Mexican National Pleads Guilty to Trafficking Methamphetamine in San Juan County

ALBUQUERQUE – Pricilio Garcia-Jimenez, 40, a Mexican national who resided in Farmington, N.M., entered a guilty plea late yesterday afternoon to methamphetamine trafficking charges.  Under the terms of his plea agreement, Garcia-Jimenez will be sentenced to 108 months in federal prison.  Garcia-Jimenez, who was in the United States without authorization at the time of his arrest, will be deported after he completes his prison sentence.

Garcia-Jimenez was arrested on May 22, 2012, on a criminal complaint alleging that he sold methamphetamine to an undercover officer in April 2012, in San Juan County, N.M.  Garcia-Jimenez has been in custody since that time.   In July 2012, Garcia-Jimenez was indicted and charged with distributing methamphetamine in San Juan County on five separate occasions between Nov. 2011 and April 2012.

During this afternoon’s plea hearing, Garcia-Jimenez pleaded guilty to four of the five counts in the indictment and an information charging him with distribution of methamphetamine, and admitted distributing methamphetamine for profit in San Juan County, N.M. In his plea agreement, Garcia-Jimenez admitted distributing methamphetamine to an undercover officer on five separate occasions between Nov. 2011 and April 2012.  He further admitted distributing methamphetamine to others on four occasions between Sept. 2011 and Nov. 2011.

Garcia-Jimenez remains in federal custody pending his sentencing hearing, which has yet to be scheduled. 

This case was investigated by the Albuquerque office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the HIDTA Region II Narcotics Task Force and is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas J. Ganjei.

The Region II HIDTA Narcotics Task Force is comprised of officers from the Farmington Police Department, San Juan County Sheriff’s Office, Bloomfield Police Department and Aztec Police Department.  It is part of the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) program which was created by Congress with the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988.  HIDTA is a program of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) which provides assistance to federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies operating in areas determined to be critical drug-trafficking regions of the United States and seeks to reduce drug trafficking and production by facilitating coordinated law enforcement activities and information sharing.