TEEN MULES

Feds Warn Of Dangers Of Teen Fentanyl Smuggling

LAPPL News Watch
February 26, 2019

“Mom … Ummmm, I’m in trouble.” The skinny teenager’s body is nearly doubled over with stress, his mother’s voice rising with increasing anxiety from the speaker of his cell phone laid out in front of him in a federal interrogation room.

Criminal drug organizations are turning San Diego teenagers into mules, using them to smuggle hard narcotics, even deadly fentanyl, across the border in a trend that is alarming law enforcement authorities.

“Hold on ... What did you do?” his mother squawks into the phone. “So, I went to Mexico and I brought back drugs because I was gonna get paid for it.” The phone call ends with the mother sobbing “How could this happen? How could this happen?”

In recent months, U.S. Homeland Security Investigations arrested four juveniles for smuggling hard narcotics into the country from Mexico.

“We’ve seen meth, heroin and fentanyl,” said David Shaw, HSI special agent in charge in San Diego. “They’re strapping it right onto their body without properly packaging it. And with fentanyl, a small amount can kill you.”