Customs agency file details actions that may damage trafficking case

By ALFREDO CORCHADO / The Dallas Morning News

EL PASO – The man known as Lalo held the keys to the house across the border where drug dealers were executed. He assigned corrupt police officers their roles in the killings and even recommended how best to dispatch victims, whether with a gun or by suffocation with plastic bags to keep the noise down.

He called in gravediggers to bury bodies, paid the killers, and notified his cartel contact and sometimes U.S. agents when the job was done. He acted as go-between for the Juárez drug cartel and its intended targets.

These and other activities of Lalo, a paid informant for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, are detailed in an internal agency document obtained by The Dallas Morning News.

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ICE officials declined to comment on the draft document.

"Your questions touch on an ongoing investigation," spokeswoman Leticia Zamarripa said. "And it's ICE long-standing policy not to comment on pending criminal cases."

Not merely a spectator

The informant's activities, former senior law enforcement officials say, prove that he was in a position of power and not merely a spectator, as previously described by ICE. And the officials say the revelations could hamper the agency's case against Heriberto Santillán Tabares, who faces murder and drug trafficking charges in a January federal trial that will feature Lalo as star witness.

"ICE will have a huge hurdle to establish credibility," said Danny Defenbaugh, a Dallas security consultant and former FBI senior agent. "There are rules, procedures you follow. If you know the person is involved in murder, the first thing you do is prosecute him immediately.

"You stop the activity and get him arrested. ... It doesn't appear that ICE did that."

The ICE document is explicit about the informant's alleged involvement in the slaying and burial of 12 suspected drug traffickers in Juárez.

"[The informant] primarily set up the meeting with those who would be picked up [for murder]," the document states. "[The informant] would arrive at the meeting with those that would be picked up."

Advice to cartel

The document says that the informant offered unsolicited advice to top cartel members on ways to expand their territory – even as he was relaying information to ICE. Lalo even offered a souvenir of sorts to his ICE contact: a key chain with a photo of a man and his family shortly after the man, nicknamed "Chapo," was shot to death and buried behind the Juárez house.

Dated Jan. 29, 2004, the draft document was prepared by unidentified ICE agents, addressed to Pete Gonzalez, assistant special-agent-in-charge, and copied to several other officials, including U.S. prosecutor Juanita Fielden and two ICE agents.

It details the informant's activities from August 2003 to January 2004 and offers a rare look at the inner workings of the Juárez cartel, considered the most powerful drug trafficking organization in the Americas and known as "The Office."

The report, along with an affidavit Lalo gave to authorities Feb. 12 at the Mexican Consulate in Dallas, reveals "The Office" as a business enterprise in which no one is indispensable and in which dozens are killed each year for disciplinary reasons.

One example was the slaying of a cartel operative who went too far, killing a woman and her 4-year-old daughter. The woman had been seeking financial help for her husband, who was being held in an El Paso jail on drug trafficking charges. She was slain, and "when [cartel boss] Vicente Carrillo Fuentes found out, he ordered the killing of the man [responsible]," the ICE report states.

The report also says that some employees of Mexico's Federal Investigative Agency, or AFI, were working with the Juárez cartel. The report notes that in November 2003, two men notified AFI about the existence of a Juárez warehouse where drugs were being stowed. Someone from AFI, Mexico's elite federal police agency, allegedly told the cartel about the tip. As a result, the report states, the two tipsters were assaulted by a group including 10 state police officers and cartel lieutenants nicknamed "Clinton" and "Saddam," and ultimately beaten to death with a hammer.

An AFI spokeswoman in Mexico City declined to comment. Mexico's attorney general's office did not respond to written questions.

The life of Lalo

The ICE report and the affidavit delivered to the Mexican Consulate also offer biographical details about Lalo.

A former Mexican federal highway police officer, Lalo, now in his early 40s, lost that job in 1995 for reasons that are unclear. He turned to the cartel for work and quickly rose through the ranks, lauded for having imagination. That creativity was expressed early when he came up with a plan to use a truck bearing the logo of the Televisa TV network to smuggle 80 kilos of marijuana from Durango to El Paso.

Durango was where Lalo is said to have met Mr. Santillán, the man who later lured him to Juárez. Mr. Santillán, described as having a penchant for fashionable clothes and Rolex watches, took such a liking to Lalo that he tried coaxing him into forming a separate partnership, according to the documents. Lalo shunned that idea because he believed that eventually "Santillán would kill him and keep all the money."

By 2000, Lalo was working for ICE as an informant. The draft document does not explain what made him turn against the cartel, but a senior U.S. law enforcement official said, "Greed is usually a reason. Plus, we offer them a degree of protection."

Lalo proved unpredictable, said U.S. law enforcement officials familiar with the case. He had a drinking problem and once had to be bailed out of jail by an ICE agent in connection with drunken driving. And he "couldn't keep his mouth shut," one U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.

But he provided valuable information about the cartel, led authorities to the grave containing the bodies of the 12 drug traffickers, helped U.S. authorities confiscate tons of marijuana and cocaine, and turned in Mr. Santillán, the law enforcement officials said.

Nevertheless, some officials privately questioned whether Lalo was worth the trouble.

Two weeks ago, he returned to El Paso with the help of ICE agents and, on his own, arranged for an acquaintance to pick up a package of money owed to him. While waiting in a Whataburger parking lot, the man was gunned down as Lalo's girlfriend watched.

Put in protective custody

ICE agents then jailed Lalo for his own protection, but released him after he warned them about possible retribution against them. He was placed in protective custody in an undisclosed location.

"ICE no longer controls the informant," said Phil Jordan, former regional director of the Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA. "The informant controls them."