Feds Land A Big Fish

(CBS/AP)  The Coast Guard has caught a big one: arresting alleged Mexican drug lord Francisco Javier Arellano-Felix as he was deep sea fishing off the coast of Baja California.

Authorities accused Arellano-Felix, 36, of being the enforcer for the gang named after – and run by – his family, reports CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker. Authorities believe he ordered the decapitation of three men – two of them police officers – south of Tijuana this summer.

He was captured when the crew of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Monsoon boarded a U.S.-registered sport fishing boat at 9 a.m. Monday about 15 miles off the coast of Mexico's Baja California peninsula, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen told a news conference.

During the news conference, one U.S. drug enforcement official said, "We've taken the head off the snake," reports CBS News correspondent Teri Okita.

Michael Braun, chief of operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration added that agents discovered Arellano-Felix's fishing plans and asked the Coast Guard to seize the boat in international waters.

"This is a huge blow" to one of the three largest Mexican drug cartels, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty said. But, he said, "much more remains to be done."

Braun said, "We're piling on this organization because they are extremely vulnerable right now."

The gang was once led by seven brothers and four sisters, but Braun noted that Javier's brother Ramon was killed in a shootout with police in 2002, his brother Benjamin is in a Mexican prison and brother Eduardo, while at large in Mexico, is not considered "capable of leading the organization at this time."

"That's not to say that there aren't one or more others capable of stepping up and running it," Braun said.

The Cutter Monsoon is towing the fishing boat, the Dock Holiday, back to San Diego where DEA agents will formally arrest Arellano-Felix and others among the eight adults and three juveniles who were captured on board.

Arellano-Felix is wanted in both the United States and Mexico for his role as leader of the violent and sophisticated Tijuana-based Arellano-Felix gang, which McNulty said was blamed in a 2003 U.S. indictment for 20 murders in the United States and Mexico.

One law enforcement official said two suspected assassins for the Arellano-Felix gang were among those aboard the Dock Holiday. He requested anonymity because he was speaking before officials officially released the list of passengers.

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