EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Two Mexican drug cartels “wholly control” some maritime ports where precursor chemicals for the deadly drug fentanyl are coming in. They also are cultivating coca plants in Mexico – an effort to cut out South American producers and boost profits from cocaine sales in the United States.

And a low-level war between the children of jailed Sinaloa cartel drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera and his former business partner could be about to take a turn. Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada is reported to be in poor health, leaving the leadership of his faction in question and possibly opening the door for the more violent “Chapitos” to grow more powerful.

So says the Drug Enforcement Administration’s 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment, which again blames Mexican transnational criminal organizations for their role in fueling record drug overdose deaths in the United States in the past few years.

A total of 111,029 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2022. Another 107,543 overdose deaths were confirmed in 2023, according to updated data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most fatalities involved synthetic drugs.

The report “highlights the dangerous shift from plant-based drugs to synthetic drugs,” said Towanda R. Thorne-James, special agent in charge of the DEA’s El Paso Division. “This shift has resulted in the most dangerous and deadly drug crisis the United States has ever faced.”

Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times more potent than heroin, figured in many of the deaths. But the National Drug Threat Assessment warns of a steep increase in deaths related to methamphetamine poisoning.

“Nearly all of the methamphetamine sold in the United States is manufactured in Mexico by the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels and it is purer and more potent than at any other time in history,” Thorne-James said. “Mexican cartels are exploiting the prescription stimulant market by manufacturing methamphetamine in pill form. Many pills containing methamphetamine are made to mimic Adderall.”

She said the DEA since Oct. 1 has seized 932 kilos of meth — more than a ton — in the El Paso Division, which includes 17 West Texas counties and all of New Mexico.

Sinaloa cartel behind ‘tusi’ club drug

Although illicit drug peddling and consumption are quickly rising in urban areas and border cities of Mexico, resulting in more violence, the U.S. remains the principal target of the drug cartels.

The Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), now have a presence in all 50 U.S. states. They use social media and encrypted communications apps in addition to street dealers to promote and sell their products, according to the DEA.

Sinaloa is seizing on social trends and pushing a club-scene cocktail called “tusi.” It’s a pink mixture of cocaine, meth and ketamine – a hallucinogenic anesthetic.

“The scope of the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels’ control of the drug trade has effectively eliminated any competition in U.S. markets. Together, the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels […] dictate the flow of nearly all illicit drugs into the United States,” the May 2024 report states.

Cocaine seizures are down around the country, but overdose deaths involving cocaine are up. A total of 15,025 fatalities involving cocaine use were recorded in the first six months of 2023.

That has to do with two factors: cocaine purity is around 84 percent nowadays, and the drug is often taken in conjunction with other drugs like fentanyl, the DEA says.

Cartels growing coca in southern, western Mexico

The Jalisco cartel has been around for little more than a decade, but in that time has become the second-most powerful transnational criminal organization south of the border. Their success is borne of brutality and, it seems, innovation.

The organization headed by Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes is consulting with Colombian coca growers to manufacture cocaine from start to finish. That’s a challenge given different soil, humidity and even the higher elevation of Mexico. But according to the DEA, Mexican cartels have already cultivated coca plants and produced cocaine, though their plants yield less paste than those grown in South America and the product is of lower purity.

Scott Stewart, vice president of intelligence for the private security firm TorchStone Global, said traffickers grew coca in Honduras and Guatemala and their techniques and hybrid plants first made their way into Chiapas, Mexico, between 2013 and 2014.

Coca is now being grown in the western state of Michoacan and alongside heroin poppies in the mountains of Guerrero.

“So far, the coca plantations have been relatively limited in size, so I doubt they will reach anywhere near the volume of coca produced in the Andes (South America) and transported by Mexican cartels to the U.S.,” Stewart told Border Report. “Honestly, whether the cocaine is sourced from the Andes or the Sierra Madre del Sur (Mexico), it still has to be smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico.”

Corruption allows cartels to produce fentanyl in Mexico

Just like Mexico has proven a key partner in helping reduce the migrant flows to the U.S. border, its assistance in stemming the flow of drugs is paramount.

However, the National Drug Threat Assessment asserts the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels are regularly getting their precursor chemicals from Asia at Mexican seaports.

“The Port of Mazatlan on the Pacific Coast of Sinaloa is wholly controlled by the Sinaloa cartel, and they charge other drug-trafficking organizations ‘piso’ (a tax) for use of the port,” the report states. “The Sinaloa cartel maintains logistical and corrupt government contacts at other maritime ports on both coasts of Mexico.”

Likewise, the Jalisco cartel uses bribery, intimidation and extortion of government and civilian port officials to guarantee the delivery of precursor chemicals from China and cocaine from Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. The CJNG also uses the ports to export processed drugs from Mexico to other parts of the world.

“The Jalisco cartel has almost exclusive-corrupt access to the ports of Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas on the Pacific Coast and can also access the ports of Veracruz and Matamoros on the Gulf of Mexico,” the report states.

Stewart said it’s “absolutely critical” for Mexico to root out corruption at its seaports.

“The cartels can bring in smaller quantities of precursor chemicals via air or smaller ships and boats, but to accommodate their current industrial scale production of synthetic drugs, they need large quantities of chemicals that can only be brought in via large vessels through the ports,” Stewart said. “The Government of Mexico recognizes this and has implemented measures to attempt to fix the problem, such as placing the military in charge of port security, but this has only served to make the military more vulnerable to bribery.”

Border Report reached out to the Mexican Embassy in Washington, D.C., and to the Foreign Ministry in Mexico City for comment and is awaiting a response.

A new fast-food restaurant? No, it’s a CJNG franchise

The days of an all-powerful “Godfather” figure that micromanages every aspect of a criminal organization appear to have come to an end in Mexico.

The Sinaloa cartel has split into four factions since the arrest of El Chapo. The cartel does not currently have a leader, according to the DEA.

But the sons of Guzman Loera – Ivan, Alfredo, Joaquin and Ovidio – head the Chapitos, his old business partner Zambada leads the remnants of the old structure, aging jailed drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero heads another faction and the fourth is led by El Chapo’s brother Aureliano “El Guano” Guzman Loera, the report states.

Zambada’s health is becoming an issue, as the more aggressive Chapitos would gain more power with him out of the picture. For now, no single cartel controls the entire border but they have proxies that rule over certain ports of entry and “tax” any other group that wants to send drugs across there, according to the National Drug Threat Assessment.

“Sinaloa exerts nearly total control over the border region south of Arizona giving it easy access to San Luis Rio Colorado and Nogales ports of entry,” the DEA analysis indicates. “Large Sinaloa cartel contingents operate across much of the border with California, too, providing access to the San Ysidro Port of Entry, the busiest border crossing in the Western Hemisphere, and Otay Mesa Port of Entry.”

Los Chapitos, the National Drug Threat Assessment says, “have a specific preference for using the Ysleta-Zaragoza border crossing between Juarez, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas.”

The Jalisco cartel may have a single authority figure in El Mencho, but the group utilizes a franchise model. There’s a small group of top-tier CJNG leaders that report to Oseguera, but each plaza or territory is its own franchise; this gives local groups much autonomy and the bosses just collect a percentage of earnings without actually funding operations, the analysis outlines.

What the Jalisco cartel does invest in is funding “super labs” for synthetic drugs, particularly methamphetamine. CJNG is also the main supplier of cocaine to the United States, the report says.

U.S. government controls Ysleta POE, ‘not the cartels’

Thousands of passenger and commercial vehicles come into the U.S. through the Ysleta port of entry in El Paso as do hundreds of cargo trucks every day.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection utilize a broad range of safeguards to identify and seize contraband at the facility, officials told Border Report.

CBP officers at Ysleta constantly engage in pre-primary inspections — border officers walking along car lines with mirrors to inspect vehicle undercarriages or canines trained to detect drugs and explosives. They engage each traveler at primary inspection booths and are expanding technologies such as low-energy portals to scan approaching vehicles, handheld density meters to detect anomalies in cars and fiber optic scopes to see inside them, CBP said in an email in response to a Border Report inquiry.

“Our borders must be the last line of defense, not the first, so CBP has been doing everything possible to take action against transnational criminal organizations in close coordination with U.S. and foreign partners,” said CBP Acting Commissioner Troy Miller.

CBP and other federal agencies also rely on intelligence to interdict drug shipment regardless of conveyance, the agency said.

U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, said border agencies need more resources for border security.

He said the Homeland Security Appropriations bill that just cleared a House committee includes $171.4 million to service current border security technology like smart surveillance towers and aerostatic balloons, and $305 million for non-intrusive inspection technology like vehicle scanners, among other funding contemplated by the bill.