Federal prosecutors say a drug operation that pushed heroin and methamphetamine across Michigan was run, in part, from inside an Upper Peninsula prison. And after years of arrests and convictions, the case just grew again.
In April, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Michigan announced that a 37-year-old man, Adrian Weyman-Urbina, had been extradited from Mexico to face charges in the conspiracy. He has not been convicted and is entitled to the presumption of innocence.
He is not the first person tied to the case. According to prosecutors, eight others have already been convicted in the scheme, which reached across 11 Michigan counties, including Alger and Luce here in the U.P., Grand Traverse downstate, and a string of counties in West Michigan.
Court records trace the operation back to Alger Correctional Facility in Munising. Prosecutors say current and former inmates were receiving heroin and methamphetamine supplied from Mexico, then distributing it both inside and outside the walls.
Investigators have described how a search inside the prison years ago turned up a quantity of drugs that pointed to something far larger than a single inmate.
The U.S. Department of Justice has said the group used Michigan prisons as a “recruiting center and distribution hub.” According to prosecutors, two of the people convicted were serving sentences at the time, and three others joined the operation almost immediately after they were released.
As for the supply, the U.S. Attorney’s Office alleges Weyman-Urbina built a distribution network while living in the country illegally, then kept it running after he was sent back to Mexico, which is the reason prosecutors pursued his extradition.
Contraband turning up at U.P. prisons is not new on its own. Just this winter, investigators broke up a much smaller effort to smuggle methamphetamine into Newberry Correctional Facility. What sets this case apart is the scale, a coordinated, international pipeline that federal officials spent years untangling.
The U.P. is home to several state prisons, which rank among the biggest employers in some of its small towns. That makes a case built around what was happening inside those walls land closer to home than the distance to the nearest big city might suggest.
What happens next? With Weyman-Urbina now back in the United States, his case moves into federal court in the Western District of Michigan. As with the others charged in the conspiracy, prosecutors will have to prove the allegations in court.
U.S. Attorney Timothy VerHey framed the extradition as a warning. “Wherever you are in the world, if you are responsible for the distribution of drugs in the Western District of Michigan, we will find you, arrest you, and bring you to justice in an American courtroom,” he said in a statement. The case is part of a national Justice Department effort called Operation Take Back America.
For the U.P., it is a reminder that the region’s prisons, and the quiet towns around them, are not as far removed from the wider drug trade as their surroundings might suggest.
Because of the prisons is what is contributing largely to the high levels of drugs in our small towns.