16 June 2006
Trinidad and Tobago, Ecuador, U.S. Dismantle Drug-Smuggling Group
22 defendants charged with importing heroin into United States
By Eric Green
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington –- U.S. law enforcement authorities have worked with their colleagues from Ecuador and Trinidad and Tobago to break up an international heroin-smuggling organization responsible, announced the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
In a June 15 statement, ICE said 22 defendants have been charged for their participation in the smuggling operation. The agency estimated that since 2004 the organization had smuggled more than 200 kilograms of heroin with a street value of about $14 million into the United States.
ICE said that authorities from the three countries seized about 28 kilograms of heroin, including 5 kilograms of heroin abandoned by a drug courier at a hotel in Guayaquil, Ecuador. In addition, the authorities seized 4 kilograms of heroin at Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, more than 4.5 kilograms at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, and nearly 6 kilograms at Piarco International Airport in Trinidad and Tobago. Law enforcement agents also seized about $220,000 in cash, said ICE, which is the investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Among those charged in the case was Javier Alexander Alvarez Monroy, a former police officer in Bogotá, Colombia. The investigation revealed that Alvarez and his associates used couriers to smuggle the organization's heroin from several foreign countries, including Ecuador, Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, Colombia, Brazil and Mexico to New York for distribution. (See related article.)
The organization employed more than a dozen drug couriers and recruiters, many of whom made multiple drug trips and most of whom were based in the Las Vegas area. Typically, the drug couriers smuggled 3 to 5 kilograms of heroin per trip concealed within the lining of clothes.
Roslynn Mauskopf, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said that "in this truly international investigation," U.S. law authorities worked closely with their counterparts in Trinidad and Tobago and in Ecuador "to shut down a far-reaching heroin importation organization and close its drug pipeline."
John Gilbride, special-agent-in charge of the New York field division for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, whose agency was involved in the case, added that "heroin-laden clothes or heroin hidden in soles of shoes -- it makes no difference how it is smuggled into the United States, law enforcement will find it."
Gilbride said that through U.S. collaborative efforts with its international partners, the United States is committed to "identifying, investigating, and dismantling drug trafficking organizations so we can stop the flow of poison onto the streets of our communities."
More information about U.S. counterdrug efforts in South America and the Caribbean is available in the U.S. State Department's 2006 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, available on the State Department Web site.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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