Phoenix: U.S. authorities have arrested dozens of suspects and broken up a smuggling network that hauled up to 200 tons of marijuana to Arizona each year from Mexico, authorities said on Tuesday.

The operation carried out by federal, state and local police in Arizona arrested 39 people on felony charges, and dismantled the Garibaldi-Lopez drug trafficking network, the Arizona Attorney General's office said in a news release.

Arizona is the principal corridor for human and drug smuggling from Mexico, an illegal trade that generates billions of dollars in illicit profits each year.

Investigators said the network spirited multi-ton drug loads to Phoenix across the remote desert wastes of the Tohono O'odham Indian reservation, for Mexico's top Sinaloa cartel.

The network routinely used scouts out in the desert to spot for U.S. law enforcement, to safeguard multi-ton drug shipments on the move each week in vehicles stolen in the United States.

Over the past five years the network moved up to 1,000 tons of marijuana with an estimated wholesale value $1 billion dollars through Phoenix, much of which was subsequently redistributed throughout the United States, the office said.

Most illegal drugs used in the United States enter the country from Mexico, where drug trafficking has become an increasingly bloody activity in recent years.

Mexican cartels have killed around 5,300 people south of the border so far this year, as they fight each other for turf and wage an all-out war with Mexican authorities.

Source : PTI