Search Results: hinojosa (3)

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The Texas Democratic Party has officially endorsed the decriminalization of marijuana, saying that current laws are negatively affecting too many young people who get busted with small amounts of weed.

“You shouldn’t put a criminal stigma on these young folks for the rest of their lives, and affect their ability to get jobs and their ability to have a meaningful career for using marijuana when they were young,” said State Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa, reports Daisy Martinez of Action 4 News.
Hinojosa said he and the Texas Democratic Party believe the criminalization of marijuana may also be contributing to the selling power of drug cartels and dealers.

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Former McAllen, Texas police officer Francisco Meza-Rojas was sentenced to 27 years for dealing drugs.

​A former police officer in McAllen, Texas, was sentenced to serve 324 months in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons as punishment for his involvement in a drug trafficking conspiracy which spanned a period of at least eight years starting in 1996, U.S. Attorney José Angel Moreno announced on Tuesday.

Francisco Meza-Rojas, 45, was identified as a leader of a smuggling organization which operated on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande River between Granjeno and Penitas, a rural area south of Mission, Texas, the U.S. Attorney’s office said.
Meza-Rojas and an associate, Jose Moncerrat Narvaez, led the part of a larger organization which specialized in the transportation of controlled substances from the edge of the Rio Grande River to locations in the Mission and McAllen areas where they would be held until the owners of the drugs picked them up.
Meza-Rojas used his brothers, as well as other individuals, to act as lookouts during the smuggling operations, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office. He would strategically place his workers along the smuggling route to call out the locations and movements of law enforcement vehicles throughout the area, the office said.

Photo: U.S. Postal Inspection Service

​A federal judge in McAllen, Texas has sentenced four illegal immigrants to prison for using the U.S. Postal Service to mail marijuana.

All pleaded guilty last summer to conspiracy to distribute marijuana through the mail. The four were convicted of mailing cannabis from various locations in the Rio Grande Valley since May 2008. They were each arrested in May 2009.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office on Tuesday announced the sentences for Leopoldo Perales-Rodriguez, 42; Juan Carlos Hernandez, 22; Victor Hugo Mares, 27; and Margarito Gallardo, 46. All four illegally lived in Mission, Texas, reports Lindsay Machak at The Monitor.