Gulf Cartel Makes Trucker Choose: Smuggle Drugs or Lose Family
41-year-old truck driver Rolando Rodriguez Bautista was going about his normal business last week. As a driver for Transportes Quintero, he drives regularly from Mexico to the United States to pick up trailers. He was doing his job and minding his business when his truck stopped by four armed members of the Gulf Cartel. They made Rodriguez exit the truck and switched out the truck’s batteries with some they had. The gunmen then told Rodriguez to drive and threatened to kill his family if he told anyone about the batteries.
As the cartel gunmen followed, Rodriguez was busted with 25 pounds of methamphetamine as he crossed the Pharr International Bridge in Texas. According to Breitbart:
On the day of his arrest, officers with U.S. Customs and Border Protection sent Rodriguez’s truck to a secondary inspection where an X-Ray of the truck pointed officers towards the battery compartments. After an in-depth inspection, officers found 12 packets of methamphetamines hidden in two of the four batteries that the truck had.
Monday morning, U.S. Magistrate Judge Dorina Ramos ordered Rodriguez held without bond. When interrogated by U.S. Homeland Security officials, he told them his plight. He also told interviewers that it was always his policy to inform authorities, if he suspected anything was off with a load he was hauling.
For a little background on the Gulf Cartel, they operate out of the city of Reynosa, home to a good share of Mexico’s factories. Hundreds of those factories are tied to U.S. conglomerates. These factories have seen many run-ins with the powerful Mexican cartels. One of the factories named Thermo Fisher is centered in a lawsuit where investors are suing the former owners for not informing them about the Gulf Cartel. The suit alleges that soldiers from the Gulf Cartel ran into the facility “waiving machine guns and terrorizing the employees, enter the plant to hide vehicles, including tractor trailers with unknown cargo, or they would go into the plant to hide from authorities.” The cartel has also positioned lookouts at posts around the site, which is irksome for factory personnel.
