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MORE U.S. CITIZENS NABBED AT BORDER FOR MOVING DRUGS FROM MEXICO
- By The Financial District
- Jun 2, 2021
- 2 min read
An increasing number of American citizens have been apprehended as they have tried to smuggle illegal drugs into the US since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, an uptick that’s come amid travel restrictions at the border with Mexico, Suman Naishadham reported for the Associated Press (AP).
For more than a year, the closure of the southern border to nonessential traffic has sharply limited the number of foreign citizens entering the US by land. The rules have been extended until at least June 21, but Mexican authorities have allowed most US citizens to walk or drive south across the border with relative ease.
Law enforcement officials and drug trafficking experts say the border rules — put in place in April 2020 to curb the spread of the coronavirus — and their lopsided enforcement are driving the rise in US citizens involved in borderland drug busts. Mexican traffickers, however, have long recruited Americans for the job.
US citizens were apprehended nearly seven times more often than Mexican citizens between October 2020 and March 31 for trying to smuggle drugs in vehicles, US Customs and Border Protection data shows. In the 2018 and 2019 fiscal years, Americans were caught roughly twice as often as Mexicans.
“As cross-border travel shifted to essential travel only, criminal organizations shifted their operations as well,” the agency said in a recent statement. It noted its increasingly seized drugs trafficked by US citizens and by commercial trucks during the pandemic. Both groups are exempt from the restrictions at US land borders.
Despite early pandemic disruptions to the global drug trade, illegal substances have since been pouring into the US — the world’s largest consumer of them.
Customs and Border Protection says narcotics seizures along the US-Mexico border have increased slightly in the 2021 fiscal year, while the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has said Mexican traffickers’ ability to move drugs into the country had stayed “largely intact.”
