OKLAHOMA CITY — In the largest single strike at Mexican drug operations in the U.S., authorities arrested more than 300 people in a sting that demonstrates a young cartel’s vast reach north of the border.
The tentacles of La Familia extend coast to coast and deep into America’s heartland, with arrests announced Thursday in 38 cities from Boston to Seattle and from St. Paul, Minn., to Raleigh, N.C.
Drug deals went down in Oklahoma parking lots, suppliers were advised to weld drugs into tire rims for transport, and in the Dallas and Seattle areas, dozens of children were removed from houses where authorities found drugs, guns or cash derived from drug sales.
Perhaps more than any other cartel, La Familia projects a Robin Hood image. The Drug Enforcement Administration said the group is “philosophically opposed to the sale of methamphetamine to Mexicans, and instead supports its export to the United States for consumption by Americans.”
Mexican police say the gang uses religion and family morals to recruit. The gang has hung banners in towns saying they do not tolerate drug use or attacks on women or children.
One of the gang’s alleged recruiters, detained last spring, ran drug-rehabilitation centers, helping addicts to recover and then forcing them to work for the drug gang or be killed, according to Mexico Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna.
In its short history, La Familia is believed to have emerged as the biggest supplier of methamphetamine to the United States and, increasingly, a peddler of cocaine, marijuana and other drugs.
La Familia operates methamphetamine “superlabs” in Mexico that produce up to 100 pounds of the drug in eight hours, a sharp contrast to small-time labs in the United States that have supplied American addicts, said Michael Braun, who retired as the DEA’s chief of operations last year.
