DRUG STASHES: MEXICAN CARTELS USE EL PASO

Evidence continues to mount that El Paso provides a large portion of
infrastructure for Mexican drug cartels. Last week, more than 3 tons
of marijuana was uncovered in an East El Paso warehouse.

A U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration task force, including other
federal agents and sheriff's deputies, also apprehended the alleged
leader of a drug-trafficking ring and three others believed to be
involved in an operation that transports marijuana to various U.S.
cities.

Drug seizures are nothing new in El Paso. But as drug-cartel news
breaks on a daily basis here, we are hit with the massive scope of the
problem.

As University of Texas at El Paso border anthropologist Howard
Campbell told the Dallas Morning News, we are among the U.S. cities
that provide the warehouses, weapons and money-laundering centers. He
noted, too, that we even supply the cartels with hit men -- some being
U.S. citizens.

In a related report this week, authorities said the Mexican drug
cartels are now the dominant drug dealers in the U.S., more so than
the Asian and South American cartels.

The alleged ringleader arrested in the warehouse raid has been
identified as Javier Flores, 33, of the 600 block of North Yarbrough.

Flores is the alleged supplier to the suspected Rafael Garcia
smuggling group that was busted in May, according to DEA spokesman
Matthew Taylor. Garcia is suspected of running El Paso stash houses
and smuggling drugs to such large cities as Chicago, Memphis, Tenn.,
and Oklahoma City.

The 7,028 pounds of marijuana seized in the Friday raid was found
inside stacks of boxes labeled "wall tiles."

Obviously, drugs are stowed ingeniously by members of the
cartels.

But it's also obvious that so many drugs get through and then are
hidden virtually under El Pasoans' noses.

In this case, it was a furniture warehouse in East El
Paso.

It could be in a residence in your neighborhood, the so-named "stash
houses," of which there are believed to be many in El Paso.

Maybe more than we have realized, we are being used by drug cartels to
store tons of illegal narcotics.

Be alert. Report suspicious activities.