Who’s smuggling drugs for the cartel?
- Border agents say cartels are changing their smuggling tactics
- People with debt to pay off do much of the heavy lifting
- Smugglers don't fit stereotypes and can be hard to pin down
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(NewsNation) — The Texas Department of Public Safety says cartels are wrangling easy targets to move drugs across the border, all while the drug trade grows increasingly dangerous.
The rules are changing. Typically, drug mules packing bundles of marijuana across the desert or stashed throughout cars offload the product, and someone moves it throughout the United States. Now, the cartel is recruiting local drug dealers in places like Butte, Montana, where someone with a debt to pay off does all the heavy lifting, said Bryan Lockerby, Montana Attorney General Office’s director of criminal investigations.
“Now what they end up doing is they drive themselves down to the border, drive across the border, meet up with a cartel member of some kind, they obtained 5, 10, 15 pounds of not only meth, but also fentanyl, and maybe some cocaine polydrug,” Lockerby said. “And then they smuggle that back across the border.”
The recruited mules generally don’t have criminal records, and immigration authorities say people who can legally cross the border are responsible for transporting most of the fentanyl smuggled into the country.
“They’re not really flagged at the border and nothing unusual pops up,” Lockerby said. “So it’s easy for them to get across just because of the volume of people that are crossing already. And then the cartel goes directly to the dealer, collects the payment, whether that is money or guns … and then they disappear back into Mexico.”
There’s no stereotypical smuggler — and that’s exactly how the cartels like it.
“I’ve seen a 70-year-old man with a cane,” Tucson Assistant U.S. Attorney Stefani Hepford said. “I’ve seen a 20-year-old girl in a car, so it’s difficult to actually say, ‘There’s one type.’ That’s going to be whoever is most likely to be successful that day.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics show 89% of fentanyl seizures are happening at the ports of entry — where officers, their dogs, and X-ray machines are stationed.
Federal officials estimate they’re only catching between 5% and 10% of the fentanyl coming in from Mexico. CBP only has the capability to screen 17% of cargo vehicles and only 2% of passenger cars at ports.
“Ninety percent of the drugs are getting through,” Lockerby said. “We only catch what we find. So after that, we don’t know what’s getting out there.”
Drug smuggling is getting easier in some ways. Smugglers can transport a small baggy of pills instead of a brick of cocaine or a bundle of marijuana.
“You don’t open up a car and immediately smell fentanyl pills like you do with a bale of marijuana,” Stefani said. “It is more concealable in a lot of ways.”
It’s also more dangerous, she said.
That’s because of the kinds of drugs smugglers are transporting — just 2 milligrams of fentanyl can be deadly to some people.
Although the majority of drugs are coming through ports where the resources are, it’s a business for criminal organizations.
“The Mexican drug cartels are able to not only mass produce drugs at a historic level than ever before now, especially with fentanyl, but they’re well aware that they’re gonna have some of the drugs seized at some point,” Texas DPS Lt. Chris Olivarez said. “But the fact of the matter is that a majority of drugs, a large amount of drugs, are getting past ports of entry (and) getting past secondary checkpoints.”
Border Patrol agents in Tucson recently picked up seven undocumented individuals accused of carrying fentanyl pills. Agents have also seized more than 2,700 pounds of fentanyl between the ports of entry.
Massive drug busts in Louisiana, Phoenix and Washington have yielded thousands of pills. Meanwhile, Texas DPS seized more than 422 million lethal doses of the drug in the past two years.
Old drugs are making a resurgence too. Cocaine and methamphetamine are showing up on the scene again in large quantities.
“The public attention on fentanyl right now with the overdoses, the number of people that are dying, the legislative changes that are happening, and the amount of enforcement pressure is going to make the cartels change their business model that they might back off on fentanyl and maybe go back to meth and something else,” Lockerby said.
President Joe Biden has called for $535 million of CBP funding in next year’s budget. More than $300 million of that would go toward new X-ray scanners that would increase inspection capacity from 17% to 70% of cargo vehicles and up from 2% to 40% of passenger vehicles.