Advertisement
California

Record fentanyl seizure by Mexican military was headed for Tijuana

By Sandra Dibble
San Diego Union-Tribune
Share

As San Diego braces for a record number of deaths this year related to the powerful opiod fentanyl, drug traffickers took a major hit last week when Mexican soldiers seized their largest haul ever — some 140 pounds of powder and nearly 30,000 pills.

Potential street value: $20 million per kilo.

The drugs were headed to Tijuana but most likely would have made it across the border and into the U.S.

“All I can say is that this not a surprise, Tijuana is the main corridor for Mexican drug traffickers to smuggle fentanyl into the United States,” said Mark Conover, deputy U.S. attorney in San Diego, and head of an inter-agency fentanyl working group. “All the indicators are that this load of fentanyl was destined for the city streets of the United States.”

Advertisement

San Diego has seen a rising number of fatalities related to fentanyl. Last year’s 33 fentanyl-related deaths were a record for the county, according to the San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Office. And this year’s tally is likely to exceed that, with 33 fentanyl-related deaths reported so far this year.

Mexican drug cartels have in recent years added fentanyl to their portfolio of illicit drugs, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. The drug is manufactured in Mexico with precursors obtained from China and then crossed as contraband into the United States, said Amy Roderick, the DEA’s spokeswoman in San Diego.

The seizure, announced this week by Mexicali-based Second Military Region, is the largest recorded by the country’s National Defense Secretariat. It comes amid U.S. government concern that international drug trafficking organizations are increasingly turning to the smuggling of fentanyl, a drug so powerful that even a tiny amount can be fatal.

The drugs were found Aug. 19 south of Yuma at a checkpoint in the municipality of San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora.

The illicit cargo was hidden inside a tractor-trailer truck ostensibly transporting grocery supplies from Mexico City to Tijuana. Soldiers seized 29,955 pills and 140 pounds of powder, both showing characteristics of fentanyl, according to the statement.

The driver and another man were taken into custody. They were not identified.

The alarm over fentanyl comes amid a rising number of accidental U.S. opioid overdose deaths—a tally that is estimated to have reached close to 60,000 in 2016. Probably the best known fentanyl victim is Prince, the musician whose death at his Minnesota estate in April 2016 was determined to have been caused by an accidental overdose of the drug.

Advertisement

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, fentanyl is 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more powerful than morphine. In many cases it is blended with heroin or sold as oxycodone tablets.

While the fentanyl overdoses have been most prevalent in the East and Midwest, California has seen a rise in fatalities as well. In Sacramento last year, fentanyl was linked to seven deaths numerous overdoses over a single-week in March.

The largest single U.S. fentanyl seizure to date took place in San Diego County in June, when DEA agents found 100 pounds of the drug in Lemon Grove following an extensive investigation, and arrested three suspects, including the daughter of a former mayor.

Also in June, officers with U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the San Ysidro Port of Entry made a record seizure of 66 pounds of fentanyl hidden inside a vehicle that was crossing from Mexico. The driver was arrested.

A kilo of pure fentanyl can produce one million tablets selling for $20 apiece or $20 million. But most of the fentanyl seized in San Diego County is diluted to a potency of about five percent, according to the DEA, and that sells for about $31,000 per kilo, Roderick said.

“Congratulations to the government of Mexico,” Roderick said of the military’s latest seizure. “It’s fentanyl that’s not going to hit the streets of the United States and potentially kill people. That’s why we’re constantly working together to stop the flow of this deadly drug.”

Advertisement

sandra.dibble@sduniontribune.com

@sandradibble

More to Read

California
Sandra Dibble

Sandra Dibble covers the border and Mexico for The San Diego Union-Tribune. She was born in Egypt, raised in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States, and has spent much of her career writing about international and multicultural topics. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Arabic from the University of Utah and a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University. She spent a year on an international journalism fellowship in which she traveled and studied in Mexico. She worked at The Miami Herald for nearly a decade, specializing in coverage of the Cuban, Nicaraguan and Haitian communities, and was part of a team awarded the Pulitzer Prize in national reporting for uncovering the Reagan administration’s clandestine support of the Nicaraguan Contras. She spent three years at The National Geographic, where assignments included writing feature articles about Paraguay and Oaxaca. She has covered the Tijuana-San Diego border since 1994.

More From the Los Angeles Times

Advertisement