Bypassing El Paso

Since Prohibition in the 1920’s twin cities on the Mexico-United States border have been entry points for prohibited/contraband items. After Prohibition those cities switched to drugs and human trafficking. Becuase of the media presence in Los Angeles, Tijuana, has been prominent in fiction and media reports about drug running but other locations along the border are far more prominent in terms of amount and organization.

There are important reasons why the Cartels cross the border east of El Paso. It is open country, scantly patrolled and important from the Cartel-business perspectives leads to large markets. College towns are always a draw for drugs particularly cocaine as it is more of an “upper class” item with meth for the farmworkers, construction guys and waitresses. Texas Tech is a key.

Juarez is a known drug plaza and one that is again in play between the local cartel and the Sinaloa. Crossing east is less likely to run into other Cartel groups nor as visible to American law enforcement. One has to “connect some dots” though to see how the Cartels are moving beyond traditional plazas at the Twin Cities of the Border to other paths. This news report in August from Lubbock is clear evidence of the movement of drugs through more remote areas of west Texas from Mexico. The drug in this case is methamphetamine. There was a time a decade ago when meth or speed was made from chemicals commonly available in American communities. However controls on chemicals like anhydrous ammonia have opened a lucrative market for the Mexican Cartels. They source original chemicals from China and bring them to one of the two or three large commercial ports on the Mexican west coast, typically in the states of Sinaloa and Michoacan. The Cartels then move the chemicals as meth to border crossings. This report from Lubbock shows evidence of this path and the likelihood that it came in somewhere east of El Paso perhaps in the Big Bend.

A new, unusually pure form of Crystal Methamphetamine has been found in Lubbock, and Sheriff Kelly Rowe is seeking new funding to fight it.

“Crystal Methamphetamine is a one-time addiction drug. It’s a type of drug if your kids get hooked on it, you might as well kiss them goodbye because you probably won’t get them back,” said Sheriff Rowe.

He said crystal meth is the biggest threat facing this area.

“It’s coming in in such a high degree of purity; it’s right out of the Breaking Bad series,” Sheriff Rowe said.

In the television series Breaking Bad, the main character builds an empire by making meth that is 99.1 percent pure.

“We just got test results in a couple of days ago from a load that was 100 percent pure. None of us have even seen that before,” Sheriff Rowe said.

Sheriff Rowe says his department seized 800 percent more crystal meth in 2014 than in 2013.