MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican soldiers and marines have seized more than a ton of fentanyl pills during two raids in the north. Officials are calling this the largest seizure of the synthetic opioid in the country’s history.
The raids came after a sharp drop in fentanyl seizures in Mexico earlier this year, and days after President-elect Donald Trump threatened to impose 25% tariffs on products from Canada and Mexico unless those countries crack down on the flow of migrants and drugs around the world. border.
Mexico’s top security official said soldiers and marines spotted two men with weapons Tuesday evening in the northern state of Sinaloa, home to the drug cartel of the same name.
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They chased the men, who came across two houses. In one house, soldiers found about 300 pounds of fentanyl, and in the other house a truck full of about 800 pounds of the drug, mostly in pill form.
“In Sinaloa, we have achieved the largest seizure of fentanyl in history,” Public Safety Secretary Omar Garcia Harfuch wrote in his social media accounts. Several weapons were also seized and two men arrested.
In the past, Mexican security forces have sometimes used the story of tracking armed men storming into homes as a pretext to enter homes without a search warrant. In at least one case, the government’s version was refuted by security camera footage.
The latest harvest was notable because fentanyl seizures in Mexico had fallen dramatically in the first half of the year. At times during the summer, federal forces under former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador reported seizures as low as 50 grams (2 ounces) per week.
Figures for the first half of 2024 show that Mexican federal forces seized only 286 pounds (130 kilograms) of fentanyl nationwide between January and June, a 94% drop from the 5,135 pounds (2,329 kilograms) seized in 2023 was seized.
The synthetic opioid is blamed for about 70,000 overdose deaths a year in the United States, and U.S. officials have tried to step up efforts to seize it as soon as it crosses the border, often in the form of counterfeit pills found in Mexico are manufactured largely from precursor chemicals. imported from China.
López Obrador has denied that fentanyl is produced in Mexico at all, although experts — and even members of his own government — acknowledge that it is.
