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Comment by bdcravens | Hacker News Reader

Unsurprising. Over 90% of the fentanyl seizures at the border aren't immigrants, but are Americans in American cars.

True, because many of those smugglers also smuggle military-grade firearms back to Mexico. It's very risky, but also very easy money. Sometimes there are enhanced controls to detect smuggling, but I'd bet anything they have well-bribed moles who warn the smugglers when that happens.

Most of the guns smuggled into Mexico from the United States are status guns. Think unique guns you'd find in popular video games, gold plated, old west revolvers and antiques, etc.

Practically it is much easier for cartels to buy thousands of rifles from Africa or the Middle East than to try and get them across the border from the US. Handguns are trivial to source directly from Chinese factories producing Glock and 1911 knockoffs.

Heck, you can order every part individually to assemble a Glock directly from Wish.com if you know what to search for.

Not true in the slightest, it's extremely easy to smuggle guns out of the United States. Glocks, AR-15s, AKs, Barrett .50 cal rifles, etc. [1] 60% of firearms trafficked are bought without a background check from gun shows in border states. Cartels continue to purchase weapons this way because it's so easy.

[1] - Pages 11-14 https://www.atf.gov/firearms/docs/report/nfcta-volume-ii-par...

> 60% of firearms trafficked are bought without a background check from gun shows in border states.

Is that from the page labeled 9 of that PDF? That's wrong on 2 counts.

The first is that that graph is showing a breakdown by destination (i.e. 60% of requests to trace a gun that was later traced to a gun show came from Mexico, not that 60% of guns in Mexico are from US gun shows).

The second is that an FFL still has to conduct a background check, even if the sale occurs at a gun show. All of those guns either had a background check, or the dealer is going to jail. The "gun show loophole" only applies to normal people trying to sell a couple of guns. As soon as the ATF thinks that someone is "engaged in the business of dealing firearms" they are required to be licensed as an FFL, and must do background checks regardless of where the sale occurs. It's all in https://www.atf.gov/file/100871/download

The report you point to has some self selection bias, it is a report only covering guns coming from the US.

Mexico only initiated 32k traces in 2021, which lends further support to my point that the majority of guns are not coming from the US. That number is incredibly small compared to the net new volume of guns cartels get on a yearly basis.

“Most cartels buy in bulk, and the weapons are coming from places like Nicaragua and other South American countries. Also Asia and some from the Middle East,” a Tijuana-based police authority who requested anonymity explained. “And, another factor is the CNC machines making uppers in clandestine shops in Mexico.” https://www.foxnews.com/world/mexico-guns-black-market-tepit...

Yes, that's why I chose a US source. The report doesn't conclude that "status guns" are the only ones making it across the border.

I'm not sure you understand the ATF report you're trying to cite. It doesn't say a lot of things because they don't fall under ATFs jurisdiction and they don't have any data on it. My information comes directly from law enforcement sources on the ground.

No, they really get most of their guns from the USA. No shipping on a boat (China doesn’t even have a gun industry for consumers, Russia and Brazil are the only producers of note with production comparable to the USA in size, and Brazil has that Dorian gap that makes smuggling difficult), cheap, and America makes a lot more guns than it needs. The statistic that 30% of Americans have 5 guns each is skewed because many of those guns were smuggled out to Mexico and Central America.

One of the reasons Republicans were so eager outraged that the Clinton admin ATF was trying to track gun smuggling from the USA into Mexico was that it was such a bad look for them.

So we're already at gig-smuggling now?

There was another article posted here that said the cartel is now using a gig work like model to be more decentralized. Can't find it though.

Maybe California could prosecute them under the new rules about contractor misclassification!

You say "already" but offering random people money for doing crime is at least several centuries old.

The cartels have used Americans as mules since cocaine took off. Americans are less likely to be searched, and while more expensive to be bribed, this is usually better than getting the shipment lost.

Not that expensive. This dumbass did it for the princely sum of 4000 pesos (~$220), then killed himself rather than face trial. He had 5 kids too.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/16/us/von-nukem-suicide-drug-cha...

The offer could have been $220 plus his kids were given the opportunity to “live another year” by the cartel. You don’t know what other “incentives” existed. Just because someone appears stupid doesn’t mean they are: you lack the relevant facts to judge.

>The offer could have been $220 plus his kids were given the opportunity to “live another year” by the cartel.

It's more likely to have been $220 plus some sort of profit sharing. The cartels are probably smart enough to align incentives instead of an over reliance on violence where it can be avoided.

The wrong way to think about bribery is as a calculated payoff. Instead it's a spur of the moment thing.

You are headed home, tickets already paid for, and then someone asks if you want to make a quick $200 real easy.

This isn't always how it goes down, but you can imagine how an impulsive person may over react to a monetary reward and thus accept very little compensation. If you run the risk assessment, you aren't going to take the deal!

I guess. I'd be instantly suspicious, but he doesn't seem like a person of good judgment to start with. It's sad that he didn't have the wit or the character to plead guilty and try to straighten his life out for the sake of his family.

Having unprotected sex isn't particularly correlated with intelligence or self control. The opposite, in fact.

> I'd be instantly suspicious

It’s their job to get extremely good at being less suspicious. The more rejections they get, the more they refine their approach, their appearance, their story, etc.

I try to avoid giving credit to my ego for not falling for a scam/con (yet!) when capitalism and evolution are both optimized for finding efficient workarounds for any hurdle. Given enough attempts and enough time, capitalism will corrupt anyone and everyone.

It says he trafficked 15kg of fentanyl. $220 is basically gas and per diem money. Allow me to present the conspiracy theory that this guy owed the cartels a favor for whatever reason, and the payment was purely enough to let him deal with the costs of performing it. This has the looks of a man who painted himself into a corner, rolled a bad dice roll, and then had no way out.

>It's sad that he didn't have the wit or the character to plead guilty and try to straighten his life out for the sake of his family.

That won't overcome the fact he now owes 15kg of goods to the cartel, and probably has no way to pay it, and he's staring down the barrel of being in prison full of people who have nothing but time to settle the debt. I think this guys death warrant was signed as soon as he got caught, and probably halfway written by the time he was even asked for the favor. Quite possible he did the best thing for his family.

Hmm, that's an angle I hadn't considered. Interesting points.

Might be stepping up efforts? Just came back to the US from Mexico (Yucatán) with partner and kids, had to make a drug dog walk (you walk at a steady pace as the drug dogs are exposed to you during the 10 meter walk) in the terminal.

Have had to do the drug dog walk the last few times I flew out of JFK. It seems to move lines much quicker and allows laptops, etc. to stay in bags going through the scanners. Think it's something we'll see more and more of, which is fine by me but they don't make much allowance for children who have no idea what is going on, in my experience (try telling two young kids that they have to walk side by side at a set pace and not touch the doggy)

Why are you fine with strong armed, authoritarian policies that target vulnerable populations while leaving the architects of death unharmed?

The problem with poisoned drugs was created by doctors, corporations, the police, and politicians. Cartel king pins, plus smaller "mom & pop shops" (~$10ks-millions operations) play their role, but the vast majority of people caught will be stupid and/or desperate smucks, who have done practically nothing.

These will be the people doing life sentences. The cartels leaders almost always get away (until maybe they die). The "mom & pop" shops I mentioned, often quite large in their own respect do get busted from time to time... however the majority of time in prison will be done by pawns, especially from these types of busts.

Then the government spikes the ball and does a victory dance, while most of society is "fine" with it... yet things consistently get worse. More violence, more dirty money, corruption, overdoses, etc.

Please don't twist my words. You know I didn't say anything of the sort and yours is a bad faith response. I will not engage.

You just did. You engaged. This is valid criticism, and not at all in bad faith.

I think that's been the practice for sometime now; we had to do the same thing at Puerto Vallarta's airport a few years back.

Not sure that's a drug dog. More likely simply a dog trained to sniff explosives. I know this because I've been made to walk the dog walk while unknowingly carrying things I should not have been carrying. The dogs never suspected a thing.

Not all dogs are trained on all drugs. I once met a dog that was only trained on various substances cartels use to mask the smell of drugs.

I had to do something similar in the Denver airport recently.

They're really stepping up. Last year they dragged me into a hospital in cuffs and told the doctors to "inspect" inside my GI tract. That was a better part of a day affair along with a federal warrant and the works. A dog never even alerted (and even verbally told so by CBP, although the warrant lied and said otherwise). They also have a network of hospitals with staff openly hostile to tourists, who are fine acting even without a warrant or consent and a complaint to the state board results in the medical professional boards telling you that a patient has no right to deny consent even without a court order.

uh, what? what was the lead up to this?

Few hours walking around in a border town and eating lunch from what I recall. When I crossed back there were a whole team of people working me over and HSI got involved. No idea what triggered them. When they found nothing they sent the debt collectors chasing me for the hospital bill, obviously that won't be paid so I look forward to the lawsuit.

edit: to note I don't know If I'm actually going to be sued, just will definitely find it humorous if they do so.

I would guess that the very temporary nature of your trip looked like you were just there to collect something and come right back. None of which justifies the subsequent outcome. Good luck in your lawsuit.

How is the hospital bill your responsibility in this situation? That’s crazy pants and just evil

>How is the hospital bill your responsibility in this situation?

Exactly but on the other hand, if not his responsibility, could acting suspicious be a free GI check hack? Health coverage can be expensive in the US.

Hack methodology:

1. Sprinkle tiny amount of drugs on yourself

2. Go to border

3. Free GI check

4. Profit?

This almost sounds like a combo of bad profiling software that flagged you and then parallel construction using the dog as cover.

If you have the time and all, definitely start throwing lawsuits and hit hard in discovery.

That's what the 2nd amendment is for

CBP can do whatever they want to anybody within a 100 mile radius of a border (maritime included) which is like, 70%+ of the US population.

Even though they’re complete fucking buffoons it’s a really good idea to not fuck with CBP, they get paid to fuck people up with impunity.

An international airport qualifies as a US border too. Think about that for a minute...

And elsewhere on order. Although Portland is within 100 miles, they were sent under a post 9/11 statutory authorization that would have enabled them to perform certain (not border/customs related) federal law enforcement actions anywhere.

Not sure I understand, are you saying GP should've pulled a gun on the cops?

I actually thought the economics worked out that lost shipments were kind of irrelevant. There was so much south of the border and so little (percentage-wise) needed to make it through to sate demand.

Where does this stat come from? At the border or border checkpoint?

These are very different.

Doesn’t that suggest using Americans as your mules is the riskiest?

Ima think most volume is moved via cargo or tunnels.

No, the relevant stat would be % likelihood of being caught for Americans vs non-Americans.

Even if 90% of the people caught are Americans, if the number of Americans actually doing the smuggling outnumber non-Americans 20x, then that means they're lower-risk.

It does not suggest that. Sending with non Americans may simply be so likely to fail that it’s not worth trying.

Bizarre thread. The Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels run China origin fentanyl in California. It is an enormous, industrial scale operation.

I had a young relative I chased around to try and get clean for years before he OD'd on opioids in a bay area Air BnB with his girlfriend. He would order laminated 'diving certificates' with drugs encased in them by mail, and other postal deliveries that were clearly really drug shipments. There is little reason for mules when 18 wheelers are bringing in hidden drug shipments from Mexico and the postal service are delivering deadly drugs from India as was the case with the San Jose police union dealer.

Did you read the article? This wasn’t someone driving a car across the border.

That's not the point - the point is that motivated Americans are the ones driving the fentanyl epidemic.

Or maybe Americans are overwhelmingly trying to smuggle across border crossings because traditionally Americans get less inspection than non-americans, whereas non nationals choose other methods(tunnels, drones, boats, other non-border zone crossings, mail/parcels, etc).

There's a good amount of both.

Addicts are the ones doing that.

You can't claim by that stat that 90% of the fentanyl is brought in by American citizens through regulated ports of entry. By the very nature of illegal smuggling via illegal border crossings, you can't even know what percentage of fentanyl smugglers or fentanyl supply is captured.

> You can't claim by that stat that 90% of the fentanyl is brought in by American citizens through regulated ports of entry.

They quite literally did not make that claim.

Yeah they did, when they started it with "not surprising" implying that it was statistically likely.

Their claim is that of the fentanyl seized at the border, 90% of that is from Americans in American cars. The other 10% would be from other sources.

That does not include:

Fentanyl seized at locations other than the border. Which we would know about.

Fentanyl manufactured in the United States.

Fentanyl in hospitals and other regulated areas.

Fentanyl not seized at all.

So they aren't making a claim about all fentanyl. They are making a claim of a certain segment of fentanyl.

You also can't know how much gets through legal border crossings. What you have posted is a non-statement

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