Cartels focus on drug trafficking as human smuggling profits drop
Story by Jorge Ventura • 22h
(NewsNation) — Mexican cartels are shifting direction in what they move across the U.S.-Mexico border, focusing on high-value contraband and other illicit drugs, while illegal border crossings are down by 95% in a once high-traffic area from this time in 2024.
In Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, cartel smugglers continue to smuggle drugs like fentanyl into the United States.
A year ago, the sector monitored by the U.S. Border Patrol was seeing up to 2,000 illegal border crossings by migrants per day. Cartels were largely responsible for smuggling large groups of migrants across the border.
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Yet with a drastic reduction in illegal crossings, cartels have shifted their business model to trafficking drugs into the U.S. as a way of making up for profits lost from moving people across the border, officials said.
“Now, they go back to their original tactics,” Christina Smallwood, a Border Patrol spokesperson covering the Rio Grande Valley, told NewsNation.
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