Joint U.S.-Mexico Drug Probe Nets Arrests
 Mark Stevenson - Associated Press
| | Alleged drug money launderers are paraded before the media in Bogota, Colombia, Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2006. Law enforcement agents broke up a Colombian money-laundering ring Wednesday, arresting 26 people in three countries and seizing more than $16.5 million in cash and drugs, drug enforcement officials said. Arrests were made in Bogota and Cali, Colombia; New York, New Jersey, Florida and London, according to Drug Enforcement Administration officials. (AP/William Fernando Martinez) |
A joint U.S.-Mexico probe of two drug rings suspected of shipping large quantities of cocaine to Alabama, California, Illinois, Oregon, and Texas resulted in the arrest of 17 people in Mexico, according to U.S. and Mexican authorities.
“With these enforcement actions, the U.S. and Mexico have dismantled two organizations accused of supplying large quantities of illegal drugs to several U.S. states,” Julie L. Myers, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in the statement.
Working under an information-sharing arrangement with U.S. authorities, Mexican police carried out search warrants at 22 locations in the western state of Jalisco and the northern state of Nuevo Leon on Wednesday.
Mexico's attorney general's office said in a statement that 17 people were arrested, but U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said there were only 12. There was no immediate explanation of the discrepancy.
U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza called the busts “one of the largest operations of its type ever executed in Mexican history.”
The raids netted a boat, two jet-skis, four guns, an armored vehicle and small quantities of cocaine, marijuana and pseudoephedrine, he said. Authorities believe the traffickers used vehicles, commercial aircraft and other means to move the drugs from Mexico to the United States.
The raids were part of an multi-year investigation called “Operation Doughboy,” which began in October 2003, when a traffic stop in Chicago, Illinois led to the seizure of $1.1 million in U.S. currency and five kilograms of cocaine.
Since then, the operation has resulted in the seizure of 2,194 pounds of marijuana, 436 pounds of cocaine and $1.7 million. Additionally, 24 members of a U.S. cell have been indicted in Indianapolis and one cell leader in Chicago has been indicted. |
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News from Around the Americas | October 2006 
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