http://www.abqjournal.com/abqnews/index ... 9&Itemid=2

Written by Bruce Daniels - ABQnewsSeeker
Friday, 08 December 2006
More narcotics seized in two southern N.M. communities.

Luna County sheriff's deputies, working with the Border Operation Task Force's domestic highway interdiction program, seized 162 individually wrapped packages of marijuana valued at an estimated $136,000 at a house in Deming Thursday morning, the Deming Headlight reported today on its Web site.

And across southern New Mexico on Wednesday, the Alamogordo Department of Public Safety's narcotics enforcement unit found 78 units of heroin, 12 tablets of methadone, hypodermic needles and a small amount of marijuana at a local apartment, the Alamogordo Daily News reported this morning.

In Deming, 19-year-old Jose Carlos Calixto Lopez, an illegal alien from the Mexican state of Coahuila, was taken into custody at a house on Klondike Street, a house authorities described as a "stash house," the Headlight reported.

"He had 169.5 pounds of marijuana in his residence," sheriff's investigator Gary Leyba said of Lopez. "He had just removed it from a 1991 Honda Accord, which had crossed the border this morning."

The Honda's glove compartment and dashboard had been hollowed out and the trunk altered to conceal packages of drugs, Leyba said.

Lopez, who allegedly told authorities the drugs had come from Mexico, was turned over to the Border Operation Task Force for federal prosecution, the Headlight said.

In Alamogordo, police arrested John E. Smith, 52, and charged him with trafficking heroin by possession with intent to distribute, as well as possession of methadone, marijuana and drug paraphernalia, according to the Daily News.

Two cell phones and $200 in cash found in Smith's apartment were seized as forfeitable property, the Daily News said.

These arrests followed on the heels of two much larger drug seizures reported earlier this week out of Las Cruces, where Border Patrol agents found $938,240 worth of cocaine hidden in a van's side compartment and another vehicle suspected of crossing the border illegally and stopped in Santa Teresa, according to a story from The Associated Press .

Agents found 206 large cellophane-wrapped bundles of marijuana worth an estimated $917,896 in the Santa Teresa stopped and the 33-year-old male driver from Mexico was arrested, the AP reported.

In the first stop, agents arrested a 40-year-old man from Mexico and a 36-year-old woman from El Paso, the AP said.