Mexican Alliance Drives Drug Flow in U.S.
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The heroin showing up in Dallas schools as "cheese" is the end product of a dangerous new trafficking alliance that is funneling increasing amounts of the drug through the El Paso-Juárez area en route to new U.S. markets, law enforcement officials on both sides of the border say.
Although Mexico is a tiny global producer of heroin, it is catching up to Colombia as the largest source for the U.S. market. Mexican heroin also is being mixed with other drugs to create a stronger and cheaper high – rapidly creating new users of a drug once relegated to hard-core addicts, the officials say.
The result in Dallas is "cheese," a mixture of so-called "black tar" heroin and crushed over-the-counter cold tablets. The product is popular mostly among Hispanic students at northwest Dallas schools who snort the concoction.
Dallas school officials first encountered the drug two years ago, and it has nearly eclipsed marijuana as the most common drug found in schools.
So far, officials estimate at least four students have died from overdosing on the heroin mixture, which federal authorities say they can find nowhere else in the country. Some Dallas County suburbs have reported they've also seen evidence the drug is creeping into their communities.
"The heroin coming into this area is through Mexican drug organizations, with some coming from Colombia," said James Capra, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Dallas office.
The growing Mexican connection represents a new danger and increases the risks to young people, experts say. Mexican heroin is cheap and readily available and does not have to be transported from faraway places like Colombia and Afghanistan.
"We're seeing a renewed flood of heroin coming through this border area," said El Paso County Sheriff Leo Samaniego. "But the stuff isn't stopping in El Paso. It's heading to Chicago, New York City, with stopovers in Dallas."
Law enforcement officials are reporting a dramatic increase in seizures of heroin along the entire U.S.-Mexico border. Seizures in the El Paso-Juárez border region, for instance, are on pace to shatter last year's figures.
Experts say the surge in heroin trafficking is a result of a bloody drug cartel reorganization and a growing interest by Mexican traffickers – who have seen the use of drugs like cocaine stagnate – to make heroin a larger part of the business. The growing demand is fueled in part by new ways of marketing heroin by drug dealers, including creating products like cheese.
Drug profits, in turn, are helping to finance the ongoing cartel turf wars in Mexico, which killed more than 2,000 people in 2006 and nearly 600 already this year.
Law enforcement officials say that the drug-trafficking alliance is working with U.S. gangs and employing new smuggling strategies, including the use of bus lines popular with immigrants.
About a half-dozen such bus lines provide service from El Paso to places such as Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver and Dallas. By using buses, smugglers avoid sophisticated detection devices such as X-ray machines set up at international airports.
"The number of buses going in and out is simply overwhelming," said Claudio "Tony" Morales, commander of special operations for the El Paso County Sheriff's Department. "It's hard for dogs to detect the heroin because there are so many buses, and usually dogs trained to detect focus more on the luggage rather than the passenger."
The smuggling schemes include paying Mexican and U.S. gangs to ensure passage of drugs across the border and hiring people such as students, housewives and even grandparents to carry the heroin taped to their bodies or inside their shoes or swallowed and carried inside their stomachs, U.S. and Mexican law enforcement authorities say.
"Smugglers are increasingly turning to teenagers, senior citizens. We're seeing a lot more families, even grandmothers – people just trying to blend in – being used as part of the cover," said Roger Maier, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. "Smugglers will do anything or use anyone to get the job done."
Last year, sheriff's authorities confiscated 50.7 pounds of heroin in the El Paso region, up from 4.4 pounds in 2005. Similarly, the El Paso sector of U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported an increase in seizures from 11.1 pounds in 2005 to 34.5 pounds in 2006. In the first three months of 2007, agents already have confiscated 21.8 pounds.
Along the Laredo corridor, which runs from Del Rio to Brownsville, agents seized 190 pounds in 2006, up from 133 pounds in 2005, said Rick Pauza, spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Laredo.
The number of pounds may appear small compared with seizures of cocaine and marijuana, drug experts say. But heroin is a more potent drug, and only a small amount of it is needed to produce deadly doses of cheese.
"Heroin is every bit like having a gun cocked to your head," said Phil Jordan, former regional chief of the DEA in Dallas. "The amounts are smaller but 10 times deadlier than any other drug."
For the past several years, the heroin market in the U.S. was generally divided along the Mississippi River, according to the 2007 threat assessment report from the National Drug Intelligence Center, a branch of the Justice Department.
"To the west of the Mississippi River, black tar heroin and, to a lesser extent, brown powder heroin from Mexico were the primary types available," the report says. "To the east of the Mississippi, white powder heroin, primarily from Colombia, but also from Southwest and Southeast Asia, was the primary type of heroin available. While users in both markets historically have been reluctant to switch heroin types, law enforcement reporting indicates that Mexican heroin is now available in more markets east of the Mississippi than traditionally has been the case."
"Historically, the Colombians were mass-producing heroin and Mexicans buying it to redistribute in the United States," Mr. Jordan said. "Now, the Mexicans have become the Colombians. Because of the price involved and profit margins involved, they have basically taken over a lot of the heroin market."
What's especially worrisome for law enforcement officials on both sides of the border is the alliance formed between two former rivals: Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, reputed head of the Juárez cartel, and Joaquín "el Chapo" Guzmán of the Sinaloa cartel. The two men are members of the so-called Federation, a powerful alliance of drug cartels that includes alleged leaders such as Ismael Zambada, the Beltran Leyva brothers and powerful families from the state of Durango, authorities say.
Mr. Carrillo Fuentes and Mr. Guzmán have had a rocky relationship, authorities say. Even today, officials say, mistrust runs so deep that the two men prefer communicating via teleconference.
"This new alliance will return the Juárez cartel as the most powerful and most formidable enterprise in the history of drug smuggling," said a senior U.S. law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "You're combining two of the most brilliant criminal minds in the drug-trafficking business. The result will likely lead to more deadly drugs and new marketing schemes, like what you see in Dallas with cheese."
What brought the two men together is control of a lucrative transportation route that cuts through parts of the "Golden Triangle," a region known for its drug production in the Mexican states of Sinaloa, Chihuahua and Durango, with easy access to Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, Interstate 10 to Texas and California, and Interstate 25 north to Albuquerque and beyond.
The cartel alliance is also relying on a growing number of both Mexican and U.S. gang members, including members of the violent Barrio Azteca in El Paso and Ciudad Juárez and members of the L-Street gang out of Los Angeles, U.S. officials say.
Of the estimated 3,600 prisoners in Juárez's state prison, known as Cereso, about 1,600 are Barrio Azteca gang members, said a senior Mexican law enforcement official.
"This is no different than outsourcing," said Louis Barragan, a supervisory special FBI agent and gang specialist. "Except these cartels are outsourcing to criminal groups willing to do the grunt work."
Gang members are also being trained as "skilled paramilitary members to compete with the Zetas," who are drug enforcers of the rival Gulf cartel with criminal ties to Dallas, said Mr. Morales of the El Paso County sheriff's office. "The gangs are more disciplined, far more skilled, deadly, and show a fierce allegiance to one another."
Dallas school investigators, working with the DEA and Dallas police narcotics and gang officers, nabbed an alleged heroin dealer a month ago operating in northwest Dallas. He is suspected of supplying heroin to "mixers," teenagers who then make and sell cheese to their young clients.
Detectives say the adult dealer was caught with $14,000 worth of black tar heroin, enough to make 43,000 hits of cheese that could sell for more than $90,000 on the street. More arrests are expected.
