U.S. Attorney Kenji M. Price on Friday announced charges against 10 Hawaii defendants linked to a methamphetamine trafficking ring with connections to California and Las Vegas.

The arrests were part of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration’s Operation Crystal Shield, a nationwide enforcement campaign against meth trafficking, and also involved the assistance of local police agencies.

At a news conference, Price said the federal court in Honolulu unsealed an indictment Thursday charging the defendants with conspiring to distribute, and possess with intent to distribute, methamphetamine across Hawaii.

The indictment also charges one of the defendants with possessing a firearm while trafficking drugs and accuses three others of unlawfully possessing a firearm as convicted felons.

Those arrested and charged were James Ferreira, Patrick Ribuca, Jeremy Javillo, Lisa Hong, Brandon Perreira, Daniel Kushiyama, Jay Pagay and James Demello of Hawaii, plus Kincaid Olayan of Las Vegas and Alexander Hernandez of California.

Five of the defendants made their first appearance in District Court in Honolulu on Friday morning, Price said, and all of the defendants were in federal custody.

As described in the indictment, the meth-trafficking ring stretched from Las Vegas and California to Oahu, Molokai, Maui and Hawaii island.

Price said Olayan and Hernandez allegedly traveled from their homes on the West Coast to Hawaii to supply local dealers with meth.

“The other eight defendants were involved in a web of drug trafficking activity in Hawaii. That activity involved receiving amphetamine from, or selling methamphetamine to, other local drug dealers and facilitating other drug transactions,” he said.

The indictment alleges that when officers arrested Pagay on Feb. 4, he had about 2 ounces of methamphetamine and a firearm. Additionally, it says Javillo was busted for trafficking drugs while on federal supervised release.

Operation Crystal Shield targets the transportation and distribution network of methamphetamine in the U.S. and has generated about 2,900 arrests and seized some 53,000 pounds of methamphetamine and approximately $56 million in cash this year.

“Needless to say, nationwide operations like Crystal Shield are critical to our communities here in Hawaii because methamphetamine traffic is unquestionably the most significant drug problem in the state of Hawaii,” Price said. “To be clear, it destroys lives, and it devastates some of our communities.”

Michael A. Davis, a DEA agent in charge from the agency’s Los Angeles Field Division, said the U.S. saw a 28% jump in overdose deaths from meth last year.

“More Americans now die from methamphetamine overdoses than any other drug except for fentanyl,” he said.

Despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, the DEA and local law enforcement agencies have led more than 750 investigations across the U.S as part of the initiative.

“The impact of the operation is clear: The large number of seizures and arrests dealt a significant blow to Mexican drug cartels and violent street gangs that prey on innocent Americans,” Davis declared.

In 2019 alone Mexican cartels shipped hundreds of thousands of pounds of meth in tractor-trailers and vehicles across the southwestern border and routed them to distribution hubs and stash houses before they were shipped across America, including to Hawaii.

Typically, he said, meth is sent to Hawaii via parcel services or smuggled in luggage and sometimes on the body.

“Hawaii is attractive to these organizations because they can double their profit, and that’s being conservative,” Davis said. “The cost of meth in Hawaii is substantially higher than on the mainland.”

Gary Yabuta, executive director of the Hawaii High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, said crystal methamphetamine, or “ice,” has been Hawaii’s greatest drug threat for over three decades, and the current COVID-19 pandemic has not affected or reduced the abuse of meth in Hawaii.

Law enforcement meth seizures in Hawaii have remained consistent over the past six months even with the social and governmental restrictions imposed during the pandemic, Yabuta said.

When coronavirus-related restrictions at the border squeezed the flow of meth into the U.S., the price more than doubled here.

“However, supply remained available. It’s just that the abusers of meth in Hawaii had to pay a higher price,” Yabuta said.

“Currently, local meth prices continue to drop as the supply of mainland meth recuperates.”

Honolulu Police Chief Susan Ballard said her department is happy to work with federal agencies and hand off cases that rise to the level of federal prosecution, including drug-, firearm- and terrorism-related crimes.

“The feds, they can keep the criminals behind bars a lot longer than we can on the state side,” Ballard said, “so we appreciate everything they do.”