Is EL PASO a sign of what the rest of America can expect from ILLEGAL ALIENS?

Question

More and more Mexico drugs are coming here is this because with more and more illegals aliens this also brings increases in drugs,crimes.Is EL PASO THE GATEWAY FOR DRUGS?
EL Paso set's the tone.Bridge inspectors seize 1,667 pounds of pot (5:18 p.m.)
By Louie Gilot / El Paso Times
El Paso bridge inspectors made their second-largest drug bust of the year Tuesday at the Bridge of the Americas commercial cargo facility when they found 1,677 pounds of marijuana in a shipment of light fixtures, Customs and Border Protection officials said.

The estimated street value of the drugs is $1.7 million. No arrests were made.
Drug smugglers are increasingly attempting to cross narcotics strapped to the bodies of passengers in vehicles at the international bridges in El Paso, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials said.
The latest reported seizure occurred about 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Paso del Norte Bridge when two Juárez women were found with a total of 32 pounds of cocaine hidden in girdles they were wearing, federal officials said. The women were passengers in a 1993 Buick Century.

"It used to be very rare, almost never seen, that someone would have dope strapped to their body when they were in a vehicle. It used to be mostly pedestrians coming in the (pedestrian) line" with contraband on their bodies, Customs and Border Protection spokesman Roger Maier said.

Maier said border inspectors in the past 12 months have seen an upward trend in similar smuggling attempts. An exact number of cases was not immediately available.

The girdle cases have involved both men and women. The drug is usually cocaine, which has a higher dollar value than marijuana."It's another thing the officers have to focus on, another threat," Maier said.

In the Tuesday incident, an officer at an inspection booth at the Paso del Norte Bridge became suspicious when some of the occupants in the car were nervous and had a bulky appearance, officials said.

The Buick was sent to secondary inspection.

An officer spotted a bundle in the waistband of one of the women as she got out of the car. A drug-sniffing dog reacted to that woman's seat in the car. A subsequent pat-down search of the women led to the discovery of the cocaine.

Photos provided by Customs and Border Protection showed that both women had large builds.

Martha Alicia Rincon Marquez, 36, was allegedly wearing a girdle with five bundles weighing a total of 13.1 pounds of cocaine. Maria Del Carmen Castro Lucero, also 36, allegedly had five bundles totaling 18.9 pounds of cocaine, Customs and Border Protection officials said. The cocaine has an estimated street value of $640,000.

"This important and sizeable seizure was the direct result of a diligent and focused CBP officer performing a thorough primary inspection," CBP El Paso Port Director David Longoria said in a news release. An investigation continues.

Answer 1

No. Los Gatos Hills sets the tone and gives us what we can expect from continued illegal immigration.

A lot of them aren't even bothering to import the drugs anymore. They just grow them here. Note that no US citizens were perpetrators.

It was supposed to be a fairly typical bust on the second day in the annual marijuana-eradication season by statewide officials -- but it turned deadly and anything but routine.

By day's end Friday, one suspect lay dead in the rugged hills after a gunbattle, one Fish and Game warden was shot by an accomplice guarding the pot field -- the first shooting of an agent in the 21-year history of the raids -- and authorities had seized as many as 50,000 plants, much more than they found during all of last year, investigators said.

Camouflaged sheriff's deputies carrying rifles scoured the steep hills above Los Gatos all day and throughout the night searching for another suspect who fled the early-morning raid. Authorities were to continue the search today.

"They're being more confrontational because there's a lot more marijuana out there," said Bob Cooke, special agent in charge of the California Department of Justice Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement in San Jose.

One suspect has been killed in raids each of the past two years, and agents have been shot at -- but never hit, Cooke said.

Fish and Game Warden Kyle Kroll, a 25-year-old Mountain View resident, was struck by a bullet that went through both his legs. Kroll, who has been a warden for two years, underwent surgery at Valley Medical Center in San Jose during the morning and was expected to recover, authorities said.

The incident began early Friday when half a dozen officers from several agencies assembled at 5 a.m. and drove up the mountain to the end of Wagner Road. They hiked for 1 1/2 hours to land that is closed to the public but where thousands of mature marijuana plants had been spotted by sheriff's deputies in helicopters on Mount Umunhum. The land is owned by the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District.

About 7 a.m., officers encountered two armed men who apparently had been guarding the crop, said Terrance Helm, spokesman for the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department.

Details of what happened next were scarce because radio communications were poor in the remote area and crime scene investigators had to be airlifted by chopper to the scene, Helm said.

Gunfire broke out between the pot guards and the officers, and one of the guards was hit while the other man ran. All available deputies in the county were summoned to Los Gatos Christian Church near the base of the mountain, which was headquarters for the operation throughout the day, Helm said.

Kroll was airlifted off the mountain while a SWAT team swarmed in and blocked off the area around the injured suspect. By the time medical workers arrived, the man had died, Helm said. Information on the man was not available from the coroner, who also had to be airlifted to the scene.

Investigators said they hadn't assembled a detailed description of the men.

"It makes no sense," Helm said of the shootout. "Generally, when they know law enforcement is coming, they flee. They generally don't shoot it out with the cops."

The eradication project is run by the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, a program of the California Department of Justice. CAMP has five teams that work throughout the state trying to locate and destroy marijuana plants, which are starting to be harvested this time of year.

In all of 2004, authorities seized 6,026 marijuana plants in Santa Clara County during raids like the one Friday. But if the high estimate of Friday's raid holds, authorities will in two days have seized more than eight times what they did in the county for all of last year, according to CAMP statistics.

A separate raid Thursday resulted in the seizure of 5,000 plants from Big Basin State Park north of Santa Cruz, Cooke said. Last year, authorities destroyed 621,315 plants statewide. The harvest season, when the raids are conducted, runs through the end of September.

The farm raided Friday was much larger than authorities initially thought. They suspected that up to 10,000 plants were being grown on two or three acres -- but as the helicopters scanned the area looking for the suspect, they discovered the swath to actually be about a mile long, Cooke said, and it could yield up to 50,000 plants. The plants stand between 4 and 7 feet tall.

People planting marijuana in the area probably chose it because it was closed to the public, said John Maciel, operations manager for the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District. Signs denoting the closed portion, which is under planning for recreational development, are posted throughout the area, he said.

Each plant is worth about $4,000 in street sales, Cooke said -- meaning that if there are indeed 50,000 plants of high quality, the crop could be worth $200 million. Most of the large-scale marijuana-growing operations in California are run out of Mexico, though it was unclear Friday whose plants were on the mountain and where they would have been sold.

Cooke estimated that it would take a dozen people to cultivate the crop on Mount Umunhum.

Officers from the California Highway Patrol, the California Division of Forestry, the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department, the Department of Fish and Game, and the San Jose Police Department worked out of the church-based command post.

Four helicopters were being used in the search, and late Friday, a helicopter carried a large load of marijuana down from the mountain in a net.

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Answer 2

Tegeras, you're the man of the hour!

I won't bother reading all the nonsense either and wish if you're going to post to summarize. Along those lines, it's like this: supply and demand. The United States is the biggest consumer of drugs being smuggled in. Did you know Colombians do not have a drug problem? Google it.

Touche, Rick C!

Answer 3

Too much of a political rant to read but I will answer the first paragraph. Illegal drugs, who buys them? Why are they so much in demand? Is it because all of the illegals want them? Yeah lets get rid of them all so the drug problem will stop....yeah right.

Other than that....please ask a question and do not make a statement that is a mile long. What you are doing is just stating an opinion and cutting/pasting stuff like there is no tomorrow which has nothing to do with what this site is about. There are other sites you can go to to complain to your hearts delight.

Answer 4

I lived in El Paso in the 1960s and it was a war zone then. I am sure it has progressed to worse by now. There were lots of Mexicans. I don't know if they were legal or not. It was not what I would call a safe place to live. Lots of tension between the Gringo and the ............whatever you were to call Mexicans then. So as things progress it looks like you won't have to go to El Paso to find this lifestyle. El Paso will come to you.

Oh by the way, I am afraid that you and people of your racist school will have to quit addressing theories that make sense and have come to pass. Liberals are offended by your way of thinking. Same goes for me. The reason being, we think alike.

Answer 5

The problem is not with Mexico or the Mexicans. The problem is with the drug trade. As long as drugs are illegal, there will be vast profits to be made from providing them for people who want them. If drugs were legalized, the illegal market would vanish, and so would the drug traffic. Tobacco and alcohol are already legal, and provide vast revenues for the government. Why not legalize pot and other popular drugs and let the profits from that trade be put to good use, rather than lining the pockets of the drug lords?

Answer 6

This is nothing as to the amount that has not been seized. This was just a decoy so that the real contra band was able to cross the border with no problems. The bribes rule the day.

Answer 7

I could go on at length about El Paso, and may, some other time.

However, right now I just want to say that after the election some Senators are pushing to have the fence bill amended so the communities involved on the border would have say where the fence goes. Letting sanctuary cities like El Paso have say where the fence goes is like giving an alcoholic the keys to the liquor store.

Answer 8

Actually more and more drugs come into this country bc people DEMAND them. It's called supply and demand. Yes, the poor and desperate are more willing to risk jail to sell them but lets not forget that someone is always ready to replace the seller. Your an American and it's called capitalism, get with the program.

P.S. Ecstasy comes mainly from Europe but I guess you're not complaining about that bc they are not brown.

Answer 9

This is just another rant. Were your exboyfriend or current illegal special friend involved in this drug smuggling? Maybe you are reporting it in a way to get back at your exboyfriend. Most people didn't want to read your cut-and-paste job rant anyhow.

Answer 10

I read the whole article and I still can't find what this have to do with illegal inmigration.Can you explain to us what illegals have to do with this? And, do you have any idea who will be the final consumer of this drugs?
Have a good day!!

Answer 11

People moving drugs around the world seem to come in all shapes, sizes, races and ages. I think we knew that already.