Pubdate: Sun, 05 Nov 2000
Source: Sacramento Bee (CA)
Copyright: 2000 The Sacramento Bee
Contact:  P.O.Box 15779, Sacramento CA 95852
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Author: By Peter Hecht, Bee Staff Writer

GROWERS HIT STREETS FOR POT-HARVEST LABOR: MEXICAN CARTELS RECRUIT, IMPORT 
WORKERS

Miguel Alvarado, 19, said he was pushing his ice cream cart on Fruitridge 
Road in Sacramento when a more lucrative opportunity came calling. Two men 
had stopped to buy ice cream that mid-September day. One excitedly told him 
he could earn $100 a day, "plus commission," if he'd just accompany them to 
the mountains. Alvarado insisted that they said he would work cutting pine 
trees. But according to a statement he later gave Colusa County sheriff's 
investigators, he soon learned otherwise.

He said the men bought him camping equipment, then drove him deep into the 
Coast Range west of Colusa. There, in a clearing surrounded by dense brush, 
conifers and scrub oaks, Alvarado said he saw a man in camouflage fatigues 
holding a rifle and guarding a vast garden of marijuana.

As his guides dropped him off and departed, Alvarado said, they told him 
his job was to harvest the crop.

"If you want to leave, go ahead," Alvarado said one of the men told him. 
"But remember, there are wild animals out there."

Colusa County Chief Deputy Sheriff Kevin Wheeler said authorities don't 
believe all of the story, namely that Alvarado and others brought to the 
mountains had no idea what they were being hired for. Yet in Colusa County 
and other parts of California, law enforcement officials say there is 
mounting evidence that marijuana growers -- largely associated with Mexican 
drug cartels -- aggressively recruit migrant or other low-wage workers in a 
late-season race to harvest their illicit crop.

In Colusa County, investigators recently discovered pot fields with a total 
of 4,500 plants and arrested seven workers who claimed they were hired off 
street corners, at day labor sites and in bars in the Sacramento area and 
Tijuana.

"I think they knew full well what they were getting into, but I have no 
doubt that part of their story is true -- that they were probably recruited 
off the street," Wheeler said. "Whoever is behind this knows that for a 
small investment they can take these people to the fields and -- if they 
get caught -- they will have no idea who the head honcho is."

Alvarado told authorities that he had fled the pot field and was lost in 
the mountains as officers in a California National Guard helicopter spotted 
the operation. Colusa investigators said they haven't been able to identify 
who planted the garden or hired the workers to cut the crop.

Four days later, authorities arrested Alvarado and a companion as the 
laborers -- tired and hungry with scratches and torn clothing -- wandered 
out of the forest at remote Goat Mountain Road near the border of Colusa 
and Lake counties.

This year, the state Department of Justice said a task force of more than 
70 local, state and federal police agencies seized 345,207 marijuana plants 
- -- worth an estimated $1.3 billion -- across California from July through 
mid-October. The haul was 43 percent higher than last year's previous record.

In the past dozen years, sophisticated Mexican drug cartels have taken over 
dominance of the California marijuana business, law enforcement officials 
say. The cartels have developed multitiered operations to plant the crop in 
secret patches in mountains from the North Coast to the southern Sierra and 
then cut, package and distribute it for sale.

California-grown marijuana fetches $4,000 a pound -- nearly the price of 
gold, state Attorney General Bill Lockyer said. And as the growing season 
culminates in late summer and early fall -- and as the police close in -- 
drug traffickers become desperate for workers and will hire outside their 
criminal networks, authorities say.

"It gets to the point at the end of the season where it's a race between 
law enforcement and the people tending the gardens," said Brent Wood, a 
state Department of Justice drug enforcement agent. "So they put 10 or 15 
people in a garden, (harvest) it and move on to the next one. I don't think 
they (the drug bosses) are worried about whether the guy they pick up to 
work will talk (to police), because by then they will have moved on to 
their next garden."

Wood, assigned to drug enforcement operations in Madera County, said 
investigators recently arrested two laborers hired by someone who stopped 
them at a gas station and offered $100 to $150 a day. He said many Mexican 
drug operations recruit workers during the summer in Tijuana, then arrange 
for a smuggler to spirit them across the border. But later in the season, 
he said, additional marijuana field hands are rounded up from California 
bars or job sites catering to migrant laborers.

John Gaines, a state Department of Justice special agent, said some workers 
claimed they were hired for farm work and -- upon seeing the marijuana 
fields -- were threatened at gunpoint. They were "told that if they don't 
do what they are told their families will be harmed," Gaines said.

But many go along willingly, he added. As marijuana growers promise, "They 
can make hundreds of dollars. What a deal."

In Colusa County, Jose Luis Flores Camacho, 25, one of seven people facing 
felony marijuana cultivation charges, told authorities he was working at a 
construction site in Rancho Cordova on Sept. 21 when a man drove by in a 
maroon or red van. The man said he was willing to pay $15 an hour for 
people to harvest grapes, said Flores, who was making only $6 an hour as a 
construction worker. Flores said he readily accepted the man's offer.

According to court documents, Flores told Colusa sheriff's investigators 
that the man later picked him up at a Sacramento restaurant and then 
stopped at an apartment complex and picked up six more workers. Flores said 
the man told his passengers not to talk to each other. The driver talked on 
a cellphone as he took them down a mountain back road to a place where four 
or five other workers were already waiting, Flores said.

"They took us to the campground and I saw marijuana plants there," he said. 
"... The next morning I was told that my job was to cut leaves off of the 
marijuana buds. I saw two other Mexican guys dressed in camo fatigues pack 
the marijuana buds into plastic bags. One of these guys carried an AK-47 
rifle with him all the time."

Flores said he worked in the garden for a week before authorities raided 
it. He said he ran off and took four days to make it out of the mountains. 
He was arrested when he stopped to use a pay phone in a nearby town.

Marysville attorney Roberto Marquez, who is representing another Colusa 
defendant, Jose Maria Figueroa Navarro, 37, said the drug cartels seem to 
"target people that they know are down and out."

Marquez said his client was recruited from Tijuana for seasonal farm work 
in California. He said a client he represented in another area marijuana 
cultivation case had been recruited from a coin laundry in Los Angeles by a 
man who struck up a conversation. Upon learning that his client was 
unemployed, Marquez said, the man then announced: "I've got an opportunity 
for you."

"It appears that they just pluck these guys up and bring them in, 
intentionally, from outside the area so that they are secluded, without 
transportation, abandoned and dependent on the growers," Marquez said. "To 
get your food you have to cooperate. And to get the hell out you've got to 
cooperate."

Wheeler, the chief deputy sheriff in Colusa County, said all seven suspects 
held in the local case appeared to be low-level laborers who wound up 
wandering in the mountains as their supervisors got away. The workers said 
they never got paid.

"It's frustrating," Wheeler said. "When it comes down to it, these guys 
(the laborers) are going to be victimized by the organization. It's a risky 
job. What's keeping the bad guys from killing them and leaving them in the 
hills?"
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