OPINION:
The Mexican drug traffickers and their Chinese suppliers have a personnel problem.
On the one hand, as they look forward to the second half of 2016 and beyond, they face an embarrassment of riches. Their traditional products, cocaine and methamphetamines, are selling well. Not only is heroin setting a new sales record, a huge expansion of heroin production in Mexico is on the horizon. Then there is fentanyl, the new high-profit offering the American addicts can’t seem to get enough of. Finally, the barn door is open: There’s no problem getting the dope across the border.
Where the Mexican drug traffickers and their Chinese suppliers have hit a wall is on the personnel front. They are always recruiting replacements for those who are arrested or killed in drug wars with other gangs. How are they going to find the additional trained, experienced people to handle the surge of heroin from Mexico or to expand their market for fentanyl? There is no problem getting additional supplies of precursors from China nor is there a problem moving additional supplies of drugs to the Mexican side of the border. Neither the Chinese not Mexican governments have much interest in stopping that. The cartels’ problem is moving the dope across the U.S. border and into the hands of the American consumer. On a very quick basis, they need a lot of new people brought into the organization. The traffickers know that there is no substitute for experience, but they just don’t have the time or inclination to train them.
Along comes President Obama to the rescue. Beginning in December 2015 and comprising five tranches so far, Mr. Obama has used his pardon and commutation powers under the Constitution to grant early release to 462 federal prisoners. Get Out of Jail Free cards, in the form of commutations, are going to drug traffickers who were largely imprisoned by President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, many of them sentenced to life imprisonment or decades of jail time. This is only the beginning. The president hopes to release hundreds more before he leaves office.
From the standpoint of the Mexican drug traffickers, this is a bonanza. Just at the very moment they need experienced hands, Mr. Obama has emptied the jails of hundreds of them. Not every person given a second chance by the president will be tempted to return to a life of crime, but Mr. Obama’s actions have created an unexpected pool from which the cartels can recruit. According to a report just out from the U.S. Sentencing Commission, 50 percent of drug traffickers were rearrested shortly after they were released. Given this high recidivism rate, half the Obama release pool are likely sign up with the cartels.
From the cartels’ standpoint, they need certain special skills. First of all, they need team players, and nearly all those receiving Obama commutations were convicted of conspiracy or aiding and abetting, so they work well with others. Looking at the list of technical specialists, the cartels would begin with import-export, and the Obama release pool has such experts. Going down the list of skills: Can you transport? Check. Can you manage and maintain a laboratory to turn the base chemicals into a final product? Check. Can you maintain a stash house? Check. Can you hide fugitives? Check. Can you operate a communications device? Check. Can you move 10 tons of cocaine? Check. Do you have experience with witness tampering? Check.
Let’s go to marketing: The cartels have a lot of new product to move. Here they are in luck because a very high percentage of those to be released were convicted of narcotics distribution. What about children? The cartels are looking for new customers. Several of those being released were convicted to selling dope within 1,000 feet of a school.
What about after-market? Here the drug traffickers have potential recruits with experience in money laundering, false financial statements and filling false income tax statements.
Security is paramount for the drug gangs given the violent world they operate in. Mr. Obama presented his commutations as only extending to “non-violent offenders.” This was not true. At least 100 of those being released so far were convicted of firearms offenses while engaged in drug trafficking. Some were convicted of just possession, but quite a few were sentenced for “use” of a firearm. There was at least one nailed for having a sawed-off shotgun and two pistols with obliterated serial numbers. In this pool, the traffickers will find all the muscle they need.
An added bonus: Those being released were from all over the country, from Guam to the East Coast, Miami to the Great Lakes, and everywhere in between. If the traffickers want someone to cover a certain town or territory, they can probably find local connections.
In short, the traffickers can find the personnel, male and female, they need to move a new wave of heroin and fentanyl across the border, over the interstates to any destination in the continental United States and into the veins of any unsuspecting young American — even a child. When overdoses begin to increase in about 24 months, we will know whom to blame.
• William C. Triplett II is a former chief Republican counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
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