Police round up $12.5 million in marijuana (2:35 p.m.)
Police seized 2,500 marijuana plants with a street value estimated at up to $12.5 million on Monday and arrested two armed men they found at the gardens.

Rafael Santoya-Pineda and Noel Tadia-Arreguin are in Jackson County Jail on immigration holds today.

The plants, each 4 to 6 feet tall, grew in scattered gardens on three acres of Bureau of Land Management property near Hyatt Lake, Jackson County Sheriff Mike Winters said. Plants of that size can produce about a pound of marijuana, which would have a value of around $5,000 on the street at the retail level, he said.

Officials had watched the growing operation, believed to be linked to a Mexican drug cartel, and swept in Monday to destroy it just before harvest time, sheriff’s Lt. Pat Rowland said.

SWAT teams from Jackson and Douglas counties and Oregon State Police, along with officers from the Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted Monday’s raid.

Investigators pulled out the plants, hoisted them in nets with a helicopter and filled a 10-yard dump truck. The plants were taken to a mill and burned, Winters said. Evidence also was collected at the scene during the day-long police effort.

— Anita Burke

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