Pubdate: Fri, 19 Aug 2005 Source: Arizona Daily Sun (AZ) Copyright: 2005 Arizona Daily Sun Contact: http://www.azdailysun.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1906 Author: Cyndy Cole, staff writer Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis) FOREST POT BUST WORTH $30M Eleven illegal immigrants from Mexico have been arrested and about 100,000 marijuana plants worth a total of $150 million are being uprooted as a result of several drug busts that culminated with one near Strawberry on Monday. Law enforcement authorities say they've caught mostly field workers in a transnational drug growing operation that's one of the largest in state history. Two previous busts on the nearby Tonto National Forest yielded about 80,000 marijuana plants, by the U.S. Attorney's office estimates, and a third in the Fossil Springs area Monday yielded anywhere from 20,000 to 36,000 more plants, with counting still ongoing. Just that most recent bust of a crop hidden among trees in the Coconino National Forest is one of the largest on state record. A hiker in the Coconino National Forest told police about suspicious activity there. The busts were all related to the same organization, the U.S. Attorney's office said in a statement. The four Mexican immigrants arrested in Monday's bust of a crop scattered and hidden over three miles in the Fossil Springs wilderness area will be held in court pending a trial, U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Aspey ruled Thursday. "Obviously this is a very large, if not huge, marijuana farm," Aspey said. "Obviously there was a larger organization involved other than these few individuals." They'll head to Phoenix next for federal grand jury trials, which are not open to the public, and ultimately face a minimum of 10 years in prison, and potentially life in prison. Gerardo Manzo Pulido was one of the men arrested on charges of growing marijuana as he tried to leave the crop in Fossil Creek, along with Jesus Castillo Melendres, Oscar Nunez Medina and David Valencia Gonzalez. Pulido told a Spanish interpreter that he's 19 years old and has an education that ended with third grade. He was hired by someone in Phoenix to tend to what he was told would be cotton but turned out to be marijuana, he told police. He was given an empty handgun and instructed to guard the crop, he told police. He nodded in court Thursday when attorneys and Forest Service Special Agent Bill Mickle said he'd never been paid the $100 per week he'd been promised. He had no cash on him when he was arrested, at least none that has been found so far with his belongings. Medina, 40, the eldest of the four and heavily armed with an assault rifle in surveillance footage, had $1,000 in cash on him when he was arrested, along with ammunition. He is not being charged at this moment for carrying the ammunition, as reported earlier. Pulido told law enforcement officers he was not allowed to leave the crop. His lawyer alluded to the idea that Pulido may not have known, or at least not have acknowledged to an interrogator, that marijuana was the crop he was growing. Lawyers for the other suspects questioned whether their clients were the ones documented tending or guarding marijuana crops in surveillance photos, and tried to build a history of who was or wasn't seen talking to whom. Each of the men arrested Monday declined to give the court a personal history. Aspey suspects each could be using a false name. Melendres, 31, has been deported to Mexico from Mesa before under the same name. Law enforcement officers from the Coconino County Sheriff's Office, the Drug Enforcement Agency, Gila County, the Forest Service and the Department of Public Safety swooped in on the farm after a DPS helicopter flew over, alerting drug farmers to police present. Gonzalez ran but was taken down by a police dog. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin