A crackdown on white supremacist gang members in North Texas landed 89 in federal prison. Officials in the area say this is the largest prosecution in the nation’s history of violent criminals with lengthy records connected with white supremacist gangs.
Collectively, the defendants are responsible for dealing approximately 2,108 pounds of methamphetamine with a street value of almost $10 million and possessing 88 weapons. In all, those sentenced received a total of 1,070 years. Officials apprehended several high-ranking gang members in the targeted sting.
Eighty-nine members or associates of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas and Aryan Circle who were selling drugs each received sentences of 20 years.
The defendants are all members of violent white supremacist gangs: the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas (ABT), the Aryan Circle, the “White Knights,” the “Dirty White Boys,” the “Irish Mob,” and “Peckerwood”, according to a statement from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Each of these organizations is a criminal syndicate but in the past years, their white supremacist credo “has taken a backseat to traditional criminal ventures, such as drug-dealing.”
Combining crimes, the 89 white supremacists have records that include 736 violations. Those crimes include 234 drug charges, 76 violent crimes, 36 gun offenses, 37 burglary charges, and a murder conviction. Seven of the charges were for sex or child abuse. Fifteen of those busted during the targeted sting are considered “career offenders” under the federal sentencing guidelines.
The Aryan Circle began in Texas prisons during the 1980s. According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Aryan Circle is the second largest white supremacist gang in the Texas prison system and probably one of the largest of its kind in both the free world and the state and federal prison systems. The ADL calls the Aryan Brotherhood “the oldest and most notorious racist prison gang in the United States.” They note that the group is primarily in the California and federal prison systems but began in California in the 1960s.
As far back as 2013, Breitbart Texas Editor-in-Chief Brandon Darby reported on the connection between these gangs and Mexican cartels.
“Evidence suggests that the Aryan Brotherhood has morphed into what is primarily a drug-trafficking gang,” he stated, “and there is a more frightening possibility: that the Aryan Brotherhood is acting as a conduit, doing the dirty work for a Mexican drug cartel criminal insurgency into the United States.”
In 2015, Darby reported on 18 Aryan Brotherhood gang members earning prison sentences for their roles in a cartel-connected drug distribution network.
“The Aryan Brotherhood has been known to act as an enforcement and distribution arm for the Mexican Gulf cartel, the transnational criminal organization that controls territory immediately south of the Rio Grande Valley Sector of Texas,” Darby reported.
A judge sentenced the last defendant, 29-year-old Jeramy Weatherall of Dallas, on Thursday for one count of possession of methamphetamine with the intent to distribute. Casey Rose, 36, from Mesquite received a life sentence for conspiracy, drug trafficking, and firearms charges.
Prosecutors originally charged 91 white supremacists, but one died before his trial began. Another is thought to have fled to Mexico.
“The Aryan Brotherhood of Texas and the Aryan Circle have essentially been decimated in North Texas,” said U.S. Attorney for the Northern District John Parker. “The outstanding collaborative work of the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Dallas Police Department helped ensure that each of the 89 defendants who were arrested have now been convicted and sentenced.”
TThe Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS-CID) Gang Unit and the Dallas Police Department Criminal Intelligence Unit conducted the investigation. These agencies received help from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HIS) and law enforcement organizations in Garland, Collin County, Mesquite, Sherman, Denison, and Sulphur Springs, Texas.
(via: Breitbart)
