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Drug Trafficking Organizations

Mexican DTOs use the Rocky Mountain HIDTA region as a base of operation for regional and national-level drug trafficking and money laundering activities. Mexican DTOs and criminal groups exploit the HIDTA region's centralized location and highly developed transportation infrastructure to supply wholesale quantities of ice methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, and marijuana to the Rocky Mountain HIDTA region from sources of supply in Mexico and distribution cells along the Southwest Border. Mexican organizational connections to these sources of supply are often family-based; extended family members are located throughout the HIDTA region and the Southwest Border area as well as in Mexico. Mexican DTO members also assimilate into the large Hispanic population in the region, allowing them to conduct their drug trafficking operations with a degree of anonymity. Mexican traffickers exploit language barriers between themselves and law enforcement authorities to impede interviews, intelligence collection, and interrogations. The ability of Mexican traffickers to control drug distribution in the region is augmented by alliances that they have formed with various criminal groups, prison gangs, street gangs, and outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMGs). Mexican DTOs capitalize on the organizational networks that these gangs have established in the region by using them to transport, store, package, and distribute illicit drugs and to assist in money laundering activities.

 
Drug Trafficking Organizations, Criminal Groups, and Gangs

Drug trafficking organizations are complex organizations with highly defined command-and-control structures that produce, transport, and/or distribute large quantities of one or more illicit drugs.

Criminal groups operating in the United States are numerous and range from small to moderately sized, loosely knit groups that distribute one or more drugs at the retail level and midlevel.

Gangs are defined by the National Alliance of Gang Investigators' Associations as groups or associations of three or more persons with a common identifying sign, symbol, or name, the members of which individually or collectively engage in criminal activity that creates an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.
 

Asian DTOs are the primary transporters and distributors of Canadian high-potency marijuana and MDMA in the region. Canada-based Vietnamese criminal groups smuggle high-potency marijuana and MDMA into the region across the U.S.-Canada border through Washington and Montana. Asian DTOs often shield themselves from law enforcement scrutiny by employing surrogate criminal groups to conduct some high-risk operations. For example, they often use East Indian drug transportation organizations for cross-border smuggling of marijuana, MDMA, cocaine, and bulk currency. Asian DTOs are also reducing the costs and risks associated with marijuana smuggling by increasing the number of indoor cannabis grow sites that they operate within the HIDTA region. Asian traffickers coordinate the smuggling of Canadian marijuana and MDMA into the United States and cocaine and bulk cash into Canada, using fixed-wing aircraft, float planes, and helicopters as well as commercial and private vehicles. Officials also report that Asian traffickers hire local individuals as "mules" to cross the Montana-Canada border. These mules cross into Montana between POEs while carrying 50- to 100-pound quantities of marijuana, typically in hockey equipment bags. These loads are often transported by private vehicles, all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), and snowmobiles as well as on foot. Most of the high-potency marijuana and MDMA smuggled across the border is transported to distribution centers in Denver; Salt Lake City; Las Vegas, Nevada; and Los Angeles and San Francisco, California.

Street gangs and OMGs pose a major challenge to law enforcement agencies in the Rocky Mountain HIDTA region because they often use violence in establishing or maintaining control of their drug trafficking activities. These gangs are responsible for most of the assaults, home invasion robberies, and homicides that take place in major metropolitan areas of the region. Hispanic street gangs, primarily affiliates of Sureņos and Norteņos, are midlevel and retail-level distributors of ice methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, and marijuana that they receive from Mexican wholesalers. African American street gang members, most notably affiliates of Bloods and Crips, are the primary converters and retail distributors of crack cocaine in the HIDTA region. OMGs, particularly Hells Angels Motorcycle Club (HAMC), Outlaws, Bandidos, and Sons of Silence, distribute ice methamphetamine and high-potency marijuana in some areas of the region. These OMGs obtain methamphetamine from Mexican traffickers and also transport the drug from California and southwestern states. Members of HAMC smuggle significant quantities of high-potency marijuana from Canada into the United States. They cross the border primarily in British Columbia, Canada, but are increasingly transporting high-potency marijuana directly into the HIDTA region through POEs in Montana.


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