SAN DIEGO — Fentanyl hidden in trunks, driver’s side doors, and in the firewall around the dashboard smuggled into San Diego by cartels in Mexico.
“They'll put it in the gas tanks, hoping that the gasoline will mask the smell from the canines,” said Special Operations Supervisor Eric Lavergne with US Border Patrol, San Diego Sector. “We've seen when they smuggle narcotics within car seats. There's nothing that's sacred. So, I mean they'll put it in the diaper of children.”
Lavergne says his agents have seen it all, including a disturbing trend of high schoolers and even middle schoolers being used as mules.
“They tell these kids, hey, you're not 18 yet. Even if they arrest you, you won't be in trouble. And that's just not the truth. you know that it's a felony arrest for smuggling of narcotics that follows you for life. That's a serious charge," Lavergne said.
Two-thirds of the people arrested for smuggling fentanyl are American citizens paid by the cartels, and a lot of that smuggling comes through the border entry in San Ysidro, where officers are trying to do their best under difficult circumstances.
“In the San Diego filed office, we're seeing 200,000 people a day,” US Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Troy Miller told 60 Minutes Correspondent Bill Whitaker in a segment that aired this past Sunday. “Every one of these 200,000 people is presenting themselves as a legitimate traveler.”
Miller also showed Whitaker a seizure vault in a top-secret location that’s packed with pills. They confiscated 27,000 pounds of Fentanyl in fiscal year 2023. And then there are the pills they don't intercept.
“Every single week, we lose 22 teens between the ages of 14 and 18,” Anne Milgram, Administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration told Whitaker. “Every single week, we're basically losing a high school class somewhere in America.”
They're made to look like regulated prescription drugs, but local agents make it clear that they are anything but a professionally created product.
“When you look at these pills being made in Mexico, there's no chemist, there's no regulation” Lavergne said. “The smugglers are just mixing chemicals together. So yes, you may take one pill and be fine. You may take one pill and die immediately.”
Last year, fentanyl killed more than 70 thousand people across the country. Miller says he needs more agents and officers to be more effective at stopping the drugs from entering the U.S. In the meantime, officials hope parents will talk to their children about the dangers of fentanyl.
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