Customs and other law enforcement officers are reporting that large amounts of drugs have been crossing the border lately, a trend that has the attention of Texas gubernatorial candidate Don Huffines.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers in late January seized narcotics from two vehicles with a combined estimated street value of $6.1 million. On Jan. 23, officers at the Los Indios International Bridge stopped a 19-year-old female in a 2010 Ford and discovered almost 20 pounds of cocaine in the vehicle, Your Basin reports. The next day, officers at the Veterans International Bridge stopped a 25-year-old male in a 2004 Ford and discovered almost 300 pounds of methamphetamine in the vehicle. The two individuals were arrested and turned over to special agents with Homeland Security Investigations.
“The drugs pouring across our border are a threat to our very way of life. Any sane leader would recognize this as an act of war, but so far our government wants to treat it more like jaywalking,” Huffines told the Midland Times. “Greg Abbott’s failed leadership has only made the situation worse. But when I am Governor, I will finally finish Trump’s wall and stop the invasion.”
Recent cartel reports come as Rep. Chip Roy (TX-21) introduced the "Drug Cartel Terrorist Designation Act," last spring. This formally established the Reynosa/Los Metros faction of the Gulf Cartel and the Cartel Del Noreste faction of Los Zetas as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
At that time, Rep. Roy noted the cartels' practices of beheading or burning their victims alive, and said, "These are organizations designed to intimidate, terrorize, and to basically create havoc at our border, and I think we ought to treat them as the terrorist organizations that they are.”
According to a report by El Universal, cartels in Mexico are responsible not only for trafficking humans across the border, but also for drugs and crime. One such cartel, the Cartel del Noreste, or the Northeast Cartel, is a faction of Los Zetas, a Mexican criminal syndicate.
“We're seeing quantities of narcotics in the United States right now that we are actually seizing that is higher than I have seen throughout my career,” Dante Sorianello, the assistant special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in the San Antonio district, told KTXS-TV (ABC) "What I can tell you is that the DEA offices in Del Rio and Eagle Pass are extremely busy. And what is going on with narcotics trafficking is directly impacting San Antonio.”
Similar cartels have made headlines in recent months. In December, the Dallas Morning News reported drug cartels in the Mexican city of Chihuahua had kidnapped and murdered 13 migrants en route to illegally cross the U.S. border. Mexican security officials told the Dallas Morning News the deceased–allegedly headed to the Midland-Odessa and Dallas areas–were killed “during a turf war” between rival gangs.
Another report from Yahoo! News states a driver in Borne, Texas, 180 miles from the border, was recently arrested while smuggling immigrants from Mexico and Honduras after crossing through the Del Rio sector, a known territory of the Cartel del Noreste. According to the report, the cartel charges around $12,000 to transport an individual from Mexico or Central America for entry into the U.S.
Abbott, elected in 2014, is serving as the 48th Governor of Texas. Before being elected governor, Abbott was the longest-serving Attorney General of Texas.
Huffines, the CEO of Huffines Communities, a Dallas/Fort Worth-based real estate development firm, will face Abbott in the gubernatorial primary on March 1. From 2015 to 2019, he represented Texas' 16th State Senate District.