La familia drug sweep nets 30 arrests in North Texas
Friday, June 10th, 2011About 30 people in North Texas were arrested Tuesday on charges of trafficking methamphetamine and other drugs from Mexico as federal authorities unsealed indictments in a massive crackdown on the remnants of the La Familia drug cartel.
About 65 people are targeted by four indictments broadly outlining the investigation, which dates to 2009. It’s unclear what guns or drugs had been recovered Tuesday.
The Dallas office of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration offered no details on the raids. “We continue to pursue elements of several transnational drug trafficking organizations impacting the metroplex,” James Capra, DEA special agent in charge, said Tuesday.
A.U.S attorneys office spokeswoman would also not release details of the operation.
The La Familia cartel, based in Michoacan, Mexico, disbanded in January, a month after Mexican authorities killed its leader Nazario “The Craziest One” Moreno Gonzalez.
The cartel was already weakened by the 2009 arrest of more than 300 operatives in the U.S., including about 100 in the Dallas area, in a DEA crackdown known as project Coronado.
But La Familia’s supply lines evidently remained intact, and Tuesdays arrests are of people alleged to have formed new cells to continue smuggling mostly methamphetamine, but also cocaine, from Michoacan into the Dallas area, a key drug running hub for the U.S.
According to the indictments, the reconstituted smuggling effort employed the same tactics as most other operations: Drugs are smuggled across the Texas-Mexico border and hidden in stash houses guarded by lookouts throughout the region. Cash is then smuggled south of the border in hidden vehicle compartments.
Court documents show that wiretap requests in this latest investigation date to summer 2009. The indictments also list $78,000 in cash seized in Dallas, as well as two seizures in Hill County, one of $245,000 last summer and another of $240,000Â in November.
Arrests are expected to continue in the Dallas area, Oklahoma and other areas throughout the week, officials said. Defendants began making initial appearances before federal magistrates Tuesday afternoon.
No cell leaders were identified among those arrested.
Of the 100 North Texans caught in the 2009 crackdown, nearly three quarters have have either pleaded guilty or have otherwise been convicted, court records show.
At its height, La Familia was one of the largest suppliers of methamphetamines in the U.S., authorities have said. Until its decline, it rivaled the Zetas as one of the bloodiest drug cartels in Mexico. Both La Familia and the Zetas have a heavy presence in the Dallas area, authorities say.
La Familia broke off from the Gulf Cartel in 2006.
They organized their new organization by rolling severed heads into a disco in west central Mexico.
La Familia’s former leader, Moreno, carried a “bible” of his own sayings around with him. Under his leadership, the group purported to have a divine mission to protect Michoacan against other criminals, and forbade its members from using the drugs its peddled.
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