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November 9, 2024“Americans are taking Mexicans’ smuggling jobs,” said David Bier, a border security expert at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. Since 2019, when Mexico overtook China to become the dominant supplier of fentanyl in the United States, cartels have been flooding the country with the synthetic opioid. The amount of fentanyl crossing the border has increased tenfold in the past five years. The largest known group of fentanyl smugglers is not made up of immigrants traversing the desert or moving through secret tunnels — they are Americans coming through legal ports of entry. Federal data shows that more than 80% of the people sentenced for fentanyl trafficking at the southern border are U.S. citizens. Officials say those numbers point to a new and alarming strategy: Mexican drug cartels are turning thousands of Americans into fentanyl mules, deploying a torrent of couriers who can easily cross back and forth into their own country. Americans have always been involved in drug smuggling, but in recent years, as fentanyl has inundated the country, traffickers have begun to rely more on U.S. citizens than ever before. One hundred times more powerful than morphine, fentanyl can be extremely profitable even in small quantities, meaning a single courier can smuggle lucrative amounts of the drug just by hiding it in their glove compartment or under their clothes. According to U.S. prosecutors, the Sinaloa Cartel spends only $800 on chemicals to produce a kilo, an amount that can net a profit of up to $640,000. Almost all of the fentanyl found at the southern border arrives in cars — and only 8 percent of the personal vehicles that cross are scanned for drugs, Customs and Border Protection says. The recruiters generally deliver the same pitch: We will pay you anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000 for a few hours of low-risk work. “Anybody that can drive across the border can get a job down there, literally, passing drugs,” David, an addict in his 50s.said in an interview from federal prison. Federal and state law enforcement in San Diego have put up billboards urging teens not to bring drugs across the border. The Drug Enforcement Administration started a program to educate high school students about the risks of smuggling.
Here's the link: How Fentanyl Enters the U.S., One American Smuggler at a Time - The New York Times (nytimes.com)