Mexico’s drug trafficking cartels have billions of dollars in drugs to sell in the U-S. Nonetheless, they are always looking for inventive ways to smuggle illegal narcotics into the United States and are now increasingly turning to young school-aged children – juveniles from the ages of 13 to 17 – to tape drugs to their bodies and transport them across the U.S. border.
As alarming, say U.S. authorities, is that these juvenile “mules” are smuggling hard drugs, from methamphetamine, to cocaine, to heroin. Most of those being caught are in the U.S-Mexico border town of Nogales, Arizona, considered the main gateway of illegal narcotics into the United States. As Mike Kirsch reports, these young smugglers face not only years in prison, but death threats from cartels demanding to be reimbursed for the drugs that are confiscated.
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Mexico’s Juvenile Drug Smuggling
Mexico’s drug trafficking cartels have billions of dollars in drugs to sell in the U-S. Nonetheless, they are always looking for inventive ways to smuggle illegal narcotics into the United States and are now increasingly turning to young school-aged children - juveniles from the ages of 13 to 17 - to tape drugs to their bodies and transport them across the U.S. border.