Arizona SWAT Raids a Million Dollar Cartel Stash House

Welcome to the US Mexico border.

Each day, narcotics worth billions of dollars are trafficked by Mexican gangs through the rest of the US.

And where millions of immigrants enter America illegally in search of a better life, we have unique access to Arizona’s specialized police units who have the most dangerous job in the border war against the Mexican crime wave.

Tonight, people smugglers try to flee from the police.

Hey, the US border patrol catch a group of illegal immigrants. off a search warrant.

Hey, tell her to get off the phone now.

Phoenix, the fifth most populated city in the USA.

It’s the capital of Arizona, situated on the US border with Mexico.

Here, thousands of people are smuggled across the border into America each year.

If illegal immigrants manage to cross the inhospitable desert, they’re then transported north in load vehicles to Phoenix before the smuggling gangs move them to other cities.

The task of intercepting these vehicles falls to Maricopa’s human smuggling unit.

Sergeant Manny Madrid is stationed beside the highway in South Phoenix.

We’ve done several hundred load vehicles.

A lot of them have several similarities between them and uh that’s what we’re looking for.

It’s a waiting game and see how long it takes us tonight.

But generally we can get into two or three different load vehicles um within a four or five hour period.

So there’s a lot of traffic coming up this highway.

It doesn’t take long before Manny gets a call that a colleague has pulled over a vehicle further up the road.28.

Two suspected illegal immigrants have been stopped.

Between 2006 and 2009, Manny’s unit have detained more than 3 and a half thousand Mexicans who have entered the US illegally.

The men are taken in and face deportation from the US if they cannot prove their status.

According to Sergeant Madrid, by this point of the journey, many illegals are in a desperate state.

We had a group of them and the guy was begging me to pull the water out of my radiator for him to drink and it was a H๏τ summer day and he was begging for my radiator water to drink.

So, you know, yeah, there’s some compᴀssion.

I mean, if your world is that bad and you’re willing to go through that to be here, I, you know, I couldn’t imagine.

So, yeah, sure, there’s compᴀssion.

After dark, the Mexican smugglers take the opportunity to transport their human cargo.

As he patrols the highway, Manny spots another suspicious looking vehicle.

Chrysler Voyager Phoenix.

People smugglers or coyotes as they’re called use SUVs like this as load vehicles.

How you doing? Get back in the van.

Please get back in the van.

Back in the van.

Put your hands up right now.

Everybody put your hands on Marasariva.

Manosa now.

Manny discovers the vehicle is crammed full of people and calls for backup.

520.

Can you start me a couple units, please? Code for as he checks the rest of the car.

One of the pᴀssengers makes a run for it.

Hey, come here.

In the car now.

Now.

Now.

104.

Um, Hispanic male, dark shirt, blue jeans.

Um, he jumped the fence eastbound towards uh, uh, probably angled like towards the substation there.

On his own and with the prospect of armed coyotes in the car, Manny attempts to secure the vehicle.

Any weapons? Any pistolas? No, nothing.

Everybody, hands right here on the right and put me on the right there.

All of you now.

No, we’re stuck here waiting.

I’m not going to go chase the one guy.

So, with backup just minutes away, the driver takes the opportunity to escape.

Go.

520 King in the vehicle just took off on me.

514 King right behind him.

Try 14 town.

Under threat of punishment from their Mexican crime bosses, the smugglers have to deliver their human cargo at whatever the cost.

He’s falling over.

Might have another jumper.

The suspected coyotes and illegals bail out of the SUV.

And one deputy gives chase.

We’re going to go around the other side over here.

32 as well.

Manny and the other units drive to the other side of the scrubland.

520 King approximately four to five R.

Chris, I’m right here.

Where you at? Dave, am I in the right spot? You’re perfect.

That tree just north of you, that’s where I last saw him.

He kind of hunkered down into there and I don’t know if he crossed the road.

I don’t think he did, but Manny is a professional hunter and uses his skills when tracking criminals in situations like this.

I’ve been a hunter all my life.

I’m I’ve hunted uh several North American animals.

We have uh we’ve tracked, in fact, recently here two weeks ago, I tracked a uh a wounded elk um by a single hoof print, one little particular thing about his hoof print for a mile and a half, and we were able to find that bull ᴅᴇᴀᴅ.

Um out here, it’s kind of the same thing.

It recently rained.

Any disturbance to this ground, even if they’re walking, is going to make a very noticeable impression that somebody’s come through here.

The K9 team arrives to ᴀssist in the search.

Many worries the coyotes are so desperate they’ll do anything to escape.

When these guys bailed, what they have on their person, I don’t know.

I have no clue.

They could have nothing.

They could have handguns stuffed in their waistbands.

I don’t know.

So, absolutely.

Is the potential for it to be dangerous? Yes, absolutely.

Is it dangerous? I don’t know until we’re done with this.

What you got right here? Oh, I think I got a track.

Tracks are found in the scrubland and then Manny gets a call that two suspects have been detained nearby.

So I picked up one 101 and you got two over there.

So we’re outstanding too, right? Two approximately three.

The deputies question and arrest the men on suspicion of being people smugglers.

This is the driver right here.

That’s the driver.

Human smuggling is a lucrative business.

Coyotes can earn their mafia bosses up to $60,000 per load vehicle.

Meanwhile, their colleagues have rounded up the remaining people from the car, all of them suspected illegal immigrants.

The men and women are lined up in the corridor while the suspected coyotes are put into a separate room.

Before they are interrogated, the arrested men are checked for injuries.

I’m just checking him.

We have a paramedic that’s on the squad.

However, I’m an EMT, so I’m just looking over his wounds, making sure that there’s nothing that needs immediate medical attention, you know, um, from the scene.

When they ran from the vehicle, there was a barbwire fence that he jumped over, and in the course of jumping over that fence, he caught got these ones.

Eight people in total were arrested on human smuggling charges.

All will be deported back to Mexico.

This is the US border town of Ngales.

All that separates it from Mexico is a 15 ft high fence.

Ngales lies in the state of Arizona in the southwest of America.

It’s impossible to police the entire 2,000m long border.

And each year an estimated 1 million people attempt to break into the US from Mexico.

The Nagalas Police Department is on the front line in his war against illegal immigrants.

Officer Robert Thompson patrols this fence every day.

Right now, we’re traveling eastbound along the uh fence line about 5 miles outside the city.

And we’re basically going to stop by at a breaking point, a big old gap in the uh fence.

The US Mexico barrier only covers 600 m of land.

So there are many gaps in the border that are open to exploitation.

This is pretty much it.

Couple strands of barb wire, big old barriers here.

This is a prime example as to how our borders aren’t really that secure.

It’s really easy to just walk it over, slide, crawl underneath through here, and boom, you’re basically in in the US at that point.

I’ll even demonstrate how easy it is to come in or even out of the US.

Mexican people smugglers or coyotes as they’re known exploit these points in the border.

Human smuggling, it’s a very profitable business around here.

The coyote will charge to almost $2,000 per person.

These these people who are trying to come into the United States and make a better life for themselves definitely have to put their lives at the mercy of these coyotees.

Throughout the whole journey, they are left without food, without water.

They’re left to die.

Some of the younger women or even the older ones for that for that matter, they get Sєxually ᴀssaulted on the journey all the way out here.

You know, highest price these people can pay actually their life.

Been dropped off in the desert with no food, no water, been Sєxually ᴀssaulted all the way through.

That’s the price they pay for what they perceive to be freedom.

The border with Mexico runs through the desolate plains of Arizona.

Where the Nagales Police Department jurisdiction ends, the US Border Patrol takes over.

Part of the Department of Homeland Security, 17,000 agents are tasked with protecting the American frontier.

With 9 years service behind him, agent Jason Miller says it’s not only illegal immigrants who are trying to break into the US.

We have caught our fair share of child molesters, murderers, and you know, basically the type of people that I wouldn’t want as my neighbor.

But there is also a fair share of those that are coming here to just look for work.

It’s not my job to differentiate between the two.

It’s my job to just apprehend them and hope that in the process of catching these people, we get some of these other guys also off the street.

And that’s that’s where I take my satisfaction in my job is knowing that I can keep a murderer from coming into this country.

I can keep I can keep a possible terrorist from working his way into this country.

In the process of their work, border agents face extreme force from these hardcore criminals.

Agent Miller’s colleagues have had lucky escapes in the past.

Smugglers had a sniper on a hillside across the way.

SH๏τ one of them in the leg.

He fell, couldn’t get to his radio, and even at that point, he couldn’t get out on his radio because of the terrain he was in.

That’s the kind of dangers that we face on a day-to-day basis.

And these guys are becoming more and more willing to um protect their their drugs or even their their groups of aliens coming across.

Mexican traffickers use specific routes around this vast open border area in an attempt to traffic drugs or smuggle people past the authorities.

In response, the border patrol have placed 200 ground sensors on the known trails used by the crime networks.

One of the sensors has just been triggered.

Right now, we’re going to kind of go into the area and get to a place where we where we think they could be coming out.

I mean, as you can see, it’s a pretty pretty dense area, so they could be coming out anywhere out of these mountains.

But we’re we’re taking taking our chances here, and we’re going to check out this trail and see if they come out to us.

The patrol get a call from their forward scouts 2 miles ahead, confirming the group who set the sensors off are approaching.

These two are going to wait out here to make contact with the group.

group’s going to be coming down this trail probably me right there.

We’re going to walk back in quite a ways and uh actually wait for the group to pᴀss by.

That way we can flank them and we can keep them from hopefully running back or running further north.

The agents take their positions hiding in the scrub and ready themselves to apprehend the suspects.

45 minutes later, the group are spotted.

I got a I got a trail.

Get out.

Get out.

Get on the ground.

The suspects are rounded up and handcuffed.

The group of five men and one woman have spent two days walking through the desert to make it to the US.

All have entered the country illegally.

In the past 10 years, an estimated 2,000 people have died attempting to enter the US illegally from Mexico.

Most succumb to heat stroke, dehydration, or hypothermia.

Even if they make it to America, Agent Miller says for some, their ordeal does not end there.

If they hadn’t been caught, they would have probably gotten to a point north of here, made a phone call for a vehicle to come pick them up and take them to what we refer to as a stash house where they keep them.

And we’ve seen some of these stash houses have got absolutely horrid conditions.

They keep dozens of people in a single room without any restroom, food, or water basically until their family in Mexico pays them in order to release them.

And they they’re unimportant to them.

They they they really don’t care.

The smuggling organization does not care about them.

They see dollar signs when they see them.

They don’t look at them as human beings.

Most of the people caught today claim to be economic migrants looking for a better life.

Jesus has attempted this dangerous journey two times already.

My mind is over here.

I I act like American people.

Uh in Mexico, the money they pay is very very um low.

If you work uh the all day, you get paid $10 and you don’t buy nothing with $10 per day.

So there’s the more you can get.

So that’s why we going to United States.

As many Mexicans do make it over, families are split between the two countries.

Jesus reveals he risked his life and broke the law as his wife and children are in Detroit.

I have to do this because I got a little girl.

I have two boys.

if they needs me.

My wife needs me and sorry, it’s my family.

If somebody has family that going, I don’t think it’s going to be very hard to understand my point or my situation.

For Jesus and his friends, they will not make it any further than the border.

They will all be processed.

And if they have no criminal record, they will be deported back home to Mexico.

Mexican drug gangs will use every method possible to smuggle narcotics into the USA.

Along with trafficking shipments over the border, an estimated 10 million packages containing illegal narcotics pᴀsses through the shipping sector each year.

Stopping this illegal contraband, as well as the billions of dollars of drug profits sent back to Mexico, is an impossible task.

In Phoenix, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s SWAT team has been called in to tackle a persistent offender.

This morning, we’re going to be executing a a narcotic search warrant for the US Postal Service.

Uh what we have are some individuals that are obviously involved in sending uh large amounts of marijuana to various locations on the east coast.

Battling the dealers moving the drug packages around the US is a dangerous task.

But in any narcotics case, you have weapons.

And when you have weapons, you’re looking at the potential of violence.

In response to this threat of violence, each operation is meticulously planned.

If this gate’s unlocked, we won’t worry about smashing it with the bear.

But if it is, we’re going to smash it with the bear dismount.

The stack’s going to come up the stairs onto the deck and go straight to the Arcadia door.

We’re going to use the breaching sH๏τgun with the DD rounds to break that.

All right, Bravo 6 is going to be our radio channel.

Let’s go ahead and get kitted up.

Get ready to do that.

With temperatures well over 100°, the team load into the bear and wait for the delivery to be made.

Why are you worried about it? There is no A to B convers.

It’s important that we all relax and uh just joke around prior to a mission uh just because it alleviates the stress of what we’re about to to do.

And uh it just it when it’s about game time, everyone focuses, everyone concentrates.

Hey guys, our target is at the location.

Target is at the house.

He’s wearing a white t-shirt.

Rick on you.

We’re ready to go.

SWAT teams are highly vulnerable when approaching a target location.

They’ll have to get as close to the property as possible before mounting their attack.

We’re going to have to put our bear through the fence in the front yard uh so we have some cover in case sH๏τs are fired.

That’s going to leave very little time for us to get from the bear up on the porch and get into the target.

So, we’re going to have our our entry team on the outside of the skids.

So, it’s just a matter of stepping off, stacking up, and getting up and being able to hit the house.

Four houses down to the left.

On arrival, they smash through the fence with ease and jump off the bear immediately.

Dismount.

Dismount.

Dismount.

Sheriff, I have a search warrant.

They announce themselves and then take out the windows and patio door.

Come out.

Come out to us.

Sheriff, have a search warrant.

Stunned, the suspect comes out immediately and the team enter to secure the house.

After clearing every room, a package of marijuana is retrieved from the property.

Inspectors from the postal service arrived to see how the operation went.

Arizona is a source state for controlled substance, in particular marijuana.

It’s a big problem for us.

Safety of our employees, uh, safety of the integrity of the postal service, the postal system.

Um, we have one in custody thanks to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.

Uh, we love working with their SWAT team.

Um, we work with them quite a bit.

They support us in these kind of operations.

These guys are trained.

They do it every day.

It’s something we don’t do every day.

So, we rely on them quite a bit.

Let’s go, guys.

Let’s move.

Buddy is satisfied with the day’s work and believes the amount of force was justified.

In today’s society, our criminals start out with an advantage.

They don’t have a rule book that they have to follow.

So, we try to level that playing field with SWAT, uh, with the tools that we have, the tools that we use, and the training that we that we use every day.

So, hopefully that’ll level the playing field a little bit.

And today it did.

Uh, the way we moved through the house was my guys were absolutely perfect.

The suspect was arrested for possession of marijuana and deported back to Mexico.

An estimated 2 million pounds of marijuana with a street value of 10 billion is trafficked through the US border town of Ngales and the surrounding area each year.

Today, officer Gaston Ortega is patrolling the streets next to the border.

A number of properties in this area are known to be consistently used by Mexican drug smugglers.

Let’s walk this way.

What do we got here? It’s normally a stash house where they hide their the contraband, the marijuana, illegals.

Sometimes we get called out out here.

You can see a lot of trash, rubbish.

See the This is what they use for strapping the bundles.

Make straps like a backpack.

They put it in the back and jump the fence.

And sometimes they hide it here.

Stash houses are used temporarily to store marijuana that’s been smuggled over the border.

As you can see, the the border is right here.

You can see the fence line right here.

And it’s easy for them to jump and bring it across.

Just that.

Yeah.

The Mexican border.

It’s approximately 50 yards away.

There’s a jumping distance.

They run it through.

Come in through the bottom of the house to the second floor or the basement.

They bring it down here, stash it in here.

They bring it up through the holes.

This house has got many holes.

Officer Ortega finds evidence of marijuana backpacks used recently to transport drugs to the stash house.

They transported the bundles in this and then they come here and make a second wrap with this clear uh plastic wrap.

They wrap it again in smaller sizes or bigger sizes and they pack it, repack it.

You see the contraband? They buck it out through the front door maybe and into the vehicle and take it off and move it out to northern cities in Arizona, Tucson, Phoenix.

Each day across Ngales, drug mules attempt to ship packages to cities further north.

On the other side of town, officer Amodor Vasquez has caught one mule red-handed.

I made contact with this female.

I asked her if I could search a bag and she said yes.

Upon searching the bag, I found between 10 and and 15 approximately pounds of marijuana.

This girl right now is getting paid between $1,000 to $500 just to take the marijuana from here to Ngalas to Tucson or Phoenix, wherever her destination was.

Back in Phoenix, the sheriff’s SWAT team continue their relentless battle with the Mexican drug gangs.

That evening, they’re brought in to ᴀssist with a warrant for a dangerous drug dealer.

About 5:30 this afternoon, I got contacted by Lieutenant Bailey from our special investigations division ongoing wiretap.

Um, apparently they got a lot of conversation tonight about two specific houses where they were going to have a large quanтιтy of cash and a large quanтιтy of dope.

Lieutenant Bailey said that there was a high violence potential at this residence.

a lot of weapons and individuals that would probably fight us.

Rico runs through the surveillance footage that he gathered from earlier that day.

All right, guys.

We’re coming off a baseline right here northbound on 12th A.

It’s that big corner house that you see on a corner.

Containment.

This is you guys right here.

You guys got to understand this is very open.

As soon as we hit baseline, we’re exposed.

Everybody’s going to have to be ready to dismount really quick.

Guys, let’s get loaded up, please.

Okay, LT, on you with the bear.

With a shootout comment on such warrants, the atmosphere is tense as the team drives to the address.

Last uh known activity at the house was movement in the house.

So, we definitely have people there.

Lights out, everybody.

Lights out.

I need lights out on the vehicles.

As they turn onto 12th Avenue, the vehicle’s headlights are switched off.

Stand by.

Dismount.

Dismount.

Dismount.

Shut the bear off.

Turn the bear off.

Sheriff search warrant.

In DD backyard.

DD backyard.

Shut ᴀss off a searchorn.

The team’s tactics are aggressive to counter the potential threat of violence and quickly find their suspect.

How are the kids? They’re five more kids and there’s a girl.

What’s her name? Ma.

Three children.

A girlfriend named Maida.

Okay, we got three children and an adult female upstairs.

Okay, tell her to get off the phone now.

Give me one other team to go with us up the stairs.

Come on, let’s go.

Worried that she may be calling in other gang members, Buddy moves upstairs to take control of the situation.

The children are finally led downstairs by one of the deputies.

For the SWAT team, finding children in a drug dealer’s house is never easy.

Well, making an entry on a house with kids is always a difficult process.

I have kids myself, so I know they are caught in between this um the acts of their parents.

We’re talking about drugs, we’re talking about weapons, and we have to come to the house and arrest their parents and they’re caught in the middle.

We try our best to explain to the kids that nothing’s going to happen.

We’re not here to hurt them.

We’re just here doing our job.

But, uh we we encounter it every single day.

The arrested man was later charged with misconduct involving a weapon and illegal possession of drugs.

There are an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants residing in the US, over half of which are Mexican.

And the ravines in this remote US border area are used daily by people wanting to sneak into America.

Officer Robert Herter has spent years policing this area and knows the smuggling routes intimately.

This is a small stream, Fred.

Uh they do use uh undocumented aliens and uh narcotic smugglers do use the natural contour uh that’s available.

This particular stream bed is being used.

You can see the type of uh the numerous foot sign that’s out in this area.

More than likely is this area will be used later on today or later on uh this week.

A lot of the areas down here provide perfect shelter until they’re uh the vehicles show up to pick them up.

If you notice the landscape, it’s primarily tan or gray and any green spots that’s available, they try to take advantage of them.

At night, these ravines become popular trafficking routes.

With light not being present, they can move around a little more freely.

And uh, believe it or not, at night, with a full moon, most of these most of these trails are are litten up like a freeway.

It’s a daily cat and mouse game.

The smugglers have an army of scouts on lookout, watching the movements of Nagali’s police.

Robert hears a whistle in the distance due to the sun going down.

people could start getting ready to move.

Um, it could have been coming anywhere from within the canyon or above the uh the plateau itself.

There it goes again.

Second whistle.

Third whistle.

If the illegal immigrants successfully dodge the Nagalis police, they’re transported north in load vehicles to Phoenix before the gangs move them to other cities in the US.

The Maricopa Sheriff’s human smuggling unit are engaged in a daily battle with the smugglers who try to ship the illegals via the main highways of Arizona.

On Interstate 17, the deputies have pulled over what they believe to be a load vehicle.

Subjects crossed the border a couple days ago, got dropped off in Phoenix.

Guess this truck belongs to his wife.

It was left in the parking lot for them.

Okay.

Unlike most illegals who were taken to a drop house first by the smugglers, this group appeared to have been brought through Nagales and left to make their own way across America.

There was never a drop in Phoenix.

The Phoenix the drop house they stayed in was in in the Ngalas border area.

So, how did he come to find this load of people? Well, they came with them.

They all crossed the border at the same time.

And where did that vehicle come from? It was parked at a at a in a parking lot in Phoenix.

Well, do you believe him? What’s your gut tell you? I tell they found the truth.

Sergeant Brett Palmer checks the men’s identification.

He suspects they’ve paid Mexican coyotes for fake papers, hoping it would help them with their journey north.

I’m leaning towards fake, dude.

It’s got several inconsistencies in the uh printing.

It’s fake.

Okay.

3511.

All right.

It’s a fake ID.

Uh fake Mexican driver’s license out of Veraracruz, Mexico.

90% of the driver’s licenses out of Mexico that I’ve personally have taken, I’ve been able to verify uh based on training that they were in fact fake uh manufactured fraudulent driver’s licenses.

So because of it, uh we can now impound the vehicle for 30 days, uh impound it and hold it.

So the registered owner won’t be able to pick it up for at least 30 days.

The lieutenant in charge of this unit, Joe Souza, explains how smugglers have changed their methods to avoid the police.

This is kind of your typical load vehicle.

You don’t see the 20, 30 people in trucks like you used to in the past.

you’ll see a a decent uh clean vehicle.

Uh an SUV of this size.

Sometimes you’ll have anywhere from uh 10 to 15 16.

There’s only eight in this particular vehicle.

The tactic is is try to blend in with traffic by not overly loading the vehicles like in the past.

The days of pulling over a U-Haul truck or a van with 30 people in it, very rarely do you see that anymore.

It’s more profitable now for them to move them in smaller groups.

Plus, if you pick off the loads, they’re not losing as much money.

Epidemic.

We could we could stay out here all night and do this.

All the occupants from this load vehicle were charged with being in the US illegally.

The next day, the human smuggling unit is building up for an operation to tackle undocumented workers.

We’re going to be conducting a search warrant this morning on idenтιтy theft and forgery investigation.

Uh this is operation uh Flintstone because we’re going to the Rock Corey to do a little bit of work today.

Uh the initial complaint came in about a year ago, September 2008.

The gentleman was uh had been employed there for about four years.

Uh said that there was an issue there because several of his co-workers had admitted to them that they were illegal in the country and that they uh uh weren’t working here with the proper authorization using social security numbers that don’t belong to them.

The reason why we have so many folks here is not so much because of the threat level because we’re serving at a search warrant at a location which is extremely large.

It’s a large yard and we need a lot of people to contain.

But even then, we always brief uh be on your toes, be prepared because anything once again can jump off where you’re in the where you’re where you’re green and you’re just laid back to in the red fighting for your life.

And that’s just police work in general.

I mean, I think you’ve heard that statement before with police work.

It’s It’s like 80 95% absolute boredom with 5% of absolute terror.

Behind behind the convoy heads off to the pre-arrange staging post where the local media are already waiting for them.

We’re about 5 minutes from the location we’re going to.

So, we’re staged behind a big shopping center not to draw attention to ourselves.

You know, media’s already hovering, right? I think somebody called them, huh? Yeah, there’s two helicopters.

Jesus Christ.

Hey, ju just so you know, it’s on the news right now.

We haven’t even moved to our target.

This is really uh really putting a damper on this operation.

Somehow the media got wind of us being here.

Now we got local media hovering above us.

And as you can see, my tones changed a little bit because now I’ve lost we’ve lost what I call element of surprise.

So now it’s I got to worry a little bit more about officer safety.

However, he decides to carry on with the warrant regardless.

Just roll out slow.

Do it now.

Go.

So, I have a a a sneaking suspicion that this is already out and people have already heard that we’re coming, which uh makes our uh job difficult.

And I’m hearing media is already driving around in front of the business.

So, it’s upsetting to me because sometimes local media doesn’t realize that what they’re doing is they compromise our case.

10 for just roll as as planned.

Just remember everybody nice and slow.

Keep your weapons hosted.

Joe enters the quarry at the back of the convoy.

15 sheriff’s deputies showed up early this morning at Bardi Enterprises, a rock and gravel company in Peoria.

Deputies were on the hunt for several suspected illegal immigrants using fake IDs.

They searched a lot, even checking inside a porta potty at one point.

In the end, one person was arrested at the business.

The irony of the local media being there is not lost on Joe.

This is one of our suspects right here.

We got his name.

He’s one of our suspects of forgery and ID theft right here.

As we walked in the gate, there he was.

Well, at least we got one.

One out of seven.

It pays to watch the local news if you’re breaking the law, I guess.

And kind of an interesting note here, investigators say one of the suspected illegal immigrants arrested today for ID theft was actually using the social security number of a US Border Patrol agent here in Arizona.

On the other side of Phoenix, the SWAT unit have been called out to clear the headquarters of a Mexican drug gang.

This is one of around 300 operations they conduct each year.

Local police have already arrested seven suspected drug dealers and recovered a number of automatic weapons.

It’s a dangerous situation and the heavily armed crack SWAT unit have been called in.

We’re going to clear downstairs.

We’ll clear the the level floor and then we’ll clear upstairs.

And then we’ll hold on the attic till the attic comes.

If it’s a big enough attic, we’ll pop Pepper Ball up there and see if anybody comes out.

All right, let’s go ahead and stack it up, guys.

Facing that way.

It’s feared other gang members are hiding on the third floor of the property, and it’s a SWAT team’s job to clear each room in the house.

All units, containment units inside and outside.

Just be advised, uh, team is going to put some pepper ball into the attic.

With it difficult to see into the third floor, pepper spray gas is fired into one of the rooms.

The team don’t find anyone upstairs, but they do make an interesting discovery.

I want to show you something we found back here in the master bedroom.

In the master bath or the bedroom, uh, we located this suitcase with a considerable amount of cash.

I’d be guessing, but I’d say it’s close to the mill.

All in all, a successful day for the sheriffs in Maricopa County.

Back at HQ, Lieutenant Souza is processing the employees detained in their swoop on the quarry earlier in the day.

All right, here we are back at enforcement support and uh we did pretty good after all.

Even with all the media attention and the media burning us, uh we ended up still getting five out of our seven suspects for uh idenтιтy theft and forgery, ID theft, the problems it causes victims for years.

It causes a lot of problems, but some of these activist groups seem want us to ignore it.

They want us to ignore it.

These people, the old saying is these people are trying to make a life.

They’re just trying to make a living.

And I understand that.

I I totally understand wanting a better life.

But at the expense of somebody at the expense of somebody else who’s been here making a life and been doing it the right way without breaking the law.

You tell me is that right? No, that’s not right.

And then we got people using someone else’s name and destroying what they built up.

So yeah, there’s victims here and how about their rights? So start talking about the victim’s rights here instead of always worrying about the suspect’s rights.