MEXICO CITY — The teenager practiced driving from his apartment in San Diego, California, to Tijuana and back, following the orders of the criminals he worked for in Mexico. He rehearsed how he would respond to questions from U.S. border agents.
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The men who paid him had opened a secret compartment in his car large enough to hold several bricks of fentanyl. When they filled it for the first time and sent it to the borderGustavo, who was 19 years old at the time, began to shake.
At the checkpoint, he calmly told border agents that he was headed home. They looked at his American passport and waved him in.
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 last five years. Mexico has been the source of almost all the fentanyl seized by US authorities in recent years.
Former President Donald J. Trump and other Republicans have blamed President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s border policies, exploiting the belief that undocumented immigrants are bringing it.
In fact, the largest known group of Fentanyl smugglers are Americans using legal ports of entry. More than 80 percent of people convicted of fentanyl trafficking at the US-Mexico border are US citizens, US data shows.
Authorities say these figures point to a new strategy: Mexican cartels are turning thousands of Americans into fentanyl mules.
Bars, gyms, rehab centers and trailer parks are places where recruiters have found couriers in recent years, court records show.
U.S. agents uncovered a recruitment network inside San Diego schools, where between 2016 and 2020 students working for criminal groups in Mexico persuaded their peers to cross the border with fentanyl, three former U.S. agents said.
“The cartels are directly recruiting anyone who is willing to do it, which is usually someone who needs the money,” said Tara McGrath, a federal prosecutor in Southern California.
Gustavo, whose full name is not being released for fear of reprisals, was recruited after he told a friend he needed money. At that time, he was his mother’s main supporter. Gustavo worked in a grocery store, but struggled to pay his bills.
After a few days, his friend called him and told him that he knew an “old guy from Tijuana” who had a job available and was always at a bar on the other side of the border.
When Gustavo went to the bar, he said he saw a middle-aged man dressed in designer clothing and surrounded by women. Gustavo introduced himself and after the two talked a little, the man took out a thick wad of bills. “’If you really want to work, then here you go,’” Gustavo recalled the man telling him.
Gustavo accepted the job.
David, an addict in his 50s, said he carried drugs across the border almost every day for three months before being detained by authorities. Sometimes when he picked up a load at a house in Tijuana, he said, he would find four or five other Americans there. “Anyone who can drive across the border can get a job there, literally smuggling drugs,” David said from prison.
A recruiter ordered Gustavo to cross the border in a car provided every three days. The man told Gustavo that if he wanted to back out, he would owe him thousands of dollars.
After Gustavo smuggled drugs for the first time, he received 6 thousand dollars. Soon he was earning tens of thousands of dollars.
But a few months later, at the Otay Mesa border crossing into California, an officer searched Gustavo’s car and found more than 30 pounds of fentanyl, according to court documents. Gustavo told his story to the officers. He was convicted of drug trafficking in August 2021 and sentenced to 32 months in prison.
Gustavo now found work in construction. “This is a good path for me,” he said.
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