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Drugs flow through S. Texas
Drug lords left with wide-open field
By Jeremy Schwartz
The 53-year-old grandmother and her co-worker pulled up to the waiting Border Patrol agents as they had done several times before, carrying the Bible they hoped would protect the 73 pounds of marijuana sitting in a hidden compartment of their sedan.
Their boss had told his stable of drug runners - and they believed it - that carrying the Bible and vials of holy water, and playing gospel music on the tape deck, would protect them from a search by the stern-faced agents and the drug dogs waiting for them at the checkpoint.
But about 150 miles away in McAllen, their boss - a 39-year-old evangelical minister named Gabriel Rolando Rodriguez - had no idea his carefully constructed drug empire was about to collapse.
With a crew of about 20 drug runners making regular trips to Houston, well-established sources in Mexico and buyers as far away as St. Louis, Mo., Rodriguez ran a solid, if unspectacular, drug operation. Since 1992 he had been moving 100 to 150 pounds of marijuana a week, never loading up his runners with much more than 75 pounds because he didn't want to risk losing more than that that much if the cargo was seized.
On the pipeline
Through numerous other organizations like Rodriguez's, officials estimate millions of pounds of drugs are smuggled north on South Texas highways each year. Fighting drugs is a job that employs thousands, both directly and indirectly. Because of South Texas' geographic location, an entire apparatus has been set up to deal with drugs, from the checkpoints, to burgeoning prosecutors' offices to narcotics divisions in almost every law enforcement agency.
And because of the region's location on one of the world's largest drug pipelines - estimates are that more than 64 percent of the drugs seized nationwide flow through South Texas - drugs are likely more prevalent here than in other parts of the country.
Checkpoints key
Rodriguez's drugs were moved north on U.S. Highways 281 and 77, passing through the Falfurrias and Sarita Border Patrol checkpoints.
"The whole thing about running dope is getting through the checkpoints," said Jaime Garza, commander of the South Texas Specialized Crime and Narcotics Taskforce.
Cmdr. Brian Uhler, of the Corpus Christi Police Department's special services division, said the city sees a greater influx of drugs just because of its proximity to the border and drug highways.
"The accessibility of drugs is there, but also, the price is significantly lower in our region," he said.
Once through the checkpoint, the value of the drugs balloons.
"When you consider the low cost of marijuana in the Valley, the cost goes up in fairly significant increments as you pass the Sarita and Falfurrias checkpoints," said assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Reed.
Classic Valley conspiracy
Rodriguez, who left school after the 10th grade, was one of many independent drug lords working out of the Rio Grande Valley, each carving out a chunk of the drug trade. With demand for their cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine and heroin so high, the field was wide open, drug agents say.
"(The Rodriguez organization) is kind of the classic Valley pipeline marijuana conspiracy," Reed said. "It was kind of low-tech, they moved relatively smaller quantities in increments."
Like many organizations, it was sewn together with family ties. His brother Jose owned a used refrigerator store in Houston, used to help launder the group's money. His wife, Norma Alicia Rodriguez, has pleaded guilty to drug-smuggling charges, as has his 23-year-old son, Gabriel Alejandro Mejia.
Down-and-out drivers
The Rodriguez organization often used middle-aged women in ordinary looking cars to smuggle their dope. While using unlikely suspects - senior citizens, families with young children - is nothing new for smugglers, the Rodriguez group added a twist.
"A lot of trafficking organizations have different theories on how to penetrate the Border Patrol checkpoints," Reed said. "Some have all kinds of elaborate compartments. In this case, they didn't have that. They had down-and-out drivers, and some were instructed to play religious music and have a Bible on the front seat."
But on this trip, on April 7, 1998, the grandmother and her male companion's luck and superstition failed them. One of the checkpoint's famous drug-sniffing dogs began barking at the Nissan's backside, and the couple was pulled over for a more detailed inspection. After removing the sedan's rear quarter panel, agents found the marijuana bundles.
Same old, same old
As the duty officer on April 7, 1998, Cris G. Pendleton was at the South Texas Narcotics Taskforce headquarters, a mysterious, computer-filled warren of offices, located in a fake "house" once used by the Central Intelligence Agency.
When the call came from the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint south of Sarita, Pendleton drove down U.S. Highway 77 thinking, "same old, same old." Such busts were daily, sometimes hourly occurrences at South Texas checkpoints.
Although officials say it's hard to pinpoint what percentage of illegal drugs comes up U.S. Highways 77 and 281, the Drug Enforcement Administration reported in 1999 that 64 percent of the drugs seized within the country came from South Texas.
The Border Patrol checkpoints along those highways dwarf the nation's other checkpoints in terms of drug seizures.
In 2000, agents at the Falfurrias checkpoint on U.S. Highway 281 seized more cocaine and marijuana than all the checkpoints in Arizona and California combined. Over the past year, the Sarita and Falfurrias checkpoints have seized more than 150,000 pounds of marijuana and more than 8,000 pounds of cocaine, worth more than $375 million.
Want to talk?
Such numbers don't take into account the drugs seized by the police departments, sheriff's departments, Department of Public Safety units and narcotics taskforces along the highways.
Garza said drugs also flood north on the Intracoastal Waterway. "It's just everywhere," he said. "We are inundated with this problem. It's so vast you can't even imagine."
After the 73 pounds of marijuana were discovered, the man and woman were taken to separate holding cells inside the checkpoint to await the arrival of Pendleton.
When Pendleton arrived at the checkpoint, she sat down with the woman and, as drug agents do with almost every suspect, gave her a chance to save her neck. Give us names, tell us whom you work for, and you won't do time. To Pendleton's pleasant surprise and to Rodriguez's later chagrin, the woman wanted to talk.
The ledger
"We have a saying," Garza said. "There are no friends in drugs."
Sitting in her cell, the woman had thought this day might come. Despite the vials of holy water, the Bible, the Christian music, she knew she couldn't tempt fate forever.
So she had quietly prepared.
She kept a ledger of phone numbers, names, vehicle registrations. Information that would be poisonous to her organization, but which would keep her from the penitentiary.
Pendleton would spend the next two years corroborating the information the woman gave her, as the case against Rodriguez and his organization mushroomed to include DEA, the Internal Revenue Service and the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Taskforce.
Through interviews, matching up phone records and vehicle registrations, and general snooping, the structure of the organization began to emerge.
"It just so happened the light shined on a lot of things," said Pendleton, who was awarded a citation by DEA and the U.S. Attorney's Office for her work on the case. "You put the puzzle together."
The Blessed One
During the investigation, agents learned Rodriguez and his siblings ran the tight-knit organization, in which the marijuana was moved from various properties in the Valley to Houston, where it was stored and repackaged for eventual redistribution.
Rodriguez bought two homes with drug money, using them to stash marijuana and money. Rodriguez and other family members also used businesses in the Valley and Houston to launder money, including a used car lot in Alamo, appropriately named "El Bendecido" or the Blessed One.
"He had it set up so well, that if he couldn't supply the demand his brother would," Pendleton said. "It was so well planned, we don't know of an instance of violence."
But it was not planned well enough.
Once the evidence was compiled, agents fanned out across McAllen and Houston to make arrests. Pendleton said that when officers arrived at Rodriguez's McAllen home in an upper middle-class neighborhood he was sound asleep.
"He said, 'What marijuana? I don't know what you're talking about,' " Pendleton said.
Turning testimony
But in his bedroom, agents found a mountain of paperwork - receipts and files linking him to the smuggling ring and to his money-laundering scheme through his front company, the El Bendecido auto dealership, and his brother's used refrigerator shop in Houston.
Agents also found a ledger listing the sizes of hidden compartments in various vehicles and how many marijuana bundles could fit in each one. Perhaps most damning, they found videotapes of Rodriguez giving religious testimony and admitting his guilt, Pendleton said.
Within a year, Rodriguez and 12 other members of his organization, including his two brothers, had pleaded guilty to drug and money laundering conspiracies.
According to court records from Rodriguez's October 2000 pleading in Houston, he struck a deal with prosecutors to testify and give information in the government's continuing investigation.
Preaching in prison
Rodriguez's conviction also led agents to the arrest of his suppliers, who are scheduled to go on trial at the end of this year in Houston. The four Valley men were indicted in April on charges of smuggling more than 1,000 kilograms of marijuana and money laundering. They face up to life in prison if they are convicted.
No sentencing date has yet been set for Rodriguez, who continues to be an evangelical minister and is in jail in Houston.
The informant in the Rodriguez case is living in Houston, but is not in the witness protection program because she willingly volunteered to testify against the organization, Pendleton said.
Independents
Garza said the Rodriguez organization is indicative of the groups that are smuggling drugs through South Texas. Unlike on the Mexican side of the border, where well-organized cartels run the drug business, groups on the U.S. side tend to be smaller and more fragmented, he said.
"It's not so much straight cartels, it's the cells. Individual groups trying to go out 'andas nickleando,' trying to get a nickel," Garza said. "We (in the Coastal Bend) are kind of sheltered from the violence in the Valley and Mexico."
Once the traffickers get their drugs to the border, they often turn to independent smugglers who specialize in methods of transporting drugs, be it truck, train or boat.
"If a cartel loses its transportation chief, maybe they'll look for one of these experts," said one local drug agent. "Some cartels have it all integrated."
1 percent caught
Garza takes what he calls a realistic view of the effect of law enforcement on South Texas drug smuggling.
"For every one load we get, 100 get through," he said. "That's being modest."
Agustin Olivarez, an agent with the South Texas Narcotics and Specialized Crime Taskforce, regularly patrols the well-worn corridor of U.S. Highway 77. He estimates that one out of 10 vehicles cruising northward is carrying drugs, a staggering number considering the 10,000 vehicles authorities say travel north on the highway daily.
Garza likened the drug war to a dog chasing a car.
"We would all want to seize all the drugs in the world. That's every narcotics officer's dreams. We know it's impossible, but we'll seize everything we can," he said. "In 20 years, things will be different. Whether they'll be worse or better, I can't say."
Contact Jeremy Schwartz at 886-3618 or schwartzj@caller.com
November 18,
2001
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