() 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.
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 .
Border Patrol officials said cartels are using Mexican nationals with dual citizenship to move the drugs at legal ports of entry. Meanwhile, at border spots between legal points of entry, they said cartels are recruiting teenagers to bring over large amounts of drugs carried in backpacks. Once caught, the teens are then sent back into Mexico but are not charged because of their age, officials told .
Over the past two weeks, Border Patrol agents have made three of their biggest seizures this year including $1.1 million in fentanyl that was found hidden inside stationary bike rollers and $2.3 million worth of cocaine that was packed into the ceiling of an 18-wheeler.
In the last few days, $640,000 worth of cocaine hidden inside an SUV was seized by agents at an international bridge checkpoint within the Rio Grande sector.
In an effort to help fight cartels, President Donald Trump recently signed a directive that authorizes the Pentagon to allow the U.S. military to target cartel activity.
The increase in drug trafficking comes as cartels are also recruiting American drivers to transport migrants into the U.S. illegally, though there has been a significant drop in border crossings amid Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Nationwide, more than 60,000 pounds of drugs were seized in June, a 22,000-pound increase from the same month in 2024. The seized drugs included more than 1,500 kilograms of fentanyl, which federal officials said is enough to kill 115 million people, FBI Director Kash Patel said.
