United States authorities have reported record drug seizures of fentanyl and methamphetamine in two separate busts at the Mexico-U.S. border.
According to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the confiscations occurred exactly one month apart: CBP officers seized approximately 4 million blue fentanyl pills in Arizona on July 1, and 1,555 kilograms (3,430 pounds) of meth in Texas on Aug. 1.
CBP said in a statement last Thursday that the fentanyl seizure occurred at the Lukeville Port of Entry, located on the border between Arizona and Sonora. The pills weighed more than 453 kg (1,000 pounds), a quantity almost four times the CBP’s previous record for a single fentanyl seizure, which was 115 kilograms (254 pounds).
“This is the largest fentanyl seizure in CBP’s history and reflects our unwavering determination to protect our nation and to disrupt the criminal activities of ruthless drug cartels,” said Troy Miller, CBP’s acting commissioner.
CBP said that a 20-year-old U.S. citizen from Arizona arrived at the Lukeville Port of Entry in a pickup truck that was hauling a sport recreational vehicle on a utility trailer.
“While conducting a thorough inspection of the pick-up truck, trailer, and sport utility vehicle, CBP officers noticed anomalies throughout the frame of the trailer. With the assistance of a CBP canine team, officers discovered 234 packages of drugs concealed within the frame of a trailer,” CBP said.
“The packages contained approximately 4 million blue fentanyl pills, which is the largest fentanyl seizure in CBP history,” the agency said.
CBP said that the fentanyl — a powerful synthetic opioid largely responsible for the drug overdose crisis in the United States — and 123 kg (272 pounds) of methamphetamine and 2 kg (5 pounds) of cocaine seized at the same port of entry on July 12 had a combined estimated street value of more than US $12.6 million.
In a separate statement issued on Monday, CBP said that the largest methamphetamine “seizure ever in port history” was made Aug. 1 at the Pharr International Bridge, which links Pharr, Texas, to Reynosa, Tamaulipas.
CBP officers “encountered a tractor-trailer making entry from Mexico” and during an inspection “extracted 1,488 packages of alleged methamphetamine” weighing more than 1.5 tonnes, according to the statement.
The meth was concealed within a shipment of lettuce, CBP said.
“This seizure … is the largest methamphetamine encounter in the history of the Hidalgo Port of Entry and has a street value of over $48 million,” the agency said.
CBP … seized the narcotics and vehicle. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) special agents initiated a criminal investigation,” it added.
CBP didn’t disclose the nationality of the tractor-trailer driver.
Insight Crime: fentanyl seizure suggests production is ‘thriving’ in Mexico
Think tank and media organization Insight Crime said that the seizure of around 4 million fentanyl pills in Arizona on July 1 “suggests that fentanyl production is thriving in Mexico, despite a ban by certain criminal groups under significant U.S. pressure.”
It was referring to a ban on fentanyl production and trafficking that the Los Chapitos faction of the Sinaloa Cartel claimed to have enacted.
Insight Crime said that Los Chapitos — the four sons of Joaquín “El Chapo Guzmán – demanded a halt to all fentanyl production in Culiacán, Sinaloa, around 1 1/2 years ago.
Two of the Chapitos, Ovidio and Joaquín, are now in U.S. custody.
Insight Crime said that “though there may have been a temporary ban on fentanyl production in Culiacán,” the size of the seizure at the Lukeville Port of Entry “suggests that fentanyl continues to be produced in other areas of Mexico.”
“Given the time since the ban and the sheer quantity of the drugs seized, it is unlikely that these pills were left over from production before the ban began,” it added.
Insight Crime also said that fentanyl labs may have relocated from Sinaloa to other parts of Mexico, particularly the northern border states of Sonora and Baja California.
It also said that the seizure “suggests that fentanyl production has moved away from the major cartels,” and noted that “less powerful fentanyl traffickers, with fewer resources, may try to smuggle large quantities in one go.”
Fentanyl seizures made by CBP at the Mexico-U.S. border last year averaged just 10.4 kg, Insight Crime said, meaning that the July 1 seizure was almost 150 times larger than the 2023 average.
Large quantities of fentanyl have been seized on both sides of the border during the presidencies of Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Joe Biden, and Mexico and the United States have ramped up collaboration in the fight against the powerful opioid.
After a meeting with Xi Jinping last November, Biden said that the Chinese president had agreed to take steps to curtail the supply of chemicals being used to make fentanyl, including by criminal organizations in Mexico.
But illicit fentanyl is still widely available in the United States, and drug overdose deaths in the U.S. remained very high in 2023 at 107,543, a decline of just 3% compared to the previous year.
Mexico News Daily
