MINNEAPOLIS _ Somewhere along his path to a better life in the U.S., William De Roo-Ramirez found himself hauling carloads of meth up to Minnesota for one of the same drug cartels that wrought horror back in his home country of Mexico.
The job paid well _ promising as much as $20,000 for each delivery _ and business was brisk. Ramirez had already made the trip more than 15 times when authorities pulled him over in Oklahoma in January and found 152 pounds of crystalline shards packed inside the Toyota Camry he had borrowed from a friend in Phoenix, one of the biggest meth loads ever stopped on its way to Minnesota.
The next day, the clean-cut 26-year-old led federal agents to three of his buyers in the Twin Cities. One, arrested after leaving a Target parking lot in Minneapolis, told investigators that he had taken delivery of some 100 pounds of meth from Ramirez in the previous two months.
The arrests of Ramirez and his associates are the latest proof that meth, after largely fading from public view a decade ago, has come roaring back. It's more potent, more plentiful and cheaper than ever, and this time around the Mexican drug cartels that control it have hand-picked Minnesota as the regional hub for their entire Upper Midwest meth trade.
State and federal investigators in Minnesota seized almost 1,500 pounds of meth last year _ four times the total retrieved five years ago. Some of that meth was bound for major dealers from Green Bay, Wis., to Fargo, N.D., but plenty was left over to wreak havoc in Minnesota. The number of Minnesotans treated for meth addiction doubled in the past decade, to almost 14,000 last year _ more than those treated for addiction to heroin and other opioids combined.
The number of overdose deaths, which peaked during the first meth crisis at 18 in 2006, soared to 140 in 2016, according to the most recent data compiled by the Minnesota Department of Health. At least 80 people have faced federal meth distribution charges over the past two years.
"Minneapolis-St. Paul has become a major market," said Kent Bailey, a former senior U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent who now leads a federally funded counter-narcotics program in the metro. "You can sit there and keep your head in the freaking sand but the sheer volume of the drugs being seized indicates otherwise."
Many of those caught supplying Minnesota's meth have had direct ties to major, internationally known drug cartels in southern Mexico.
One couple managed a Brooklyn Center stash house where agents found 140 pounds of meth, much of it bound for Wisconsin. Another man fled the country as investigators closed in on a Crystal candy shop believed to double as a stop-off for meth from California. Last summer, agents arrested a hair salon owner as she burst out of her Lake Street shop gripping a duffel bag loaded with meth.
But their arrests _ and even the historic seizure from Ramirez this year _ have done little to slow the flood of meth. Barely a month after Ramirez was stopped, law enforcement happened upon another 82 pounds of the drug hidden in a pickup allegedly driven by a member of the same cell thought to be managed by the notorious Sinaloa cartel.
"Meth is just our biggest problem," said Kenneth Solek, assistant special agent in charge of the DEA's Minneapolis office.
