sinaloa, Juarez, Gulf and Tijuana cartels have roots that go back many years, even decades.
But in its short history, La Familia is believed to have emerged as the biggest supplier of methamphetamine to the United States and, increasingly, a peddler of cocaine, marijuana and other drugs.
Complaints that were unsealed across the country portray an organization that spread deep into Middle America, down to small-time sales.
In Oklahoma, authorities seized about 20 pounds of methamphetmaine, two pounds of cocaine, six weapons and several thousand dollars. They identified Ruben Garcia, 29, as a major supplier in the northeast part of the state.
Agents spotted Garcia and his partners dealing drugs over several months at restaurants, grocery stores and Wal-Mart parking lots in the Tulsa area, according to court documents. In one tapped phone call Oct. 9, Garcia counseled a supplier in Mexico who helped arrange a shipment in McAllen, Texas, that the easiest way to smuggle drugs is welded inside tire rims of vehicles.
Court records do not list an attorney for Garcia.
In North Carolina, targeted cells operated from the Raleigh area to the eastern cities of Rocky Mount and Greenville, a region with a large Hispanic population to help the targets blend in and quick access to three interstate highways. They made four arrests Wednesday but totaled 49 arrests over the past year.
In Nashville, after more than a year of surveillance, agents converged on a home when two people arrived in a Toyota Camry from Atlanta Aug. 14, according to a complaint. A search of the vehicle discovered hidden compartments that "contained nine similarly wrapped packages, each of which were the size of a kilogram of cocaine." One package tested positive for cocaine.
Inside the home, agents found drug ledgers, a money counter and a loaded pistol. At another home, they found about 50 pounds of marijuana, several loaded handguns and two bulletproof vests.
Texas Child Protective Services removed 20 children from houses in the Dallas area when authorities executed 44 search warrants, said James Capra, the DEA's special agent in charge in Dallas. All the homes where children were found had drugs, guns or cash derived from drug sales.
The sting reached into small towns hundreds of miles from Mexico.
Nine arrests were made in Monroe, Wash., with a population of about 16,000 and home to the state's largest prison about 25 miles northeast of Seattle. None seemed to be doing any retail drug dealing, Monroe police Cmdr. Steve Clopp said.
"I would say that they were well-integrated members of the community," Clopp said. "A lot of them keep up the everyday appearance of work and family."
In the Inland Empire, a cluster of east Los Angeles suburbs where 25 people were arrested and 156 pounds of methamphtamine seized, most suspects are illegal immigrants from Mexico who came to the United States to work for La Familia, said Stephen Azzam, DEA assistant special agent in charge in Riverside, Calif.
Methamphetamine was shipped from the Inland Empire, an area with three interstate highways, to cities including Atlanta and Chicago, Azzam said.
La Familia is known as unusually violent, even by Mexico's standards.
After the arrest of one of its leaders in July in Mexico, the cartel launched an offensive against federal forces, killing 18 police officers and two soldiers over a weekend. In the worst attack, 12 federal agents were slain and their tortured bodies piled along a roadside as a warning for all to see.
"They are one of the most violent, if not the most violent, cartel in Mexico right now," said Michael Braun, who retired as the DEA's chief of operations last year.
La Familia operates methamphetamine "superlabs" in Mexico that produce up to 100 pounds of the drug in eight hours, a sharp contrast to small-time labs in the United States that have supplied American addicts, said Braun.
The organization was founded around 2004 and really took off in 2006, Braun said.
The arrests in places such as Atlanta, Dallas and Los Angeles suggest that its U.S. distribution network is sophisticated, said Scott Stewart, an analyst at the Stratfor consultancy in Austin, Texas, who follows the Mexican drug trade.
"Those are beautiful interstate (highway) hubs," Stewart said. "It's looking they have ramped up very quickly."
 
slimvictor said:
Maybe I should have been happy to hear this news of the sick drug war, but I don't buy into the whole affair, and the idea of trashing 8 tons of perfectly good marijuana is a travesty, if you ask me.
Click to expand...

What don't you buy into? The cartel wars? I assure you that they are real and they are a very scary thing for a country to have to deal with. Fortunately in the US, we haven't had to experience it but in south america it is really really bad.
 
More Than 1,000 Arrests Made At One Huge Drug Bust

The Daily Texan

10/23/2009

The largest drug enforcement take-down in U.S. history occurred Wednesday with the collaborative effort of law enforcement agencies nationwide, striking at the heart and severing several arms of the Mexico-based La Familia drug cartel.

La Familia is the newest and most violent of the five major Mexican drug cartels, said Attorney General of the United States Eric Holder at a Washington, D.C. press conference Thursday. Based in the Mexican state of Michoacán, their reach extends into the U.S. with major operations in Florida, North Carolina and Maryland.

A 44-month investigation of the cartel led to the take-down that coordinated 3,000 law enforcement officials across 19 states and 35 cities, 16 of which were in Texas. The national round-up arrested 1,186 individuals and seized 1,999 kilograms of cocaine, 2,710 pounds of methamphetamine, 29 pounds of heroin, 16,390 pounds of marijuana and $32,795,000 in cash.

The Texas operations resulted in the arrest of 81 individuals and seizure of 220 pounds of methamphetamine, 23.1 pounds of cocaine and $960,000 in cash, along with numerous weapons and vehicles.

The Drug Enforcement Agency’s Austin Task Force, in conjunction with the Austin Police Department and several other Central Texas agencies, searched 13 locations simultaneously Wednesday morning, resulting in the seizure of 30 kilograms of cocaine and approximately $350,000.

“There certainly were a large number of people who were arrested,” said Tela Mange, Texas Department of Public Safety spokeswoman. “[The take-down] is just a great indicator of what law enforcement agencies can do when local state and federal agencies work together.”

Austin officials arrested four individuals from a Texas-based drug operation led by Jose Israel Maldonado, a fugitive in Mexico whose operation is linked to the Mexican La Familia cartel.

“We really don’t know how far things would have branched had we kept going,” said APD Cmdr. Sean Mannix. “Once [the Drug Enforcement Administration] had made the determination that they identified significant players in the cartel, it was time to interrupt the operation instead of letting the drugs flow into the U.S. It was time to shut them down.”

Mannix said law enforcement officials will continue to arrest persons of interest for further investigation. He said Maldonado is a mid-level player in the cartel and not part of the overall executive structure. The DEA is requesting the apprehension and extradition of Maldonado by Mexican authorities.

According to the affidavit, Maldonado distributed cocaine as far back as April 2008. The organization hid cocaine within TV’s, VCR’s and speakers and shipped them via FedEx.

More than 100 packages believed to be incoming money or outgoing cocaine were received and mailed by the organization in the three-month period from April to June.

Maldonado’s brother Erick Maldonado ran the organization in Austin and used a Pflugerville home as a stash house. The organization possessed up to four Austin homes for their operations and moved as much as 100 kilograms of cocaine a month in the Austin area.

The department’s narcotics unit’s investigation began in early 2008 and utilized information from five individuals, three of whom were co-conspirators with one of the suspects.

hrough the collection of video, audio and recorded telephone calls, as well as observed drug transactions, APD built enough probable cause for multiple search-and-arrest warrants.

“We have within 30 days in which to seek a federal grand jury indictment on [the suspects], or the complaint gets dismissed,” said Daryl Fields, U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesman. "That is essentially the next step.”
Click to expand...

http://www.dailytexanonline.com/top-stories/more-than-1-000-arrests-made-in-huge-drug-bust-1.2034704
 
The war on drug users will never end. The illegal drug business is so lucrative that another 1000 will take the places of those arrested. Ending prohibition would drive prices down and bring an end to the cartels.
 
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