Drug cartels set up shop deep inside US

Mexican drug cartels whose operatives once rarely ventured beyond the US border are dispatching some of their most trusted agents to live and work deep inside the US — an emboldened presence that experts believe is meant to tighten their grip on the world’s most lucrative narcotics market and maximise profits.

If left unchecked, authorities say the cartels’ move could render the syndicates harder than ever to dislodge and pave the way for an expansion into other criminal enterprises such as prostitution, kidnapping and extortion rackets, and money laundering.

Cartel activity in the US is certainly not new. Starting in the 1990s, the syndicates became the nation’s number one supplier of illegal drugs, using unaffiliated middlemen to smuggle cocaine, marijuana, and heroin beyond the border or even to grow pot there.

A wide-ranging review of federal court cases and government drug-enforcement data, plus interviews with many top law enforcement officials, indicate the groups have begun deploying agents from their inner circles to the US. Cartel operatives are suspected of running drug-distribution networks in at least nine non-border states, often in middle-class suburbs in the midwest, south, and northeast.

“It’s probably the most serious threat the United States has faced from organised crime,” said Jack Riley, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Chicago office.

One of Mexico’s most notorious drug kingpins — a man who has never set foot in Chicago — was recently named the city’s Public Enemy No 1, the same label once assigned to Al Capone.

The Chicago Crime Commission said it considers Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman even more menacing than Capone because Guzman leads the deadly Sinaloa cartel, which supplies most of the narcotics sold in Chicago and in many cities across the US.

Years ago, Mexico faced the same problem — of then-nascent cartels expanding their power — “and didn’t nip the problem in the bud”, said Jack Killorin, head of an anti-trafficking programme in Atlanta for the Office of National Drug Control Policy. “And see where they are now.”

Riley sounds a similar alarm: “People think, ‘The border’s 1,700 miles away. This isn’t our problem.’ Well, it is. These days, we operate as if Chicago is on the border.”

Border states from Texas to California have long grappled with a cartel presence. But cases involving cartel members have now emerged in the suburbs of Chicago and Atlanta, as well as Columbus, Ohio, Louisville, Kentucky, and rural North Carolina. Suspects have also surfaced in Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania.

Mexican drug cartels “are taking over our neighbourhoods”, Pennsylvania attorney general Kathleen Kane warned a legislative committee. State police commissioner Frank Noonan disputed her claim, saying cartels are primarily drug suppliers, not the ones on the ground.

For years, cartels were more inclined to make deals in Mexico with US traffickers, who would then handle transportation to and distribution within major cities, said Art Bilek, a former organised crime investigator.

As their organisations grew more sophisticated, the cartels began scheming to keep more profits for themselves. So leaders sought to cut out middlemen and assume more direct control, pushing aside US traffickers, he said.

Beginning two or three years ago, authorities noticed that cartels were putting “deputies on the ground here”, Bilek said. “Chicago became such a massive market.”