| | |  Editorials | Issues 
Drug Cartels Beefing Up Presence in the US
 William Booth & Nick Miroff - Washington Post
go to original
October 22, 2010
San Diego – When a major Mexican drug cartel opened a branch office here on the California side of the border, U.S. authorities tapped into its cellphones – then listened, watched and waited. Their surveillance effort captured more than 50,000 calls over six months, conversations that reached deep into Mexico and helped build a sprawling case against 43 suspects – including Mexican police and top officials – allegedly linked to a savage trafficking ring known as the Fernando Sanchez Organization.
According to the wiretaps and confidential informants, the suspects plotted kidnappings and killings and hired American teenage girls to smuggle quarter-pound loads of methamphetamine across the border for $100 a trip. But U.S. law enforcement officials say the most worrisome thing about the Fernando Sanchez Organization was how aggressively it moved to set up operations in the United States, working out of a San Diego apartment it called “The Office.”
At a time of heightened concern in Washington that drug violence along the border may spill into the United States, the case dubbed “Luz Verde,” or Green Light, shows how Mexican cartels are trying to build up their U.S. presence. The Fernando Sanchez Organization’s San Diego venture functioned almost like a franchise, prosecutors say, giving the group greater control over lucrative smuggling routes and drug distribution networks north of the border.
“They moved back and forth, from one side to the other. They commuted. We had lieutenants of the organization living here in San Diego and ordering kidnappings and murders in Mexico,” said Todd Robinson, the assistant U.S. attorney who will prosecute the alleged ring next year.
The case shows that as the border becomes less of an operational barrier for Mexican cartels, it appears to be less of one for U.S. surveillance efforts. Because the suspects’ cellphone and radio traffic could be captured by towers on the northern side of the border, U.S. agents were able to eavesdrop on calls made on Mexican cellphones, between two callers in Mexico. Recorded on wiretaps: the operation’s biggest catch, Jesus Quinones Marquez, a high-ranking Mexican official and alleged cartel operative code-named “El Riñon,” or “The Kidney.” As he worked and socialized with U.S. law enforcement officials in his role as international liaison for the Baja California attorney general’s office, Quinones passed confidential information to cartel bosses and directed Mexican police to take action against rival traffickers, prosecutors say. He and 34 other suspects are now in U.S. jails. The remaining eight are still at large.
Investigators say that the Fernando Sanchez Organization was ambitious. It was building a network in San Diego, complete with senior managers to facilitate large and small drug shipments and sales. Unlike the cartel crews in Mexico, which are typically built on strong ties between families or friends, the San Diego franchise recruited from U.S.-based Latino street gangs.
Some recruits were illegal immigrants, others U.S. citizens, according to arrest warrants. “Some of them kept a very low profile. Their family members didn’t even know.” said Leonard Miranda, a retired captain in the Chula Vista, police department who worked on the investigation. According to the 86-page federal racketeering indictment, cartel members operated stash houses, managed smuggling crews, distributed marijuana and methamphetamine, trafficked in weapons, laundered money, committed robberies and collected drug debts.
When people did not pay, they were kidnapped or targeted with execution on both sides of the border. According to U.S. law enforcement officials, the Mexican government was not involved in the investigation. Quinones, the high-ranking Mexican official, was a close adviser to Attorney General Rommel Moreno, the top prosecutor in Mexico’s Baja California state. He was arrested July 22 when U.S. agents invited him to the San Diego police department to help with an investigation. It was a setup. But the U.S. wiretaps also detected other troubling signs of corruption.
A day before the arrests, a Mexican police officer received a call on his cellphone, which was being tapped by U.S agents. The caller warned him that he was about to be arrested. According to court testimony, the call came from the offices of the federal police in Mexico City – a special unit vetted to work alongside agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. |
|
| |
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us