The same story ran as a featured aeticle on page 3 of the Chronicle (8/12)

August 12, 1997

29 Held in Drug Smuggling to New York From Mexico

By CHRISTOPHER S. WREN

NEW YORK For nearly a year, 18wheel trailer
trucks, driven by seasoned truckers recruited in
Michigan, have been rolling northward from the Mexican
border to New York, delivering tons of concealed cocaine
and marijuana and carrying back millions of dollars in
illegal drug profits.

Federal officials said the truckers were dispatched by
Mexico's most powerful drug trafficking syndicate, once
headed by the late Amado Carillo Fuentes, which set out
to seize a share of the New York market, the country's
most lucrative, even when it meant encroaching on
territory that was the domain of Colombian drug cartels.

On Monday, federal law enforcement officials put a crimp
in the smuggling operation by arresting 29 people in
sweeps from the New York region to Battle Creek, Mich.,
to Albuquerque, N.M. In announcing the arrests, the
federal officials provided a clearer picture of the
scope and extent of the Mexican push into the New York
region and the role of the CarilloFuentes syndicate.

"We find them not just in Los Angeles and Houston and
Chicago but in the New York City metropolitan area,"
said Thomas Constantine, the head of the Drug
Enforcement Administration.

Monday's sweeps were not the first involving the Mexican
syndicate, and law enforcement officials say that their
battle with the Mexican traffickers is not over. Since
December at least 61 other suspects have been arrested
around the country. Federal agents have seized more than
11 tons of cocaine, almost 7 tons of marijuana and more
than $18 million in drug profits that traffickers failed
to smuggle back into Mexico. Officials promised on
Monday that more arrests would follow.

The arrests highlight the latest strategic shift by
Mexican drug barons, who have graduated from
transporting cocaine and heroin for the Colombians to
distributing much of the drugs themselves.

By demanding up to half of what they smuggled as payment
from the Colombians, the Mexicans carved out their own
markets in the West Coast, the Southwest and parts of
the Midwest. Until now, they left the East to the
Colombians and their Dominican distributors.

The crackdowns have hit the CarilloFuentes syndicate,
the largest of four Mexican trafficking organizations,
when it has yet to recover from the death of its leader,
Amado CarilloFuentes, 42. He died early last month,
apparently from a heart attack, after undergoing
liposuction and plastic surgery at a Mexican clinic to
alter his appearance.

It is unclear whether the Colombian cartel is ceding
territory in New York willingly. But a DEA report noted
that "Colombiabased traffickers appear willing to turn
over some of the tasks of wholesalelevel cocaine
distribution and moneylaundering to their counterparts
operating from Mexico" in order to avoid the daily risks
of drug trafficking in cities like New York.

In telephone interviews, federal agents involved in the
investigations sketched a sophisticated drug trafficking
operation.

The CarrilloFuentes organization, which operates from
Juarez, the Mexican border city, outfitted the trailer
trucks with sliding compartments in the roof to conceal
the cocaine. To divert suspicion, the traffickers hired
drivers who did not look Mexican in Battle Creek, Mich.,
and later Albuquerque, N.M. An official said that some
drivers received about $5,000 to take drugs to New York
and take money back.

The 29 arrests on Monday included nine truckers, all
U.S. citizens. Of the rest, most were Mexicans, and
included workers and managers in the cartel, officials
said.

Law enforcement officials say that they began to
investigate the CarilloFuentes connection on Dec. 3,
1996 after discovering of 5.3 tons of cocaine stashed in
a warehouse in Tucson, Ariz. The investigators learned
that three other loads totaling another 5 or 6 tons had
left the Tucson warehouse by truck for New York. Law
enforcement agents seized 1.5 more tons of cocaine in El
Paso. And a state trooper in Tyler, Texas, found 2,700
pounds of marijuana in one truck heading to New York and
$2 million in cash in another returning from New York.

On June 11, drug agents found 1,350 pounds of cocaine
hidden inside a stack of plywood in a warehouse in
Jersey City, N.J. "It was hollowed out like a coffin
inside, and all the coke was there," one agent said. The
discovery led police officers to five Mexican suspects
living in New Rochelle and Mamaroneck, two towns in
Westchester County, N.Y.

A parallel investigation uncovered the smuggling of at
least one and a half tons of cocaine a month in crates
of fruit and vegetables from Mexico. A New York
connection in that case became apparent in March when a
New York drug task force recovered nearly 3,600 pounds
of cocaine buried in a 30ton shipment of carrots parked
near La Guardia Airport. Nine suspects were arrested and
$1.3 million in cash was confiscated.

Copyright 1997 The New York Times Company