Dead body in the living room and a dead body in the den. The floor was covered with kilo wrappers [for drugs] and there was a money-counting machine

" Atlanta is like 'Miami Vice' in the 1980s," said Patrick Crosby, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Georgia. "We ship more cocaine to Florida than we get from Florida."Mexican drug cartels began setting up shop in well-established communities, in the midst of unsuspecting neighbors.

"We found a dead body in the living room and a dead body in the den. The floor was covered with kilo wrappers [for drugs] and there was a money-counting machine set to count hundred-dollar bills," said Gwinnett County District Atty. Danny Porter, who spends much of his limited resources on drug-trafficking cases. "There were mattresses on the bedroom floor, a pickup in the garage and big buckets of charcoal placed throughout the house to absorb the odor of cocaine."

The Obama administration announced plans last week to shore up efforts along the Southwest U.S. border and send agents to Mexico to try to dismantle drug cartels responsible for thousands of murders, beheadings and kidnappings there. Meanwhile, law-enforcement officials in the U.S. are waging their own battles to crack down on drug-related crimes that have spread to cities and small towns across America.The Mexican drug cartels have set up networks in at least 230 cities, including Chicago, according to the Justice Department's National Drug Intelligence Center.Atlanta, with its prime location for easy distribution, has become a major hub for drug trafficking by the cartels and a principal distribution center for wholesale-level cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana to the eastern United States, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officials said. In 2008, Atlanta led the nation with $70 million in confiscated cash, according to the DEA. That is more than double the $32 million seized in Chicago in 2008.
Mexican cartels have replaced Colombian ones as the primary distributors of cocaine, transporting drugs into the Atlanta region from California, Texas and Mexico, the DEA said. They have set up stash houses for cash and drugs in suburban and rural communities, operated by mid-level leaders who oversee multimillion-dollar operations, officials said."We are a great distribution center because you can get anywhere east of the Rockies in a day's drive," said David Nahmias, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia.The cartels often set up shop in places such as Gwinnett County, where the Hispanic population has grown from 64,137 in 2000 to 132,123 in 2007, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Here, the young men who have come to America to distribute drugs blend in with the law-abiding citizens, day laborers and workers who migrated here for jobs in construction, the poultry plants and the farming industry."Money goes to the stash house normally [located] in a middle-class suburban neighborhood. It's very non-descript and you never thought it would be there in a million years," said Rodney Benson, head of the DEA's Atlanta office. "That's where the money is counted and the balance sheets are reconciled. Then it's methodically placed in heat-sealed plastic to prevent tampering, labeled and given back over to the transportation specialists whose job is to take that money across the Southwestern border to Mexico and the cartel leadership."Porter said he isn't sure how the president's incentives will help counties such as Gwinnett, where prosecutors are increasingly handling drug-related cases while being mandated to take one-day-a-month furloughs because of state budget cuts.Unlike the Colombian drug dealers known for their flashy cars and Miami Beach mansions, the Mexican traffickers prefer to conduct business quietly—until violence erupts. Local officials said they want to make sure that the vicious crimes occurring in Mexico do not make their way to their towns.Last May, authorities arrested the suspected leader of one of the most dangerous Mexican organizations, the Gulf Cartel, after authorities responded to reports of a kidnapping in his Lawrenceville neighborhood. Authorities found $7.6 million in cash and 12 kilograms of cocaine in the modest two-story home 20-year-old Edgar Rodriguez-Alejandro rented in Gwinnett County.Last week, three men pleaded guilty to holding drug dealer Oscar Reynoso hostage in the basement of a house in a middle-class neighborhood in Lilburn. Reynoso, 31, had been lured to Atlanta from Rhode Island, chained to a wall and tortured for a week because he owed the cartel $300,000, the DEA said. Reynoso also has pleaded guilty to drug charges."What we always hear from neighbors is, 'We never saw them or talked to them,' " Porter said. "They maintain the yard and keep to themselves."