_{Photo: Enrique George Herbert}

by Charles Gladden

BELIZE CITY, Mon. July 22, 2024

Belizean George Enrique Herbert, who was once reputed to be a major figure in the George Street Gang, has been returned to the country after being imprisoned for over 20 years at the Federal Correctional Institution Victorville, in Adelanto, California, after being found guilty of drug trafficking charges in the early 2000s.

Herbert was charged with conspiring to import 12 tons of cocaine into the United States between March 2001 and August 2003. Reports at the time indicated that Herbert allegedly teamed up with a corrupt Belizean official who was working with Mexico’s Juarez Cartel to assist in the smuggling of large quantities of cocaine from the Atlantic coast of Colombia to Mexico.

He was allegedly assisted by armed members of the George Street Gang, who received one-ton-plus cocaine shipments in the waters off Belize from speedboats dispatched by high-level cocaine supplier Mauricio Ruda-Alvarez, who was killed in October 2002. Herbert would then transport the product to Calderitas, Mexico, where it would be handed over to the Juarez Cartel operatives, assisted by corrupt Mexican police, then shipped to the US.

He was convicted on four counts of cocaine importation, and each count carries a mandatory 10-year sentence and a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. Eventually, he was sentenced to 33 years and 4 months.

After serving 21 years in a US federal prison, he was deported to Belize and will be a part of the Belize Police Department’s deportee monitoring program.