(NewsNation) — Law enforcement officials are now saying El Paso, Texas is the new epicenter of illegal border crossings.

Two years ago, the proverbial epicenter was in the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas. Last year, it was in the Del Rio sector. Now, El Paso is the hub of dangerous cartel drug trafficking and human smuggling.

The level of activity is unheard-of for the area. Recent incidents include a group of 500 Venezuelan migrants making the crossing in the El Paso area.

Law enforcement is not used to seeing anything like this in this area. They told NewsNation that this is no accident and it’s not driven by the migrants. Everything can be traced back to one place, the Mexican cartels.

“So the cartels are extremely adept at understanding the politics not only in Mexico, but in the United States as well. And they adapt to the politics they they adapt to where numbers can be increased, where they can decrease. They do what is necessary in order to generate a profit simply because the cartels are recognizing that they can move. There, they can move human smuggling and drug trafficking to where it best benefits them. And that’s what they’re currently doing right now,” said Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Control Council

The cartels will go to great lengths to move people into the U.S. There are photos of migrants who are actually found trying to cross into the U.S. through the storm drains in El Paso.

It’s a whole business model in which the cartels can make tens of thousands of dollars per person being smuggled, depending on where they come from around the world. And it’s one of those situations in which the safety and lives of migrants come second to profits.