Major heroin bust includes E. Wash. arrest

TACOMA, Wash. (AP) — Federal authorities say 23 people have been arrested in Washington as part of a national crackdown on Mexican drug trafficking organizations operating in the U.S. The dragnet included at least one arrest in Eastern Washington near Yakima.

Agents arrested the 23 and seized 65 pounds of black tar heroin on Wednesday while serving search warrants in the Tacoma area. Over the past 13 months, $400,000 has been seized.

The group ran a heroin delivery service, with customers from around the region calling up and placing orders, according to the U.S. attorney’s office. A dispatcher would direct them to wait at certain intersections within a 6-square-mile area south of Tacoma, where they’d be met by a drug runner.

“In just one residence, agents found 58 pounds of black tar heroin – a stunning indication of the massive amounts of poison this group was spreading,” said Jenny A. Durkan, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington. They operated almost like a pizza delivery business, using runners and dispatchers to get drugs out into multiple south Puget Sound communities.”

Arrested in Sunnyside was Alicia Alvarez, according to documents filed in the U.S. District Court of Eastern Washington. She was indicted on charges of conspiracy to distribute heroin. She and 12 other defendants were ordered to pay a total of $500,000, as well as forfeit $49,9000 “seized from Calypso Mares on or about March 25, 2010 at Medford, Oregon,” according to the indictment. Mares also is charged with conspiracy to distribute heroin.

The indictment alleges the conspiracy began within the last give years and included Pierce, Thurston and Grays Harbor counties.

The arrests were part of a dragnet that arrested more than 2,200 and seized $5.8 million in cash, 2,951 pounds of marijuana, 112 kilograms of cocaine, 17 pounds of methamphetamine, 141 weapons and 85 vehicles.

Read a full story on the bust, called Project Deliverance, by clicking the link below.

Huge drug dragnet yields 2,200 arrests

By Richard A. Serrano
Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — In what was billed as the largest U.S. dragnet in the war on drugs from the Southwest border, senior federal law enforcement officials announced Thursday that they have arrested more than 2,200 people, including a top Mexican cartel leader, seized nearly 75 tons of drugs and confiscated $154 million in cash.

The massive takedown, dubbed “Project Deliverance” and executed around the United States, was hailed as part of a nearly two-year, multiagency operation in the Obama administration’s effort to fight the escalating and murderous Mexican drug trafficking operations.

It remains to be seen, however, what effect the dragnet truly will have on violence along the border, where Mexicans are being killed in record numbers and the White House recently announced the deployment of National Guard troops to bolster the U.S. response there. But top federal law enforcement authorities called it a major attempt at striking back.

“Project Deliverance inflicted a debilitating blow to the network of shadow facilitators and transportation cells controlled by the major Mexican drug cartels,” said Michele M. Leonhart, acting administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, describing how hundreds of cars, buses and trucks have been stopped with cash and drugs hidden in gas tanks, air bags and behind trap doors.

Leonhart said a main focus of the raids and arrests was to “target the transportation networks” of the cartels moving drugs, guns and money, and to identify new “smuggling techniques” such as hidden compartments in automobiles and the use of commercial buses. “There were a number of things that opened our eyes,” she said, such as how heroin now is being smuggled into the U.S. in vehicles in bulk and not by individual couriers anymore.

Large arrests have been staged in the past, and cartel leaders have been extradited to the U.S. and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. But in the past the arrests only ended up frustrating U.S. authorities because younger, more violent cartel leaders immediately stepped into the breach.

However this time, with the large scope of “Project Deliverance,’” which included 3,000 agents arresting 429 people in 16 states on Wednesday alone, U.S. officials hope they may be getting an upper hand.

As an example they highlighted the arrest of Carlos Ramon Castro-Rocha, alleged leader of the violent smuggling operation that carries his name along the border.

Also known as “Cuate,” or “The Twin,” he was named in a six-count federal grand jury indictment unsealed this week in Arizona following his arrest May 30 in Mexico. The indictment alleged that last year Castro-Rocha, 36, and his organization based in Sinaloa, Mexico, were a major distributor of heroin in this country, and that he employed smugglers as “cell heads” in the Phoenix area to move the drugs from vehicles to stash houses, where it was packaged for distribution.

Some 45 pounds of black-tar heroin was seized from his organization in Arizona, a value of $2.2 million in street sales, officials said.

Castro-Rocha was arrested by Mexican authorities on the request of U.S. officials, and is pending extradition to Arizona. He faces a maximum of $4 million in fines and a sentence of life in prison.

A total of 2,266 people were arrested in 16 states, including the Chicago area where nine defendants were charged with drug offenses and 44 kilograms of heroin were seized last month. Many of those drugs were found in a hidden “trap” under a floorboard in a vehicle that had left Laredo, Texas, two days earlier.

“Without question,” pledged Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., “these arrests and seizures will disrupt drug cartel operations and impact the ability of traffickers to move narcotics into the United States.”

Holder also noted that Mexican officials assisted the U.S. in organizing the dragnet, and said that they also “are waging a courageous battle against drug cartels within their own borders. We continue to stand by them and work with them.”