When President Trump threatened 25 percent tariffs unless Mexico put a halt to fentanyl trafficking, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum dispatched an additional 10,000 national guard members to the border. For more than three weeks, troops have stopped nearly every U.S.-bound car leaving Nogales, questioning drivers, sliding mirrors under vehicles, poking fiber-optic scopes into gas tanks and walking drug-sniffing dogs around autos. The result? The troops have found 150 fentanyl pills. Meanwhile, U.S. officials just across the border have seized more than 400,000, reports the Washington Post. Some critics have dismissed Mexico’s operation as a show, designed to placate a U.S. leader fond of military solutions to complex problems. That misses the point, analysts say. Mexico appears to be making a serious effort to cooperate more on tackling fentanyl and other narcotics. On Thursday, it transferred 29 high-level drug suspects to the U.S.
The border operation underscores the difficulty of finding the opioid — especially for a country with a weak, underfunded security structure. The fentanyl epidemic is the deadliest in U.S. history. Overdose deaths attributed mostly to the opioid topped 100,000 in 2023, before dropping by more than 20 percent in the 12-month period ending in August. The drug is largely made in small Mexican labs and is highly concentrated.
That makes it frustratingly hard to find at crossings like Nogales. About 11,000 vehicles a day crawl north across the border, carrying tourists, shoppers and workers, along with commerce ranging from Ford Broncos to tons of tomatoes. “A pill is very tiny,” said Michael Humphries, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection director of the Nogales, Ariz. border crossing. For smugglers, “concealment locations are pretty unlimited.”
U.S. officials welcomed the Mexican reinforcements. “We need all the help we can get,” said a veteran antidrug official in Arizona. The Mexicans’ lack of experience and classified intelligence makes it hard to detect fentanyl, said the official.. “They’re not going to find a lot ... if they don’t know what they’re looking for,” he said.