GREEN CARDS LEAD A STING TO DRUG RAIDS

Nearly 160 Colombian and Mexican suspected drug traffickers believed
to have been operating along the Eastern Seaboard were charged
Wednesday with trading vast quantities of cocaine and heroin for green
cards from an undercover agent posing as a crooked official of the
Immigration and Naturalization Service.

More than 100 of the suspects, most of whom lived in New York, were
arrested as scores of law enforcement officers fanned out in a series
of daybreak raids from New York City to southern Florida.

The sting, which went by the code name Operation Wildcard, was
intended to cripple the New York arm of the Mexican and Colombian drug
cartels, particularly in upstate New York counties, said Daniel J.
French, the U.S. attorney in Albany, N.Y., whose office is to
prosecute the case.

"These traffickers were very interested in obtaining green cards so as
to come and go freely from the United States," French said. "But the
cards they were dealt came from a stacked deck."

The operation relied heavily upon an undercover agent of the INS in
the Albany area who posed as a corrupt official and agreed to furnish
the suspected traffickers with resident alien cards for $5,000 to
$13,000 each, French said. Many times, the payments came in the form
of drugs -- up to a half kilogram of heroin, for example. The deals
were made at a number of small upstate restaurants, with names like
Sharon's Place or Denny's, or highway motels like the Best Western
Inn.

The suspected traffickers were steered to the INS agent by two other
undercover investigators working with the state police and the federal
Drug Enforcement Administration, who have been working for several
years to infiltrate the drug cartels, said James W. McMahon, the state
police superintendent. About a dozen of the defendants arrested
Wednesday were described as cell managers, or leaders of the American
wings of the cartels.

While making the arrests, the authorities said, they seized seven
kilograms of heroin, said to be worth more than $10 million on the
street, and 12 kilograms of cocaine, said to have a street value of
about $5 million. They also seized about $350,000 in cash.

French said the green cards were a crucial tool used by the cartels,
allowing the cell managers, their lieutenants and drug smugglers to
pass easily through U.S. borders. He added that all of the defendants
would be arraigned in Brooklyn in the next few days and then sent to
Albany for prosecution.