Cartels dispatch agents deep inside US

(AP) – Mexican drug cartels whose operatives once rarely ventured
beyond the U.S. border are dispatching some of their most trusted agents
to live and work deep inside the United States – an emboldened presence
that experts believe is meant to tighten their grip on the world's most
lucrative narcotics market and maximize profits.

If left unchecked, authorities say, the cartels'
move into the American interior could render the syndicates harder than
ever to dislodge and pave the way for them to expand into other criminal
enterprises such as prostitution, kidnapping-and-extortion rackets and
money laundering.

Cartel activity in the U.S. is certainly not new.
Starting in the 1990s, the ruthless syndicates became the nation's No. 1
supplier of illegal drugs, using unaffiliated middlemen to smuggle
cocaine, marijuana and heroin beyond the border or even to grow pot
here.

But a wide-ranging Associated Press review of
federal court cases and government drug-enforcement data, plus
interviews with many top law enforcement officials, indicate the groups
have begun deploying agents from their inner circles to the U.S. Cartel
operatives are suspected of running drug-distribution networks in at
least nine non-border states, often in middle-class suburbs in the
Midwest, South and Northeast.

“It's probably the most serious threat the United
States has faced from organized crime,” said Jack Riley, head of the
Drug Enforcement Administration's Chicago office.

The cartel threat looms so large that one of
Mexico's most notorious drug kingpins – a man who has never set foot in
Chicago – was recently named the city's Public Enemy No. 1, the same
notorious label once assigned to Al Capone.

The Chicago Crime Commission, a non-government
agency that tracks crime trends in the region, said it considers Joaquin
“El Chapo” Guzman even more menacing than Capone because Guzman leads
the deadly Sinaloa cartel, which supplies most of the narcotics sold in
Chicago and in many cities across the U.S.

Years ago, Mexico faced the same problem – of
then-nascent cartels expanding their power – “and didn't nip the problem
in the bud,” said Jack Killorin, head of an anti-trafficking program in
Atlanta for the Office of National Drug Control Policy. “And see where
they are now.”

Riley sounds a similar alarm: “People think, 'The
border's 1,700 miles away. This isn't our problem.' Well, it is. These
days, we operate as if Chicago is on the border.”

Border states from Texas to California have long
grappled with a cartel presence. But cases involving cartel members have
now emerged in the suburbs of Chicago and Atlanta, as well as Columbus,
Ohio, Louisville, Ky., and rural North Carolina. Suspects have also
surfaced in Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania.

Mexican drug cartels “are taking over our
neighborhoods,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane warned a
legislative committee in February. State Police Commissioner Frank
Noonan disputed her claim, saying cartels are primarily drug suppliers,
not the ones trafficking drugs on the ground.

For years, cartels were more inclined to make deals
in Mexico with American traffickers, who would then handle
transportation to and distribution within major cities, said Art Bilek, a
former organized crime investigator who is now executive vice president
of the crime commission.

As their organizations grew more sophisticated, the
cartels began scheming to keep more profits for themselves. So leaders
sought to cut out middlemen and assume more direct control, pushing
aside American traffickers, he said.

Beginning two or three years ago, authorities
noticed that cartels were putting “deputies on the ground here,” Bilek
said. “Chicago became such a massive market … it was critical that
they had firm control.”

To help fight the syndicates, Chicago recently
opened a first-of-its-kind facility at a secret location where 70
federal agents work side-by-side with police and prosecutors. Their
primary focus is the point of contact between suburban-based cartel
operatives and city street gangs who act as retail salesmen. That is
when both sides are most vulnerable to detection, when they are most
likely to meet in the open or use cellphones that can be wiretapped.

Others are skeptical about claims cartels are
expanding their presence, saying law-enforcement agencies are prone to
exaggerating threats to justify bigger budgets.

David Shirk, of the University of San Diego's
Trans-Border Institute, said there is a dearth of reliable intelligence
that cartels are dispatching operatives from Mexico on a large scale.

“We know astonishingly little about the structure
and dynamics of cartels north of the border,” Shirk said. “We need to be
very cautious about the assumptions we make.”

Statistics from the DEA suggest a heightened cartel
presence in more U.S. cities. In 2008, around 230 American communities
reported some level of cartel presence. That number climbed to more than
1,200 in 2011, the most recent year for which information is available,
though the increase is partly due to better reporting.

Dozens of federal agents and local police
interviewed by the AP said they have identified cartel members or
operatives using wiretapped conversations, informants or confessions.
Hundreds of court documents reviewed by the AP appear to support those
statements.

“This is the first time we've been seeing it –
cartels who have their operatives actually sent here,” said Richard
Pearson, a lieutenant with the Louisville Metropolitan Police
Department, which arrested four alleged operatives of the Zetas cartel
in November in the suburb of Okolona.

People who live on the tree-lined street where
authorities seized more than 2,400 pounds of marijuana and more than $1
million in cash were shocked to learn their low-key neighbors were
accused of working for one of Mexico's most violent drug syndicates,
Pearson said.

One of the best documented cases is Jose
Gonzalez-Zavala, who was dispatched to the U.S. by the La Familia
cartel, according to court filings.

In 2008, the former taxi driver and father of five
moved into a spacious home at 1416 Brookfield Drive in a middle-class
neighborhood of Joliet, southwest of Chicago. From there, court papers
indicate, he oversaw wholesale shipments of cocaine in Illinois,
Wisconsin and Indiana.

Wiretap transcripts reveal he called an
unidentified cartel boss in Mexico almost every day, displaying the
deference any midlevel executive might show to someone higher up the
corporate ladder. Once he stammered as he explained that one customer
would not pay a debt until after a trip.

“No,” snaps the boss. “What we need is for him to pay.”

The same cartel assigned Jorge Guadalupe
Ayala-German to guard a Chicago-area stash house for $300 a week, plus a
promised $35,000 lump-sum payment once he returned to Mexico after a
year or two, according to court documents.

Ayala-German brought his wife and child to help
give the house the appearance of an ordinary family residence. But he
was arrested before he could return home and pleaded guilty to multiple
trafficking charges. He will be sentenced later this year.

Socorro Hernandez-Rodriguez was convicted in 2011
of heading a massive drug operation in suburban Atlanta's Gwinnett
County. The chief prosecutor said he and his associates were
high-ranking figures in the La Familia cartel – an allegation defense
lawyers denied.

And at the end of February outside Columbus, Ohio,
authorities arrested 34-year-old Isaac Eli Perez Neri, who allegedly
told investigators he was a debt collector for the Sinaloa cartel.

An Atlanta attorney who has represented reputed cartel members says authorities sometimes overstate the threat such men pose.

“Often, you have a kid whose first time leaving
Mexico is sleeping on a mattress at a stash house playing Game Boy,
eating Burger King, just checking drugs or money in and out,” said Bruce
Harvey. “Then he's arrested and gets a gargantuan sentence. It's sad.”

Typically, cartel operatives are not U.S. citizens
and make no attempt to acquire visas, choosing instead to sneak across
the border. They are so accustomed to slipping back and forth between
the two countries that they regularly return home for family weddings
and holidays, Riley said.

Because cartels accumulate houses full of cash,
they run the constant risk associates will skim off the top. That points
to the main reason cartels prefer their own people: Trust is hard to
come by in their cutthroat world. There's also a fear factor. Cartels
can exert more control on their operatives than on middlemen, often by
threatening to torture or kill loved ones back home.

Danny Porter, chief prosecutor in Gwinnett County,
Ga., said he has tried to entice dozens of suspected cartel members to
cooperate with American authorities. Nearly all declined. Some laughed
in his face.

“They say, 'We are more scared of them (the
cartels) than we are of you. We talk and they'll boil our family in
acid,'” Porter said. “Their families are essentially hostages.”

Citing the safety of his own family,
Gonzalez-Zavala declined to cooperate with authorities in exchange for
years being shaved off his 40-year sentence.

In other cases, cartel brass send their own family members to the U.S.

“They're sometimes married or related to people in
the cartels,” Porter said. “They don't hire casual labor.” So meticulous
have cartels become that some even have operatives fill out job
applications before being dispatched to the U.S., Riley added.

In Mexico, the cartels are known for a staggering
number of killings – more than 50,000, according to one tally.
Beheadings are sometimes a signature.

So far, cartels don't appear to be directly
responsible for large numbers of slayings in the United States, though
the Texas Department of Public Safety reported 22 killings and five
kidnappings in Texas at the hands of Mexican cartels from 2010 through
mid- 2011.

Still, police worry that increased cartel activity could fuel heightened violence.

In Chicago, the police commander who oversees
narcotics investigations, James O'Grady, said street-gang disputes over
turf account for most of the city's uptick in murders last year, when
slayings topped 500 for the first time since 2008. Although the cartels
aren't dictating the territorial wars, they are the source of drugs.

Riley's assessment is stark: He argues that the
cartels should be seen as an underlying cause of Chicago's disturbingly
high murder rate.

“They are the puppeteers,” he said. “Maybe the
shooter didn't know and maybe the victim didn't know that. But if you
follow it down the line, the cartels are ultimately responsible.”

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