Sheriff believes marijuana field workers were worked by illegal aliens


By MICHELE MARCOTTE


Monday, September 28, 2009

Evidence collected at a huge marijuana growing operation between Melrose and Etoile on Sunday has led authorities to believe that the majority of the operation was conducted by illegal aliens who answered to someone higher up.

Nacogdoches County Sheriff Thomas Kerss said items recovered from the operation's camp sites contained names, and his office is in the midst of obtaining leads on those individuals. He said from the appearance of working and living environments of the operation, he "strongly suspects" the majority of them will be illegal aliens and could be "linked to an individual higher up in the organization."

The large growing and harvesting operation, which Kerss estimates at 10,000 plants, was located Saturday night. An area resident noticed an unusual path of clothes leading into the woods and called authorities, Kerss said.

"Some nearby hog tracks lead us to believe that some feral hogs and come through and strewn the clothing believed to have come from one of the campsites," he said.

Kerss said a deputy was dispatched to investigate and located one of the camp sites strewn with piles of marijuana leaves, shucked stalks and a hammock. Authorities were dispatched to the scene, but as nightfall approached, they put off searching the nearby area for additional harvesting operations until Sunday.

Sheriff's deputies and county constables spent all day Sunday inventorying the outdoor marijuana fields, removing the plants and collecting DNA evidence from a handful of camp sites.

"Based on the number of tents and hammocks, it appears there were about two dozen people living and working in the woods," Kerss said, adding none of them had returned.

The living arrangements — a combination of air mattresses, hammocks, tents and lean-tos — were described as thrown together and crude, Kerss said, but the operation for growing the marijuana appeared to be a very sophisticated process.

"There was no electricity on the site at all," he said. "They used gas-operated pumps to move the water from a pond into retention ponds they had built. Then they mixed plant fertilizer and nutrients into the water and had more pumps that pumped that into the fields."

The operation is believed to have started during the early months of the summer based on the living area and growth of the marijuana, Kerss said. While the details are still speculation, Kerss believes the area off CR 425 was selected because of its remote location and natural water source, used to sustain the people and the plants.

No charges have been filed yet, but the evidence gathered during the investigation is expected to help identify some of the people involved.

"It should help us identify some of the field workers," he said. "While that is important to us, we want to be able to work up the chain of command and find out who was funding and outsourcing the operation."

Deputies searched the surrounding areas Monday, and while no additional marijuana was located, there were sites found in the nearby areas that appeared to be places where the operation was intended to expand.

"We found areas where they had used machetes to cut small saplings out to let the sunlight in," Kerss said, "but those areas had not been planted, yet, though it was cut in the same pattern of the field that we had found."

The total cost of the plants found at this time is estimated to be more than $1 million, Kerss said.

"I don't have an exact dollar figure, but based on sources from the DPS Narcotics Division, other growths that were not nearly as large netted over $1 million," he said. "This was twice the size, so we can conservatively say that we confiscated over that."


http://www.dailysentinel.com/news/conte ... 7&cxcat=10