About 8 p.m. Saturday, the gang officers stopped to check why the Camry was parked the wrong way on the road leading to the sheriff's office and the Cook County courthouse in Maywood.

The driver, Jose Ramirez-Rodriguez, didn't have a license. He and his passenger, Efrain Rodriguez-Juarez, looked nervous. And there was a statue of Jesus Malverde sitting on the console of the car, Jackson said.

The officers found 50 kilograms of cocaine -- with a street value of $19.3 million -- in the trunk of the car, Jackson said Tuesday. The men are suspected of working for a Mexican drug cartel and allegedly were coming from a nearby ware- house where they put the drugs in the trunk, she said.

Jesus Malverde, a handsome, mustachioed bandit, was hanged in 1909 in Sinaloa, Mexico, legend has it. He became a Robin Hood of sorts and the patron saint for Mexican criminals.

Leaders of the murderous Mexican drug cartels reportedly pray to Malverde regularly. Cops and federal agents say they see the statues in homes of drug dealers here.

"It definitely raises a flag," one Chicago Police officer said. "It tells you the guy might be prone to the kind of violence you see every day in Mexico."

Ramirez-Rodriguez, 23, of Wheaton, and Rodriguez-Juarez, 32, of Carol Stream, were ordered held in lieu of $1 million bail on drug charges.