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With reports
like this --
"In
Small-Town USA, Business as Usual for Mexican Cartels" (CNN)
Wilmington,
North Carolina -- Less than a mile off a county road in Ivanhoe near the Black
River, federal drug agents and local authorities found exactly what their
informant had promised.
"We saw
what looked like, as far as you could see, marijuana plants," said Drug
Enforcement Administration agent Michael Franklin.
There were
about 2,400 in all, surrounded by a makeshift camp where the growers had
illegally squatted on private property, setting up a generator and pump to
tap the river for irrigation. The camp, which had been recently inhabited,
contained a tarp shelter, canned fuel, drinking water, toiletries and old
clothing, some of it camouflage.
Authorities
staked out the "grow" for two days waiting for the marijuana
farmers to return. They didn't. It was just as well, Franklin said.
"The
people we were really focusing on were not the guys tending the field. The
guys bankrolling the field were the target," he said.
Those guys,
according to the DEA's source, were members of La Familia
Michoacana, a Mexican drug cartel that the Justice
Department says focuses primarily on moving heroin, cocaine, marijuana and
methamphetamine into the southeastern and southwestern United States.
Because the
investigation into the June 2009 seizure is still ongoing, the DEA would not
divulge further details. But Franklin said the case is one in a growing list
of cartel-linked busts he is seeing in largely rural southeastern North
Carolina. The area's Latino population has grown considerably in the past 20
years, and authorities say cartel operatives use Latino communities as cover.
"While the
majority of (Latino residents in the area) are hardworking people like anyone
else, it's an opportunity for the cartels to have their foot soldiers do
their thing, too," Franklin said. Based in Wilmington, he is resident
agent in charge of 14 counties.
News of cartel
machinations are common in cities near the border, such as Phoenix, and the
far-flung drug hubs of New York, Chicago or Atlanta, but smaller towns bring
business, too. In unsuspecting suburbs and rural areas, police are
increasingly finding drugs, guns and money they can trace back to Mexican
drug organizations.
The numbers
could rise in coming years. The Justice Department's National Drug
Intelligence Center estimates Mexican cartels control distribution of most of
the methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana coming into the country, and
they're increasingly producing the drugs themselves.
In 2009 and
2010, the center reported, cartels operated in 1,286 U.S. cities, more than
five times the number reported in 2008. The center named only 50 cities in
2006. --
I wonder how
long it will be before the reds on the bottom of this map start bleeding (no
pun intended) into the top:
(Image:
"Mexican
Drug War: Waves of Violence," The
Economist)
Michael J. Panzner
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