A 35-year-old Mexican national who was living illegally in California and ran a nationwide drug trafficking ring out of the Pacific Northwest was sentenced Monday to 15 years in federal prison for plotting to kill a Centralia police officer who intercepted one of her shipments.
Iris Adrianna Amador-Garcia, of Bellflower, California, led a sprawling drug operation that distributed pounds of methamphetamine, hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills, and large quantities of heroin to buyers in Washington and across the country, with reach as far as Fiji, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington. After one of her large drug loads was seized during a Centralia traffic stop, prosecutors say Amador-Garcia and her associates were caught openly discussing a plan to track down and murder the officer who made the bust.
The case is the latest illegal-immigrant-led narcotics ring tied to Mexico to be dismantled in Washington, and one of the most violent.
A nationwide pipeline anchored in California
Federal law enforcement first identified the ring in February 2020, and indictments were returned in the fall of 2021. The organization, co-led by Amador-Garcia and Jose Alfredo Maldonado-Ramirez, pushed drugs into Massachusetts, New York, Illinois, Ohio, Florida, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Virginia.
Law enforcement seized 9 pounds of methamphetamine in a May 2020 traffic stop, another 30 pounds of meth and 20,000 fentanyl pills in April 2021, and 57 pounds of meth in a September 2021 stop. In August 2021, agents intercepted 19 pounds of meth that co-conspirators tried to ship to Fiji. At the residence where Amador-Garcia lived with her brother and other co-conspirators, agents recovered a kilogram of fentanyl, 80,000 fentanyl pills, and two firearms; eight additional guns were seized from other search sites in Washington and California.
The conviction comes as federal authorities continue dismantling foreign-tied drug rings flooding Western Washington with fentanyl and firearms, part of a wider enforcement push that recently produced 18 arrests in a Centralia-to-Snohomish County sweep.
Plot to kill a Centralia officer over a traffic stop
U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour cited the murder plot in handing down the 15-year sentence. “Threats against law enforcement is a line in the sand that is completely unacceptable,” Coughenour said.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Neil Floyd said in a statement that Amador-Garcia’s network was prepared to kill to protect its operation. “This criminal organization was well-organized, well-sourced, and well-connected. This defendant was prepared to take drastic measures to protect what she had built. She and her criminal associates were intercepted openly discussing killing an officer after a large shipment of drugs was seized,” Floyd said. “I am grateful for the diligent work of law enforcement to keep that officer safe, and to take these dangerous traffickers off the street and shut down their pipeline of devastating narcotics.”
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