MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. — Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office detectives said they arrested the supervisor of a massive “illegal dumping transfer station” in the county’s rural Redland area on Wednesday.
Investigators said the site, located at 13105 SW 199th Ave., had enough trash and debris to fill multiple Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Authorities said a detective began surveilling a dump truck at around 4 p.m. on Wednesday and followed the driver as he drove into the site.
From the outside, the detective saw the driver dumping landscaping debris onto the property, an MDSO arrest report states.
“There were several other trash piles observed on the property consistent with an illegal dumping transfer station,” the detective wrote.
Authorities said the detective detained both the dump truck driver and “dump supervisor” Walter Afitt Garcia, 48, as Garcia opened the front gate for the driver to allow him to leave.
According to the report, Garcia said he was “just an employee” of site owner Manny Dorta, 39, and he “just lets trucks in and out.”
The report states that the dump truck driver told investigators that Garcia and Dorta “have permits” to dump at the site and said he “pays $300 per trip and has been there twice today.“ It states that he told investigators that Garcia “tells him where to dump the debris because they don’t lease the whole property.”
The dump truck driver doesn’t appear to be facing charges, but Dorta is listed as an “at large” co-defendant. Authorities said the site is not, in fact, permitted to dump solid or yard waste.
Authorities said they obtained a search warrant for the property and found piles of “landscaping debris mixed with plastic, pipes, metal and Styrofoam totaling 418,388 cubic feet in volume.”
Besides being enough trash to fill four Olympic-sized swimming pools and about three-quarters of a fifth, it would also be enough to fill more than 175 standard 40-foot shipping containers.
Deputies arrested Garcia on a felony littering charge and a misdemeanor charge of failing to obtain an environmental permit. According to jail records, he was out on bond at the time of his arrest on two counts of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, domestic battery and battery on a law enforcement officer.
According to a separate MDSO arrest report, those charges stemmed from a July 9, 2025 incident at Garcia’s northwest Miami-Dade home in which he, while under the influence of drugs, stabbed one of his brothers in the hand and beat another with a metal cane.
A separate report states that he also hurled a plate and wooden chair leg at responding deputies.
Garcia remained in the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center as of Thursday afternoon.
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