Mexico Under Siege

U.S. TARGETS CARTEL AND ITS 'TOXIC REACH'

300 Suspects Are Held in Nationwide Raids on La Familia, a Brutal and
Fast-Growing Drug Gang From Mexico.

Drug agents swept through Los Angeles and dozens of other locations
Wednesday and Thursday, arresting more than 300 people and seizing
large quantities of drugs, weapons and money in the biggest U.S.
crackdown against a Mexican drug cartel.

The months-long offensive, the fruit of dozens of federal
investigations over the last 3 1/2 years, will put a significant dent
in the U.S. operations of La Familia Michoacana, one of Mexico's
fastest-growing and deadliest cartels, authorities said.

"The sheer level and depravity of violence that this cartel has
exhibited far exceeds what we unfortunately have become accustomed to
from other cartels, [and] the toxic reach of its operations extends
to nearly every state within our own country," Atty. Gen. Eric H.
Holder Jr. said at a news conference in Washington to announce the arrests.

The investigation has involved hundreds of agents and analysts from
the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, as well as prosecutors and
other officials from the Justice Department.

"We're hitting them where we believe it hurts the most: their revenue
stream," Holder said. "By seizing their drugs and upending their
supply chains, we have disrupted their business-as-usual state of operations."

In all, authorities have arrested nearly 1,200 suspected La Familia
members or associates in recent months as part of "Project Coronado,"
the multi-agency effort to dismantle the organization's
methamphetamine and cocaine distribution network in the United States.

But Holder and other officials acknowledged that La Familia has
become too powerful, too politically entrenched -- and too popular
with Mexico's citizens -- for the arrests to deal the cartel any kind
of death blow.

"We have to work with our Mexican counterparts to really cut off the
heads of these snakes and get at the heads of the cartels . . .
either in Mexico or extradite them to the United States," he said.

For that to happen, U.S. authorities need the full cooperation of the
Mexican government in arresting and prosecuting the leaders of La
Familia. But according to court documents unsealed Thursday, few if
any leaders have been taken into custody by Mexican authorities
despite several being indicted in U.S. courts.

La Familia has been linked to hundreds of drug-related killings in
Mexico, including the kidnapping, torture and killing of 12 federal
agents in the western state of Michoacan, La Familia's home base.

Several senior U.S. drug officials said Mexico was cooperating but
that La Familia's leaders were too well insulated to go after,
protected not only by their own army but by corrupt police and politicians.

"It's a full-blown military operation to go in and get them," said
one drug enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity
because of the sensitivity of U.S.-Mexico counter-narcotics relations.

A Mexican counter-narcotics official agreed, saying his country had
thrown thousands of troops and police at La Familia but that the
cartel's chieftains were even more elusive than others.

"They rarely spend two or three nights in the same place, and when
they do, they live in these very fortified compounds," said the
official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing
similar sensitivities. "It is even more difficult for us because they
buy not only information, but they buy protection from the very guys
that are supposed to get them."

Although a relative newcomer to Mexico's drug underworld, La Familia
has quickly become one of the most violent, quick to attack Mexican
troops and lawmakers who have tried to halt its expansion, U.S.
counter-narcotics officials said.

La Familia now competes with the established Gulf and Sinaloa
cartels. But in an unusual twist, its leaders espouse a religious
philosophy, asking core members to carry Bibles and attend church.

The cartel manufactures tons of methamphetamine strictly for export
to the United States, prohibiting its own soldiers from using illegal
drugs or selling them in Mexico, said Michele Leonhart, acting
administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Such tactics have made La Familia something of a Robin Hood-type
organization within Mexico, several drug enforcement officials said Thursday.

"We are fighting an organization whose brutal violence is driven by
so-called divine justice," Leonhart said. "Accordingly, La Familia's
narco-banner declared that they don't kill for money and they don't
kill innocent people. However, their delivery of that message was
accompanied by five severed heads rolled onto a dance floor in
Uruapan, Mexico."

The indictments unsealed Thursday provide a rare look inside the
highly disciplined and secretive organization, which is also involved
in counterfeiting, extortion, prostitution and armed robbery.

Most of those arrested in the U.S. are believed to be foot soldiers
or associates of the cartel, but some have direct ties to La Familia
leadership in Michoacan, authorities said.

Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles have indicted five suspected La
Familia members with the help of several undercover informants. One
of the indicted is Gerardo Rodriguez-Lopez, a fugitive who
authorities allege ran a methamphetamine smuggling operation from
Mexico through Los Angeles County to Minnesota, Kansas, Georgia and Texas.

Overall, the DEA said, at least 24 people were arrested in Southern
California during the latest raids, many of them alleged La Familia
members or associates from three separate drug distribution cells.

Over the last two days, authorities arrested 90 people in Dallas and
dozens more in Atlanta and other large urban hubs of La Familia.

But many other arrests occurred in small towns and rural communities
in Washington state, Texas, California, Oklahoma, Missouri, North
Carolina and elsewhere.