Source: Modesto Bee (CA) Contact: http://www.modbee.com/man/help/contact.html Website: http://www.modbee.com/ Pubdate: Friday 28 August 1998 Author: Ron DeLacy Bee, staff writer 3 IMMIGRANTS RELEASED IN FOOTHILLS POT BUST SAN ANDREAS -- Calaveras County authorities have released three of six illegal Mexican immigrants arrested in last week's record-setting marijuana raid. The other three -- Gerardo Mora, Cipriano Ramirez and Lorenso Gudino - -- have been charged with marijuana cultivation. They remain in county jail with bail set at $50,000 each and are due in Municipal Court for preliminary hearings Sept. 8. Apparently off the hook, although the district attorney's office wouldn't say why, are Eleajar Valencia, Juan Magallow and Fidel Ramirez. They were turned over to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, which means they will be deported, authorities said. The INS had placed immigration "holds" on all six people arrested, so that whenever they got out of jail or prison they would be forced to leave the country. Two of them -- Mora and Gudino -- were tackled last week on a huge marijuana plantation near the Calaveras River about three miles southwest of San Andreas. Narcotics agents had been watching the site for more than a month, and moved in for the bust Friday. They cut down or uprooted 11,643 pot plants -- more than triple the previous record for a Calaveras County raid and the biggest of the year in California, state agents said. Later Friday deputies arrested four more suspects -- Cipriano Ramirez, Fidel Ramirez, Valencia and Magallow -- who were found walking along Highway 12, about four miles out of town. Officers said the four were confronted by a drug agent who recognized one of them from surveillance of the pot plantation, and that all four admitted they had just come from there. But that doesn't automatically make them guilty of cultivation. They could have been visiting, and apparently that's what at least some of them claimed. Obviously, sheriff's Lt. Mike Walker said, the district attorney's office felt the evidence against Valencia, Magallow and Fidel Ramirez wasn't as strong as it was against the others. Deputy District Attorney Seth Matthews said he wouldn't discuss the reasons. - --- Checked-by: Rich O'Grady