Drug smuggling

DEA Explains Drug Smuggling Methods Along the Southwest Border

The cat-and-mouse game has gone on for decades. The players have changed, and the communications are more sophisticated, but the game is the same.

Drug cartels in Mexico send as much illicit contraband, and people, into the United States as possible, while law enforcement agencies north of the border try to catch them.

The Tucson Sector in Arizona is one of the primary marijuana trafficking routes in the country for two different reasons, said Doug Coleman, special agent in charge of the Arizona Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

First, a lot of the terrain is remote, unpatrolled, and often unfenced, so marijuana can be more easily backpacked in. And second, the commercial port of entry in the small border town of Nogales is the entry point for about 70 percent of the winter produce trucked into the United States.