3 IMMIGRANTS RELEASED IN FOOTHILLS POT BUST

SAN ANDREAS -- Calaveras County authorities have released three of six
illegal Mexican immigrants arrested in last week's record-setting
marijuana raid.

The other three -- Gerardo Mora, Cipriano Ramirez and Lorenso Gudino
- -- have been charged with marijuana cultivation. They remain in county
jail with bail set at $50,000 each and are due in Municipal Court for
preliminary hearings Sept. 8.

Apparently off the hook, although the district attorney's office
wouldn't say why, are Eleajar Valencia, Juan Magallow and Fidel
Ramirez. They were turned over to the U.S. Immigration and
Naturalization Service, which means they will be deported, authorities
said.

The INS had placed immigration "holds" on all six people arrested, so
that whenever they got out of jail or prison they would be forced to
leave the country.

Two of them -- Mora and Gudino -- were tackled last week on a huge
marijuana plantation near the Calaveras River about three miles
southwest of San Andreas. Narcotics agents had been watching the site
for more than a month, and moved in for the bust Friday.

They cut down or uprooted 11,643 pot plants -- more than triple the
previous record for a Calaveras County raid and the biggest of the
year in California, state agents said.

Later Friday deputies arrested four more suspects -- Cipriano Ramirez,
Fidel Ramirez, Valencia and Magallow -- who were found walking along
Highway 12, about four miles out of town.

Officers said the four were confronted by a drug agent who recognized
one of them from surveillance of the pot plantation, and that all four
admitted they had just come from there.

But that doesn't automatically make them guilty of cultivation. They
could have been visiting, and apparently that's what at least some of
them claimed.

Obviously, sheriff's Lt. Mike Walker said, the district attorney's
office felt the evidence against Valencia, Magallow and Fidel Ramirez
wasn't as strong as it was against the others.

Deputy District Attorney Seth Matthews said he wouldn't discuss the
reasons.

Checked-by: Rich O'Grady