Posted on 08/18/2006 6:02:19 AM PDT by radar101
HOWARD LIPIN / Union-Tribune DEA agents escorted Francisco Javier Arellano Felix, wearing a bullet-proof vest and still in flip-flops after his arrest Monday aboard a fishing boat off Baja California, from the San Diego Coast Guard Station to a waiting SUV and then to the federal courthouse downtown yesterday.
The arrest of the leader of the Arellano Félix drug cartel this week was the result of intensive police work, international cooperation and more than a year of planning, law enforcement officials said yesterday.
Francisco Javier Arellano Félix pleaded not guilty to racketeering, conspiracy and other charges in San Diego federal court yesterday, hours after coming off a Coast Guard cutter wearing a bulletproof vest and walking in flip-flops. “It doesn't get any better,” said John Fernandes, special agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration office in San Diego, where agents hatched the plan that led to the arrests.
The notorious Tijuana cartel is accused of moving tons of drugs, paying millions of dollars in bribes and killing scores of rivals and law enforcement officials.
With Arellano behind bars, Mexican and U.S. officials said, his family's drug cartel was “defunct” and chaos would ensue among those seeking to control narcotics smuggling through Baja California.
Catching its leaders was a priority on both sides of the border.
“These kinds of operations take surveillance, surveillance, surveillance,” Fernandes said. “That's boots on the ground, or in this case, boots on the water.”
Arellano's top lieutenant, Arturo Villareal Heredia, and Marco Villanueva Fernandez, who the DEA says controlled operations along the California-Mexico border, were among the 11 people aboard the 43-foot boat named Dock Holiday when armed Coast Guard officers approached it Monday in international waters off Baja California Sur.
Agents have been looking for ways to arrest Arellano, 37, and other top cartel leaders for years.
About 14 months ago, they began “Operation Shadow Game” in a concerted effort to find Arellano and his brother Eduardo, both of whom were indicted in San Diego federal court in 2003. They put out a $5 million reward for information that would lead to either brother's arrest.
In April, they learned the cartel leaders were planning to use the Dock Holiday, a well-appointed sport-fishing boat that had been purchased in the United States.
Mexican officials said that information came about from interviewing some of the more than 120 members of the Arellano Félix cartel they have arrested in recent years.
After learning of the boat's existence, the DEA contacted the Coast Guard, which runs cutters along the Pacific coast of Mexico and Central America on drug-interdiction missions, and came up with a variety of scenarios for a high-seas arrest of cartel leaders.
They planned for the possibility the Dock Holiday could have innocent family members aboard.
Agents were aware of the boat's movements. Fernandes wouldn't say how, but he hinted it wasn't from an informant seeking the $5 million.
“No one will be collecting that reward,” he said.
All the while, the DEA was working with Mexican officials on the operation.
“This yacht had made several trips as a test,” Daniel Francisco Cabeza de Vaca Hernández, Mexico's attorney general, told a television interviewer yesterday about the Arellano arrest. “They became confident after about four trips, and that's when he started to operate on the yacht.”
Marco Villanueva Fernandez, who the DEA says controlled operations along the California-Mexico border for the Arellano Felix cartel, and Arturo Villareal Heredia, (below) Arellano's top lieutenant, were among the eight men arrested Monday and in custody in San Diego. On learning the boat was in international waters Monday, the DEA notified the Coast Guard. The Monsoon, a Navy ship on loan to the Coast Guard, sent a detachment aboard the Dock Holiday to determine who was aboard. Agents back in San Diego didn't know for sure whom they would find, Fernandes said.
Eight men and three boys ages 5 to 11 were on the U.S.-flagged Dock Holiday and posed no resistance when approached.
The Monsoon crew questioned the men, asking them for identification and taking their pictures, which they sent back to DEA agents in San Diego.
Although the men used false identities – a common practice among drug traffickers – the agents knew they had Arellano, Villareal and Villanueva in custody, according to court filings made public yesterday.
Arellano and Villareal, described as No. 1 and No. 2 in the organization, eventually admitted their true names.
Of the other five men, only one was known to the DEA agents, although only by his nickname. Agents suspect the other men are using fake names. But they must be important to the cartel, a DEA agent said, simply because the organization wouldn't let them get on a boat with Arellano if they weren't.
Arellano probably wasn't just fishing off the coast when he was caught, said Cabeza de Vaca, the Mexican attorney general.
“We think that he was trying to extend his activities toward the south of the peninsula so it's probable that he was interviewing people,” he said. The eight men and three boys were put aboard the Monsoon and a Coast Guard crew took over the Dock Holiday. The two vessels then started to San Diego several hundred miles away and soon were joined by other Coast Guard cutters, Coast Guard Rear Adm. Jody Breckenridge said.
The Monsoon got to San Diego yesterday morning, and the prized party was taken off in a cordon of security as rooftop snipers looked on and then put in government SUVs for a short trip down Harbor Drive to the federal courthouse.
There, Arellano, still dressed in flip-flops, plaid shorts and a faded orange shirt, appeared before federal Judge Leo S. Papas. A temporary lawyer entered a not guilty plea on Arellano's behalf to racketeering and drug and money-laundering conspiracy charges. He faces decades in prison if convicted.
The lawyer, Leila Morgan of Federal Defenders of San Diego Inc., told the judge that Arellano was unemployed and asked for a government-appointed lawyer. The judge appointed Inge Brauer, a criminal defense lawyer with 30 years of experience, pending a hearing to determine if Arellano can afford to pay his own lawyer.
Prosecutor Laura Duffy told the judge that Arellano is dangerous and would flee if allowed to go free, and the judge set a hearing for Monday to determine whether to grant bail to him or the seven other men who are in custody.
In any case, immigration officials have put a deportation hold on all eight, meaning that they would go into their custody if they tried to post bail.
The boys – one was Arellano's son, another his nephew, while the third's relationship wasn't spelled out – were expected to be reunited with family members soon.
Two of the boys are Mexican, one is a U.S. citizen.
Earlier yesterday, during a news conference, authorities said they don't expect an immediate halt in drug trafficking or violence related to the cartel.
“We're not naive enough to think that drug trafficking is going to stop,” said FBI Daniel R. Dzwilewski, special agent in charge of the FBI's local office.
Fernandes said violence will likely result as members of the organization and competing cartels fight for control of the lucrative drug trade.
For the better part of two decades, the Arellano drug cartel engaged in open drug trafficking, “becoming rich by feeding off of the addiction of others and wielding the power to murder, corruption, threats and violence,” U.S. Attorney Carol Lam said.
José Luis Santiago Vasconselos, Mexico's deputy attorney general for organized crime, thanked U.S. authorities for their collaboration.
Vasconselos said Mexican authorities will now focus their attention on corrupt police officers in Tijuana who are suspected of helping the cartel conduct its operations.
He also said authorities will work to maintain peace in Tijuana, where hundreds of homicides have involved people linked to drug trafficking.
Meanwhile, Arellano's brother Eduardo, who authorities say plays a diminished role in the cartel but who experts on the drug trade say is the real power of the organization, remains at large.
“We're always looking for Eduardo,” the DEA's Fernandes said.
The $5 million reward is still available.
Good catch!
HST, if they can get the man, they can get his money! Whyinhell are US taxpayers forced to pay for lawyers for this scumbag?
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