HOUSTON, Texas — Officers have busted a million-dollar automobile theft ring run by a harmful Mexican drug cartel — and nabbed three migrant members of the crew, together with one who snuck into the US illegally and has a protracted rap sheet.
Mexican nationals Edgar Bravo, Jesus Gutierrez-Escamilla and Bernando Fernandez-Pereyda had been accused Thursday of serving to function the chop store ring underneath the management of the Jalisco New Technology Cartel, in line with Immigration and Customs Enforcement paperwork obtained by The Submit.
Sources mentioned Gutierrez-Escamilla entered the US illegally at an unknown date over a dozen years in the past and has since been out and in of regulation enforcement custody.
ICE paperwork present he was arrested in 2012 and convicted of trespassing. He solely served a 20-day jail sentence and was again out on the streets.
He was arrested for a site visitors violation in 2016 however not deported, as ICE famous in his case file that he didn’t “meet any priorities for enforcement.”
Fernandez-Pereyda, in the meantime, was apprehended by the Border Patrol in March 2023, although ICE information don’t present how that case was adjudicated.
Throughout Thursday’s raid, the Harris County Sheriff’s workplace recovered 14 stolen automobiles with fraudulent titles at three Houston-area chop retailers.
“It was just about a easy round-up. We did have one person who fled. We had been capable of get him in custody. However it was a reasonably easy execution. We did use our SWAT workforce they usually’re fairly good at what they do and was capable of safe everybody,” mentioned Saul Suarez, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s workplace.
Ray Donovan, who retired because the DEA chief of operations in April 2023, informed The Submit that the cartels and their associates dabble in varied types of crime, not simply drug manufacturing and trafficking. It’s suspected that the automobile theft ring additionally concerned human trafficking.
“You may have a community of drug distributors all all through the US and in Houston they usually obtain large fentanyl and cocaine from Mexico. They’re additionally concerned in different felony actions moreover simply the distribution and trafficking of medicine,” Donovan mentioned.
Donovan described Houston as a “hub for the cartels.”
“It’s only a large level of transshipment, it’s additionally like a brokering place. So dope goes into Houston, it’ll go to Atlanta, it’ll go to Chicago,” Donovan mentioned.
Earlier this week, the US Lawyer’s Workplace for the Southern District of Texas introduced the arrests of 23 folks tied to Jalisco New Technology concerned in an enormous drug-smuggling operation partially primarily based in Houston.
The group allegedly smuggled narcotics into the US, distributing the illicit medication from Houston and Galveston to different places all through the nation.
There are nonetheless warrants out for the arrests of the chief of the drug-trafficking ring and 15 different fugitives.
