Sheriffs in southern border states say the billion-dollar business of drug smuggling is being rocked by the perfect storm of unfavorable conditions, potentially spurring higher prices in the United States as supply dries up.
Residents from South America up through Mexico have been locked down under stay-at-home orders in a similar fashion as people in the U.S., making it harder for the cartels to transport drugs to the U.S. southern border. A March 20 Trump administration ban on all nonessential travel at border crossings between the U.S. and Mexico made it more challenging for smugglers to move drugs in vehicles through ports of entry.
On top of that, Border Patrol agents working between those ports of entry are also arresting far fewer illegal immigrants — from 4,000 people a day during the surge last May to less than 100 each day in recent weeks, allowing them to focus on threats like drug smuggling. With ports of entry and the unfenced land in between being closely watched by federal border officials, cartels appear to be cutting back on their movements.
Mark Dannels is sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona, which runs up against 83 miles of the Mexican border. Dannels told the Washington Examiner in his 36 years as a law enforcement official, the suspension of nonessential travel coupled with the Border Patrol’s immediately returning all illegal crossers “is the best deterrent we’ve had on this border” to drug smuggling.
In Dallas-Forth Worth, two sheriffs accustomed to finding smugglers moving drugs on the highways from the border to their cities have seen a downturn in activity amid the global coronavirus outbreak.
“We think it’s not coming across the border certainly like it was a month and a half ago — two months ago, which demonstrates that if we lock down that border what happens,” said Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn, whose county is 400 miles north of the border and includes Fort Worth and 2.2 million residents.
“With the COVID-19, what we’re seeing is things have started to slow down,” said Sheriff Jim Skinner of Collin County, Texas. In Skinner’s county northeast of Dallas, deputies have seen a decrease in smuggling-related stops, an indication that fewer loads of drugs are being transported to his region because less is coming over the border.
Drugs regularly smuggled into the U.S. include marijuana, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and fentanyl. Some, such as meth and fentanyl, are man-made substances, while others, like cocaine and marijuana, are grown. The trouble for transnational criminal organizations making substances like meth is that the precursor ingredients needed to make them may be less available from suppliers, Skinner said — just like the ingredients and components of many other products.
“The cartels are hoarding the meth in order to tinker with the market,” Skinner said. “They understand the problems over here and that it’s a little more difficult here to swing [offload] dope because a lot of the places they’d do that are shut down.”
The result is an increase in the demand for drugs, resulting in a surge in the costs. Skinner said the price of meth outside Dallas has recently doubled. Waybourn said the cartels can afford to shut down for a couple months and sit on “tons” of cash as they reevaluate next steps, like hoarding their supplies to cause a price surge.
“The cartels, I can assure you, are cooking up new schemes,” said Skinner. “It’s fair to say that the same thing is happening with law enforcement — retooling, retraining, all the things that we need to be doing to stay on top of this, too. It’s just this constant cat and mouse game.”
Tom Schmerber is sheriff of Maverick County, Texas, which runs up against more than 50 miles of predominantly rural international border. Schmerber said Mexican authorities have also shut down their side of the border, deployed military in the border state of Coahuila, and only allow one person per vehicle. Schmerber said Mexico’s interior closures make it challenging for cartels to get their money from drugs sold in the U.S. back south of the border.
