Drug smuggling

Cartels recruiting drug, people smugglers in bars, high schools

Smuggling arrests in Southern Arizona often conjure up images of Mexican drug cartel foot-soldiers sneaking across the border in the dead of night. But a decade of U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics — and a review of more than 100 federal court cases by the Arizona Daily Star — turn that idea on its head. 

Actually, most suspected smugglers arrested in Arizona and along the rest of the U.S.-Mexico border either are U.S. citizens or went through the years-long process of becoming legal permanent residents. 

U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents — CBP statistics do not distinguish between the two — accounted for 68 percent of smuggling arrests made by Tucson Sector Border Patrol agents in fiscal year 2015. Along the entire U.S.-Mexico border, citizens and legal residents accounted for 81 percent of smuggling arrests by agents.