MEXICO CITY –
Mexican soldiers and marines have seized over a ton of fentanyl pills in two raids in the north, with officials calling it the biggest catch 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 U.S. president-elect Donald Trump threatened to impose 25 per cent tariffs on products from Canada and Mexico unless those countries cracked down on the flow of migrants and drugs across the border.
Mexico’s top security official said soldiers and marines late Tuesday spotted two men carrying guns in the northern state of Sinaloa, home to the drug cartel of the same name.
They chased the men, who ran into two houses. In one house soldiers found about 660 pounds (300 kilograms) of fentanyl, and in the other a truck packed with about 1,750 pounds (800 kilograms) of the drug, mostly in pill form.
“In Sinaloa, we achieved the biggest seizure in history of fentanyl,” Public Safety Secretary Omar Garcia Harfuch wrote in his social media accounts. Several guns were also seized and two men were arrested.
In the past, Mexican security forces have sometimes used the story of following armed men running into houses as a pretext to enter homes without search warrants. In at least one case, the government version was disproved by security camera footage.
The latest haul was striking because fentanyl seizures in Mexico had fallen dramatically in the first half of the year. At some points during the summer, under former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, federal forces reported seizures amounted to as little as 50 grams (two 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, down 94 per cent from the 5,135 pounds (2,329 kilograms) seized in 2023.
The synthetic opioid has been blamed for about 70,000 overdose deaths annually in the United States, and U.S. officials have tried to step up efforts to seize it as it comes over the border, often in the form of counterfeit pills made in Mexico from precursor chemicals largely imported from China.
López Obrador always denied that fentanyl is even produced in Mexico, though experts — and even members of his own administration — acknowledge that it is.