Fentanyl Crossing in "Vaginal Cavities and Rectums"

Cartels use Instagram to recruit young U.S. "body carriers" near the border

The 24 year old American woman was crossing by foot from Mexico into the United States at the Ysleta bridge of El Paso when customs inspectors brought the sniffer dogs out and they caught a scent from her groin area. The agents patted her down and found it suspiciously bulky between her legs. Under pressure, she removed a package from her vaginal cavity; it was wrapped in a condom and contained 180 grams of fentanyl - the synthetic opioid at the heart of the United States’ worst ever overdose crisis.

That seizure in February was one of many from what agents call “body carriers” smuggling fentanyl over the border. In the following week, agents at the same crossing caught a 37 year old woman with 120 grams of fentanyl in her vagina, and a 34 year old man with 100 grams in his boots and pockets. Again, they were U.S. citizens. Last year at the same location, agents found a 19 year old who was two months pregnant and had 118 grams of the opioid in her vagina.

U.S. agents along the southern border say they are struggling to keep up with the quantity of body carriers amid a record of 27,000 pounds of fentanyl seized during fiscal year 2023. The carriers can be both both men and women and also hide the drugs in their rectums or under vests or inside bras. But women concealing the hazardous narcotic in their vaginas is an especially common and effective ploy.

Body carrying is an old tactic, with smugglers flying to Europe and swallowing condoms filled with cocaine or heroin and “shitting” them out after landing. But fentanyl increases the importance of the trick because such minuscule quantities of the drug can be so valuable (and so lethal). Just a small quantity making it through can equal big profits.

Whereas a wrap of cocaine can contain a gram of the disco powder, a pill of fentanyl can contain just a milligram, or a thousandth of the weight. These pills are being sold to U.S. users from 50 cents to five bucks a piece, so a kilo of pure fentanyl is worth several million dollars on the street.

There has been a lot of attention to the record number of undocumented migrants and asylum seekers. But the body carriers tend to be U.S. citizens, often from towns near the border in Texas, Arizona, California, and New Mexico. And in a recent development, cartels recruit many of the young carriers via social media such as Instagram.

“They are attracted by the photos of expensive cars and jewellery and the lifestyle,” said a U.S. law enforcement official investigating a major smuggling corridor over the border. “For us, it’s shoot and miss most of the time.”

The New Donkeys

The amount of fentanyl being seized at the border has rocketed, increasing more than five fold between 2019 and 2023. At the same time, U.S. overdose deaths have soared, with more than 110,000 fatalities over the last year according to provisional data, with fentanyl or other synthetic opioids in 70 percent of victims. It’s one of the worst overdose crises the world has ever known.

The big seizures of fentanyl, which tend to make the press, are mostly in vehicles, also going over the official crossings. A typical case was last month when U.S. agents stopped a Chevrolet Silverado truck driving into Arizona and used a scanner to check out the spare tire, getting a high-density reading. They ripped it open and found 21 kilos of fentanyl pills marked M-30.

But the many small loads taken by body carriers also add up to a lot of dope. The quantity of people crossing the border means agents can only search a fraction. And when they make a detention, they are busy doing the paperwork and dozen of others can be walking drugs through.

In Mexico, the people who carried dope over the line were traditionally known as burros or donkeys as they hauled hefty loads of marijuana on their backs. It was largely men who would shift the 25 kilo or 50 kilo loads over the desert. With cannabis legalization spreading across the United States, however, the market has crashed for Mexican weed. While back in 2010, border agents seized 2.4 million pounds of marijuana, in fiscal year 2023 it was down to 150 K.

The new burros walk through the “ports of entry,” and are often young women. Cartel affiliates can recruit them using narco Instagram accounts with tens of thousands of followers that show pictures of flash cars, private planes and jewellery. While there are many fake accounts, there are others authentically run by traffickers and they will message followers and lure them into smuggling fentanyl.

The agents try to trace the Instagram accounts and get hold of the private messages. However, they need a court order to do that and the cartels are quick to open and shut the accounts so the info can be out of date.

When the agents catch the body carriers, they usually provide little useful information. “They don’t want to talk at all most of the time,” the agent said. “Once you call their parents, they’ll talk a little bit but a lot of them don’t even know who the drugs belong to. They just know who gave it to them and it’s usually not the person who is going to be any benefit to us. So that is where the problem is.”

The carriers can be paid a few thousand dollars to take a load through. Another tactic the cartel uses, the agent says, is helping the carriers buy a car, and as they have pending payments they will be enticed to take more loads.

With the sheer level of overdose deaths, fentanyl trafficking has become a hot political potato in Washington and in relations with Mexico and China, where the precursors come from. Under pressure, Mexico has gone after traffickers such as the Chapitos (sons of El Chapo) with Mexican troops nabbing their head of security, “El Nini” in Sinaloa last month. In an apparent bid to take the heat off, the Chapitos have also put out banners claiming that fentanyl production is now banned in their turf. And China promised to crack down on the precursors before a recent summit.

Yet despite these actions, there is no sign yet of fentanyl availability waning on U.S. streets or of any slowdown in the catastrophic level of overdose victims.

Copyright Ioan Grillo and CrashOut Media 2023