Hispanics Actively Targetted in "Grow-Me State"

POINCIANA, FLORIDA | '"Cuban refugees are dominating arrests in Florida's indoor-marijuana trade in what investigators call a nearly punishment-free crime.

Born decades after Fidel Castro took power, groups of young Cubans are turning to the lucrative business of raising ultrapotent pot worth up to $4,500 a pound without fear of deportation or lengthy prison sentences. Probation is a common sentence for anyone convicted in state court of running a grow house, drug agents say. And, unlike with other foreign-born felons, U.S. policy prevents the deportation of Cubans.

South Florida groups identified by law enforcement as Cuban Drug Trafficking Organizations now control hundreds of grow houses that have sprung up from Miami to Atlanta since 2005, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, court records and interviews by the Orlando Sentinel with local and federal drug agents.

"This takes me back to the old days of the mob," Polk County sheriff's Organized Crime Squad Sgt. Julio Lima said of strictly run Cuban pot rings. "This is organized crime at its best."

Statewide, records aren't kept that specify the nationalities of those who run grow houses. However, Cuban influence has risen rapidly:

•South Florida High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area supervisors estimated that Cubans who arrived in the U.S. within the past five years represent 85 percent to 90 percent of the suspects arrested in Florida on grow-house-related charges. They based their estimate on arrests in South Florida — the center of the trade — and two statewide busts in 2008 and 2009 known as "D-Day" and "Eagle Claw."

In Poinciana, one of Central Florida's hot spots for illegal cultivation, Cuban-born suspects represent about 85 percent of growers arrested on both sides of the Osceola-Polk county line in this community of 70,000 ...."'

Source: Orlando Sentinel, Florida, USA.