A former city official from the border city of Matamoros remains in federal custody after U.S. law enforcement agents arrested him in connection with the attempted smuggling of cocaine in Texas. Since information about the arrest went public, the City of Matamoros has tried to distance itself from the case, claiming that he had stopped working there months before his arrest.
The incident first began during the Easter holiday, when Luis Miguel Garduno was driving a late-model GMC Acadia from Brownsville north to Corpus Christi, Texas. A criminal complaint filed in the case revealed that when Garduno pulled up to the Javier Vega U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint in Kinney County, about 80 miles north of the border. During the stop at the checkpoint, agents sent Garduno to a secondary inspection area where a police drug dog alerted agents to possible drugs inside the vehicle.
Following the dog alert, authorities searched the vehicle and found a trap door in the floor. Inside that trap door, authorities found ten bundles of cocaine. The total weight of the drugs was 10.92 kilograms of cocaine, or roughly 22 pounds. During a subsequent interview with agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Garduno told authorities that he had been instructed to drive the loaded vehicle to pay off a debt that he owed.
Court documents do not provide details about who told him, nor any additional information about the debt. However, the drug trafficking operations in Brownsville and the border city of Matamoros are directly controlled by the Gulf Cartel.
While the arrest went unnoticed for a few days, last week the city of Matamoros sent out a notice distancing itself from Garduno, who had been the director of public services. According to a statement, he had stopped working there months before his arrest. Garduno is just the latest in a long list of politicians and public officials from Matamoros tied to the Gulf Cartel.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart News Foundation. He co-founded Breitbart News Foundation’s Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at [email protected].
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart News Foundation’s Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at [email protected].
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