Pubdate: Mon, 10 Aug 1998
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL) 
Section: Sec. 1, p. 1
Contact:  
Website: http://www.chicago.tribune.com/ 
Author: Douglas Holt 

CHICAGO A NEW HUB FOR DRUGS

Ciudad Juarez, the sprawling Mexican city just across the Rio Grande from El
Paso, Texas, is a town too poor to provide its 1.5 million residents with a
sewage-treatment plant. But federal authorities consider the drug cartel
based there one of the world's most powerful.

Even after its leader, Amado Carrillo-Fuentes, died a year ago in a botched
plastic-surgery operation, the Juarez ring has continued generating tens of
millions of dollars in drug profits weekly, federal authorities say. The
cartel delivers cocaine by the ton to cities such as Dallas, Denver,
Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.

But a growing hub of the enterprise, recent federal investigations have
shown, is Chicago. Juarez cartel drug cases now lead to Chicago more often
than any U.S. city, including New York or Los Angeles, according to the U.S.
attorney's office in El Paso.

"I think `ubiquitous' is probably a good word to describe the Chicago
connection," Assistant U.S. Atty. Sam Ponder said.

Federal officials say Chicago and its suburbs recently have seen a dramatic
increase in wholesale drug operations in which cocaine and marijuana are
brought here and stored before being divided and shipped elsewhere. One
reason for the increase, authorities say, is the Juarez connection.

On Monday, Vice President Al Gore is scheduled to come to Chicago to
announce a response. Gore and other federal officials plan to outline the
Chicago Narcotics Initiative, which will try to disrupt major drug
traffickers, money launderers and street gangs by drawing resources from the
U.S. Customs Service, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI and
the U.S. attorney's office, according to a draft of the plan obtained by the
Tribune.

So far this year, Chicago-based DEA agents have seized more than three times
as much cocaine and nearly 10 times as much marijuana as during all of last
year. And local customs officials have confiscated $16.1 million in
drug-related cash, more than twice last year's total.

While seizures are an imperfect indicator of drug-related activity--they
could reflect heightened law-enforcement efforts or just plain
luck--authorities see the across-the-board increases as a sign more drugs
and drug profits are flowing through Chicago.

But political pressure also has helped prompt the new federal response.
Earlier this year, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley complained federal
authorities were doing too little to fight drugs locally. Soon afterward,
the U.S. attorney's office reassembled a unit of prosecutors devoted to drug
cases.

Juarez became a major source of drugs to Chicago starting in the early
1990s, when Colombian drug traffickers began paying Mexican traffickers in
cocaine rather than cash. The shift made Mexican traffickers powerful
suppliers of cocaine in their own right. As a result, drug runners'
command-and-control centers, such as those that have long existed in Miami
and New York, began appearing in cities with stronger ties to
Mexico--especially Chicago, federal officials said.

"Over the last five years, a new center of gravity for drug trafficking in
the United States is really Chicago," said Donald Ferrarone, former special
agent in charge of the DEA's Houston office and one of the first
law-enforcement officials to notice the Chicago-to-Juarez connection based
on intelligence reports coming across his desk.

Drug trafficking in Chicago has long been ruled by the Herrera crime family,
with roots in Durango, Mexico. But "the Herreras had a very close
relationship with Carrillo-Fuentes and still have it" with his successors
running the Juarez cartel, said Peter Lupsha, a retired research scholar at
the Latin American Institute at the University of New Mexico.

Beyond family ties, Chicago offers drug traffickers the same infrastructure
favored by legitimate businesses: a central location and a ready network of
roads, rails and airports.

As a result, it's no surprise that as Carrillo-Fuentes built his drug empire
in the 1990s, Chicago became a prime place to warehouse drugs bound for
elsewhere and a location to consolidate cash before shipping it back to
Mexico, law-enforcement officials said.

The Juarez connection is by no means the only route for Chicago-bound
illegal drugs. Nigerian heroin rings have a significant Chicago presence.
Some Colombians deal directly with Chicago-based distributors. And in May,
DEA agents seized more than 1 1/2 tons of cocaine thought to have come from
Reynosa, Mexico. That cocaine was concealed under carrots at a West Side
produce company.

But for years, investigators have seen solid hints of a burgeoning
Juarez-to-Chicago drug pipeline. In 1995, Chicago police seized 1,615 pounds
of cocaine wrapped in newspaper from Juarez. Last month, Chicago police
confiscated 4,900 pounds of marijuana at a South Side warehouse from a
semi-truck that rolled in from El Paso.

And in 1997 in El Paso, Customs agents seized $5.6 million in small bills
stuffed in a hidden compartment of a semi-truck trying to cross into Juarez.
The truck came from Chicago.

That cash seizure was hailed as the largest on the U.S.-Mexico border. But
only a week earlier, two trucks from the same group got across and delivered
$20 million in cash to the Juarez cartel, said Rene Shekmer, an assistant
U.S. attorney in Michigan who was involved in the case.

Perhaps the most significant sign of the Juarez connection to Chicago came
in March, when a Cook County sheriff's police officer pulled over a Jeep
Cherokee in southwest suburban Burbank.

In what authorities described then as the work of an alert officer who took
time to investigate an illegal lane change, the driver was found to be
carrying $1.6 million in drug-related cash stuffed in two suitcases.

But it was no accident that the local officer arrested Roberto
Orozco-Fernandez, 36, who was living in a ordinary-looking house in Burbank,
where investigators found $50,000 more.

In March, federal authorities were tailing Orozco-Fernandez, who was thought
to be a hit man and money launderer for the Juarez cartel. They had reason
to think he was carrying a large amount of cash.

But the chance to arrest him on drug conspiracy charges came as
investigators were still gathering evidence for what would become the
nation's largest money-laundering investigation ever, a globe-spanning sting
dubbed Operation Casablanca. So they turned to local authorities for a
little help.

A Cook County sheriff's officer "pulled him over so it didn't tip off the
whole major project," said a law-enforcement official familiar with the arrest.

Such tactics are likely to continue, according to the Chicago Narcotics
Initiative plan that Gore plans to help unveil Monday.

"As occurred in March 1998, large seizures of drugs and money will be
referred to local law enforcement in order to conceal ongoing federal
undercover operations," according to a planning document outlining the
initiative.

- ---
Checked-by: Melodi Cornett