From the good people with Oregonians for Immigration Reform:

August 16, 2009

OFIR members and supporters:

Another news story about illegal aliens setting up marijuana growing operations in wilderness areas in Oregon.

The illegal alien growers cut down native vegetation, apply herbicides, pollute rivers and streams and kill wildlife. Why do we never hear from environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society, The National Resource Council, etc. in opposition to these practices? Is it that illegal aliens are a protected political class of polluters?

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Tribal police seize fourth major marijuana grow on the Warm Springs reservation

By Bryan Denson, The Oregonian
Saturday August 15, 2009, 12:48 AM

Detective Starla Green, of the Warm Springs Tribal Police, radios her progress in receiving 1600 marijuana plants dropped by helicopter from their garden in Jefferson Creek canyon. Warm Springs Tribal Police Narcotics detective John Webb led the interagency team that seized the plants Friday.

Police crept into a marijuana plantation this morning on a remote stretch of the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, seizing 1,630 plants but catching none of the growers who are suspected of being part of a Mexican drug gang.

Outdoor pot seizures are common in late summer months across much of Oregon as growers prepare to harvest one of the state's leading -- although illegal -- cash crops. But the cultivation of cannabis on the 1,019-square-mile Warm Springs reservation and other native lands across the region has reached epic proportions.

Today's seizure marks the fourth time since July 2007 that police have taken down the fruits of suspected Mexican drug gangs on the Central Oregon reservation. Authorities seized 30,584 plants in the earlier busts, estimating their street value at $33.5 million.

The estimated street value of the plants seized today was $5 million, said Warm Springs Police Chief Carmen Smith.

Cartels have picked reservations in Warm Springs and Umatilla, as well as Washington tribal lands -- including those owned by the Colville and Yakama tribes -- because they are remote, mountainous and offer little human traffic, Smith said. Like other tribal police agencies, his department focuses its slim resources on policing his town and nearby neighborhoods.

"We're so busy," Smith said, "that we don't have time to make these rural patrols."

Mexican growers have wormed their way into the Warm Springs reservation by taking girlfriends who live there, scouting remote spots and setting up camps in wild places that prove most inhospitable to human traffic, Smith said. His department has identified their plantations by putting tribal police in Oregon Army National Guard helicopters to look for them from the air.

"That's how we spotted this one," the chief said.

The grow site was identified about a month ago and police kept watch on what appeared to be a group of Hispanic men tending the marijuana.

As morning's first light shone blue across the region, a task force of investigators -- tribal police from Warm Springs, Umatilla, Quinault, Wash., and Puyallup, Wash., along with federal agents from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Forest Service -- began sneaking up on the growers's campsite.

The grow site was along Jefferson Creek, a rugged patch of Ponderosa pine forest on the southwestern corner of the reservation. Police found their route to the grower's camp so overgrown with snowbrush and Manzanita that it took them three hours to quietly pick their way through 500 yards.

They must have been overheard. As they approached the camp, investigators heard someone running through the woods, said Warm Springs Detective John Webb.

When police finally reached the plantation, they found a hose that appeared to have been dropped in a hurry by a suspect watering the plants.

Investigators found a sophisticated irrigation system in which growers had run a hose at least 400 yards upstream. Water was propelled by gravity into the gardens, where workers apparently sprinkled each plant by hand, Webb said.

Investigators found tarps and irrigation equipment among the plants that was nearly identical to those found during Mexican cartel grow seizures on the reservation in 2007 and 2008. It appeared the growers had cleared a patch of snowbrush and planted marijuana in its place.

"It was quite well camouflaged," Webb said. "The plants were anywhere from two feet to seven feet in height. They looked like they had two, maybe three different strains."

At about 3 p.m., a Chinook helicopter lifted three cargo nets full of marijuana plants -- about a ton, all told -- out of the forest.

"It's already been photographed and documented," Webb said. "So now it's going to be destroyed."

Bryan Denson: bryandenson@news.oregonian.com

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ss ... h_maj.html