Montana: The Unlikely Hot Spot for Mexico’s Drug Cartels
The presence and influence of Mexican drug cartels is far more than a mere border issue. These transnational criminal organizations have a strong footing in the American heartland, infesting small towns with fentanyl and setting up operations on Indian reservations.
As reported by NBC News, the Sinaloa Cartel has pushed into Montana, where it is able to sell its fentanyl pills at 20 times the price they would go for in urban border areas.
Chad Anderberg, a Montana Division of Criminal Investigation agent, told the outlet of a former Mexican police officer working for the Sinaloa Cartel who was arrested outside Butte, Montana, upon being discovered to be in possession of two pounds of pure methamphetamine (an amount authorities said could supply a population of 2,150 for a number of days).
The arrest of the former Mexican policeman, Ricardo Ramos Medina, exposed a ring responsible for transporting at least 2,000 pounds of meth and 700,000 fentanyl-laced pills into Montana from Mexico over a period of three years.
“Why Montana?” said Anderberg. “It boiled down to money. He could make so much more profit from drugs he sold here than in any other place.”
Moreover, Montana’s Indian reservations have become a hotspot of cartel activity. According to NBC:
Some areas of the state have become awash with drugs, particularly its Indian reservations, where tribal leaders say crime and overdoses are surging.
On some reservations, cartel associates have formed relationships with Indigenous women as a way of establishing themselves within communities to sell drugs, law enforcement officials and tribal leaders said. More frequently, traffickers lure Native Americans into becoming dealers by giving away an initial supply of drugs and turning them into addicts indebted to the cartels.