Some cartel members have testified about using underground tunnels. But none have said they’ve transported drugs into the United States at unwalled sections of the border.
The testimony comes at a time when President Donald Trump’s push for a border wall includes arguments that it would help stop the flow of drugs into the United States.
Trump tweeted Friday that without a steel barrier or wall along the US-Mexico border, “our Country cannot be safe. Criminals, Gangs, Human Traffickers, Drugs & so much other big trouble can easily pour in. It can be stopped cold!”
US Border Patrol seized nearly 480,000 pounds of narcotics at the US-Mexico border between legal ports of entry during fiscal year 2018, said Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Katie Waldman. But the department has not provided data about the amount of drugs seized by authorities at legal border crossings.
A spokeswoman for the Drug Enforcement Agency, Mary Brandenberger, said she was unable to provide more details because of the lapse in government funding during the partial shutdown.
From tunnels to legal ports of entry
In Guzman’s case, the government’s own witnesses — many of them former Mexican cartel associates — testified that after the government cracked down on smuggling tunnels, they began relying on legal ports of entry to bring drugs into the country.
Former high-ranking Sinaloa cartel leader Jesus Zambada Garcia testified about Guzman’s use of tunnels in the early 1990s to quickly smuggle drugs such as cocaine into the United States, earning him the nickname “El Rapido,” or “The Fast One.”
“(A tunnel) is the most secure way to cross drugs to the US — the easiest way to cross over weapons,” Zambada Garcia testified.
Zambada Garcia was arrested in Mexico City in 2008 and extradited to the United States, where he pleaded guilty to importing, distributing and selling cocaine and belonging to a continuing criminal enterprise. He has not been sentenced but could face between 10 years and life in prison.
He said that in the late 1980s to early 1990s, 95% of cocaine was brought into the United States by a tunnel under Arizona’s border with Mexico. But as law enforcement began discovering and closing tunnels, cartel management directed drugs to flow into the United States in other ways.
Tractor-trailers were, and continue to be, a popular method of smuggling in narcotics. Some trucks are fitted with a “double bottom” that has hidden compartments. Others are filled with goods, such as large cans of chilis, that contain sand surrounding a specially made, cylindrical brick of cocaine. If shaken by authorities, the sand makes the cans sound like chilis are moving around inside. From about 1990 to 1993, nearly 30 tons of cocaine were smuggled into the United States using this method, Zambada Garcia said.
Zambada Garcia’s nephew, Vicente Zambada, testified that drugs were often placed in “clavos” — hidden compartments in cars — and driven across the border through legal ports of entry. The younger Zambada was once groomed to take over the Sinaloa cartel by his father, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, who worked alongside Guzman.