Mexican Drug Channels Spread Over U.S.

Last of five articles

By Roberto Suro
Washington Post Staff Writer

To his neighbors in a middleclass, predominantly Hispanic, Houston
neighborhood, Chano Rojas seemed a quiet family man who lived in a small
clapboard house and drove a slightly battered compact sedan. They rarely
saw him do anything more adventurous than go out to a nearby restaurant for
dinner with his wife and stepdaughter.

A softeyed, 53yearold man with a toothbrush mustache, a little pot belly
and slickedback black hair, Rojas set off most days for the old dockside
neighborhood of Magnolia, which has welcomed Mexican immigrants as a point
of first arrival for nearly a century. There, he was known as a oneman
employment agency. He'd pay men cash to work a few hours unloading trucks,
or simply to stand on a nearby street corner and watch for anybody who
wasn't a neighborhood regular.

The best jobs went to men who would be instructed to drive a car to
Chicago, Washington or another city. Rojas would tell them to take their
families, drive at the speed limit and drop the car at a specified address.
Sometimes, Rojas had as many as a dozen people working for him. The jobs
never lasted long; Rojas seemed to like turnover. But transience is
expected in an immigrant neighborhood, and there are always new people
happy to take a job even for a few days.

Rojas is now serving a 30year federal prison sentence for drug
trafficking. According to investigators who had him under surveillance for
months, Rojas's recruits probably knew he was involved in some kind of
criminal enterprise but may never have grasped its scope. In fact, the
investigators themselves were stunned when they found nearly 120 pounds of
cocaine — more than $1 million worth at wholesale prices — in his warehouse
and more than $1 million in cash stuffed into a closet at home.

"You would have never figured Chano Rojas as a major league coke dealer
because everything he did blended into the community around him," said a
Houston police detective who helped close the case. "It's that ability to
fade into the woodwork of a big Latino neighborhood that makes Mexican
dealers so elusive and so dangerous."

The burgeoning drug traffic from Mexico has generated corruption, violence
and a kind of lowintensity war along the 2,000mile border between Mexico
and the United States. But mounting evidence from many sources — the Rojas
case, a courtroom in Des Moines, wiretaps in Los Angeles, drug seizures in
New Jersey — confirms that the problems have spread deep into the U.S.
heartland. Mexican traffickers have established distribution networks
capable of delivering marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine to
local retailers in most parts of the nation.

Along the way, the traffickers are beginning to have a potentially profound
effect on the MexicanAmerican communities in cities around the United
States. Mexican drug syndicates opportunistically exploit the fact that
their country is by far the largest source of new immigrants to the United
States. They hide in the neighborhoods their conationals have established
in every major city, and they recruit financially strapped newcomers as
drivers, couriers and lookouts — the cannon fodder of their operations.

"Often we are dealing with people who know how to operate here because they
have spent time in the United States. They know how to gain access to
businesses, services, vehicles, and they have access to a virtually
unlimited supply of foot soldiers," said a senior Drug Enforcement
Administration official based in Texas. "All that has helped the Mexicans
gain dominance very quickly, and it also makes them much more dangerous in
the long run."

Although the number of individuals with any connection to the drug trade is
only a tiny fraction of the nearly 7 million people born in Mexico now
living in the United States, the growing prominence of the drug operations
threatens to taint the whole of the Mexican immigrant experience, just as
the Mafia cast a stigma that Italian immigrants struggled against for
generations. Mexican immigrants and their U.S.born offspring constitute
the only large segment of the U.S. population that is growing rapidly.

Mexico as 'Scapegoat'

"The American people could turn on Mexico very quickly and make it the
scapegoat for their drug consumption problems, the same way they heaped
blame in the past on the Colombian cartels or the Mafia," said Rodolfo de
la Garza, a professor of government at the University of Texas in Austin.

Currently, most Americans distinguish between the mostly poor Mexican
immigrants they see living on this side of the border and the rich, deadly
Mexican drug traffickers they perceive as living and operating in Mexico,
said de la Garza, who has conducted extensive opinion research on attitudes
toward Latinos and in Latino communities.

"The distinction between good Mexican workers and bad Mexican drug kingpins
could break down, however, and produce a much more widespread demonization
of Mexicans in this country," he said. "And if the Americans turn on
Mexico, it is the Mexican Americans who will get caught in the middle."

Middleclass, Englishspeaking Mexican Americans are conservative on social
issues and typically support strong measures against crime and drug abuse,
de la Garza noted, but "a broad attack on Mexican dopers would send them
into convulsions." On one level, they might feel ethnic loyalty toward
Mexican immigrants and fear that they would get caught up in the
stigmatization, he said. At the same time, they would react as angrily as
any other community threatened by an influx of drugs.

This dilemma is apparent in the way some prominent Latino advocates
approach the drug issue.

"Our communities suffer as much as any others from the public health costs
and the crime problems associated with drug trafficking, but we are very
conscious that at this point Latinos are already the target of a great deal
of stereotyping that portrays them as criminals and of a more general
antiimmigrant bias," said Charles Kamasaki, a senior policy analyst for
the National Council of La Raza, a Washingtonbased umbrella group of
Latino organizations around the country.

"In this atmosphere, blaming America's drug problems on Mexico would really
constitute a kind of pilingon, especially considering that America already
had big drug consumption problems long before Mexican drug traffickers came
on the scene," he said.

Under different circumstances, Kamasaki said, "there might be a greater
willingness to admit that there is an issue in our own community, but now,
in this context, with the kind of stigmatization that already exists, it it
very hard to imagine."

Thomas Goldsbury, a teacher and community activist in a predominantly
Latino Houston neighborhood, put it this way: "I see parents who are scared
to death at what is happening to their kids but they are scared to death to
admit it."

Goldsbury said he has watched local teenage gangs go from mischief to
felonies largely as a result of their involvement with drug trafficking.

"Drugs are the easiest form of income for a teenage boy who doesn't have
any skills and who doesn't speak much English," said Goldsbury, who lives
and works in area of southwest Houston crowded with large immigrant
families and identified by police as a prime recruiting ground for Mexican
traffickers seeking drivers and lookouts. It is, increasingly, an area
where drugs are sold and consumed.

"The parents are the weakest link in the whole chain because they are
usually working two jobs and they simply don't find out what their kids are
doing until it is too late," Goldsbury said. "You are talking about
newcomers who do not feel like they belong here yet and who are still
struggling to survive. All that makes them and their children very, very
vulnerable."

In the U.S. Heartland

The impact of the rise of the Mexican drug traffickers reaches far beyond
border cities like San Diego or El Paso, and beyond other cities with
traditionally large Mexican American communities like Houston or Chicago.
It reaches deep into the heartland, touching unlikely places — like Judge
Carol Egly's courtroom in Des Moines.

In the summer and fall of 1995, young Mexicans began appearing before Egly
as defendants. They had no credible identity papers and rarely spoke any
English. They seemed poor but were carrying thousands of dollars worth of
drugs, usually methamphetamine, a highly addictive stimulant. "We didn't
know who they were, where they had come from or what they were doing," Egly
said recently.

About that time, Egly also started seeing young Iowans who arrived in a
frenzy. "They were literally climbing the walls," she said. "Several times
a day we'd have people too incoherent to be arraigned, too noisy and
lunatic to handle in a courtroom." Some had committed bizarre crimes, like
the young man who pistolwhipped his grandparents or the woman who went on
a checkforging spree in her sister's name. After several had been referred
for psychiatric treatment, jail officials discovered these suspects were
methamphetamine users.

It took Egly a while to realize she was seeing two small pieces of a much
bigger puzzle — the rapid expansion of the Mexican traffickers' reach.
These organizations had grown large enough and extensive enough to become
the primary impetus for an epidemic of methamphetamine use that was
sweeping the Midwest.

"All of a sudden we are looking at a very large and efficient drugdealing
operation that seems to have popped up out of nowhere and that has made a
real change in the life of this community," she said. "How did that happen?
I think we should know."

A few recent lawenforcement operations illustrate this widening impact:

Seven tons of cocaine were seized and 35 people arrested in an
investigation last summer that uncovered Mexican traffickers operating in
New York City, which had long been considered a stronghold of the Colombian
cartels. The cocaine arrived from the border area in tractortrailers with
false compartments or hidden in hollowedout stacks of plywood, and much of
the operation was run from headquarters in Los Angeles.

Another Mexican drug organization discovered this year operated with
distribution cells in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and the border
region. Police seized nearly two tons of cocaine hidden in a 30ton
shipment of carrots that was on its way from McAllen, Tex., to wholesalers
on the East Coast.

More than 50 individuals have been prosecuted for running a network that
linked drug suppliers in Mexico and distributors in rural areas and small
towns in eastern Kentucky. Two families dominated the network, which
federal officials allege is responsible for importing more than 11 tons of
marijuana since 1992.

There was a time when most Mexican traffickers were merely
smugglersforhire in the employ of the Colombian cartels. But then,
according to a DEA intelligence analysis, they began demanding payment in
drugs rather than cash, and dealing the drugs on their own behalf.

It is a pattern exemplified by the career of Carlos Rodriguez. All through
the 1980s, Rodriguez dispatched cocaine shipments from the Rio Grande
Valley to Los Angeles and New York, usually aboard 18wheelers fitted with
secret compartments. Rodriguez, who became a government informant after he
was busted, testified recently that he had worked loyally for Colombians
who told him nothing more than where to pick up the cocaine in Mexico and
where to drop it off in the United States. On delivery, they paid him in
cash for his services.

But a few years ago, Rodriguez said, he began dealing with the Mexican
cartel allegedly headed by Juan Garcia Abrego, the only Mexican kingpin
ever brought to trial in the United States. Eventually, Garcia Abrego's
lieutenants told Rodriguez to stop dealing with the Colombians. "Well, we
were being absorbed by the organization they had," Rodriguez said.

Testimony by Rodriguez and several other traffickersturnedinformants at
Garcia Abrego's federal court trial in Houston this spring offered glimpses
of the transformation of the Mexican American drug distribution rings.
Acting on instructions from Mexico, they set up sham businesses to provide
an infrastructure for their efforts — everything from a truckrepair shop
in Houston, where secret compartments were fitted in place, to an
electronics wholesaler in Brownsville, Tex., where tons of cocaine that had
just crossed the border were repackaged for delivery to American cities.

"The Mexicans had a smuggling infrastructure in place for decades — they
had the people, the front operations and a familiarity with this country —
and so the transition into fullscale drug trafficking was very easy for
them," said Joseph A. Vanacora, special agent in charge of the DEA's
Chicago office.

Several large Mafia families, like the Gambinos, evolved out of a specific
geographic area; similarly, most of the big African American gangs,
including the Gangster Disciples, the Crips and the Bloods, started out in
one neighborhood. These groups have usually undertaken a variety of
pursuits, sometimes endeavoring to control all the criminal activity on
their turf. Mexican drug traffickers, by contrast, move around a vast
territory in two nations. And they have a singleminded focus.

"Why dabble in loansharking or prostitution when you are making unlimited
profits moving cocaine?" Vanacora asked. "The answer is: You don't, unless
you were doing that other stuff before you got into coke."

Even within the world of drugdealing the Mexicans have defined clearcut
roles for themselves. "The Mexicans are not trying to control street
sales," Vanacora said, noting that even though the biggest profits are to
be made at the retail level, that is also where the worst violence takes
place.

"They have no interest in turf wars — that they leave to the gangs,"
Vanacora said. "The Mexicans are interested in moving drugs and selling
them — selling them in large quantities to anyone who can pay."

Playing CatchUp

The Mexican trafficking groups have expanded so fast that officials are
obliged to play catchup.

"We are at about the same stage with the Mexicans that we were at with La
Cosa Nostra in the early 1950s," said a veteran FBI supervisor, who asked
not to be named. "We know they have big organizations because we can see
the effects, but we don't really know how they operate."

In congressional testimony, DEA chief Thomas A. Constantine said of the
Mexican cartel bosses: "These organized crime leaders are far more
dangerous, far more influential and have a great deal more impact on our
daytoday lives than their domestic predecessors."

Constantine recalled that when law enforcement made a case against a Mafia
boss, "he could be located within the U.S., arrested and sent to jail." The
leaders of Mexican organizations, on the other hand, "operate from the
safety of protected locations and are free to come and go as they please
within their home countries."

That pattern — of strings being pulled from the relative safety of Mexico —
was allegedly found in the case of Jorge Velazquez. Authorities said their
investigation of Velazquez, now awaiting trial on drug charges, offered
them one of their most intimate looks at the workings an alleged Mexican
drug organization.

In the summer of 1995, Velazquez went on a househunting trip to Country
Club Hills, Ill., a quiet, workingclass suburb south of Chicago. The real
estate agent who took him around recounts that Velazquez was accompanied by
a woman, apparently his wife, and two children. Eventually, authorities
said, he rented a modest threebedroom house on West 189th Street, but he
was never seen again in Country Club Hills.

Starting in October, two men appeared to be living in the house, quietly
going about their business and never attracting much attention — at least
not until one Saturday afternoon in January, when squads of local police
officers and federal agents descended on the place.

Inside, they discovered nearly 300 pounds of cocaine and $240,000 in cash.
But the most important find was a ledger that allegedly detailed the
operations of a drug distribution ring that had produced sales worth more
than $22 million in about 100 days.

Federal court documents, including a conspiracy indictment against
Velazquez and 15 others, depict an organization that was flexible, fast and
highly compartmentalized.

The Country Club Hills house served only as a warehousing and distribution
point, and it was only meant to operate for a few months. Inside,
investigators found several beds and television sets, but no other
furniture. More important, they found no guns. Despite the massive
quantities of cocaine and cash they handled, the three or four men who
worked the operation were apparently confident they operated in utter
secrecy. Every transaction and every expense — gasoline, rental cars, food
and the cell phones that ultimately gave them away — were recorded in the
ledger, down to the penny.

At Christmas, the alleged cocaine trade took a break. A man was sent up
from Mexico to watch the stash, authorities contend, while the usual crew
spent the holiday with their families in Mexico. When the police busted
them in January, the men were expecting an order within days to fold up the
operation and go home. One of them had already promised his wife he would
not be away much longer. He has now been in jail for a year and a half.

About six people helped run the Country Club Hills house, according to the
allegations. They were the cocaine equivalent of migrant workers who had
come up to handle a harvest and would not tarry on this side of the border.
Even before they headed back to Mexico, another crew was supposed to be on
the way to set up another house that would handle the same customers in the
Chicago area.

Cocaine allegedly came to the house by way of smugglers who appeared to be
working along the Rio Grande in southeastern Texas. Investigators said they
are not sure how it arrived. Periodic telephone calls from Los Angeles
would instruct the men at the house to put a specified quantity of the drug
in a car that was to be parked at a designated location, usually a shopping
center parking lot.

Sometimes they would meet customers to exchange the drugs for cash,
investigators said, but contact was always kept to a minimum. According to
investigators, the cocaine was going to wholesalers, almost all of them
Mexicans, who were themselves often a step or two removed from the street
gangs and dealers who sold the drugs to users in the form of crack. The
cash collected from these transactions allegedly was immediately dispatched
to Mexico by way of a separate transportation network handled by smugglers
based in El Paso.

Velazquez allegedly handled all of these operations by remote control. A
physician by training, he was known only as "El Doctor" to many of his
associates. According to federal investigators, he traveled to the United
States occasionally to check on his operations but conducted most of his
business from a ranch in the western Mexican state of Sinaloa.

It was there, beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement, that Velazquez
allegedly negotiated the sales that were consummated in suburban Chicago
parking lots. Price, quantity and destination were all decided in Sinaloa.
The men accused of actually exchanging cocaine for cash in Chicago were
just soldiers. And investigators say they believe that the Country Club
Hills operation was just one of several that Velazquez allegedly managed.

Nearly four months after the Country Club Hills house was raided, Velazquez
made a trip to Los Angeles for a day, allegedly to confer with one of his
top lieutenants. Federal officials had been listening over wiretaps as he
made arrangements for the rendezvous. The two men were arrested as they
chatted in a parking lot. El Doctor will go on trial in Chicago this fall.

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