Mexican cartels have flooded Montana with fentanyl and methamphetamine, setting up operations on Indian reservations where law enforcement is weak, according to a report.
“They know who to pick,” Stephanie Iron Shooter, director of American Indian health for the Montana Department of Health and Human Services, told NBC News.
“Like any other prey-predator situation, that’s just how it is.”
Drug traffickers have discovered that the notoriously deadly fentanyl costs nearly 20 times as much in remote Big Sky Country, where its population of 1.2 million is spread across 150,000 square miles of rugged terrain.
They will initially target Native Americans by giving them an initial supply of drugs, turning them into addicts, said former DEA investigator Stacy Zinn.
“The cartel will send their advance team or individuals to find out who is distributing small quantities in this reserve, who we can get our hands on,” said Zinn, who initially investigated the Mexican cartels in Texas before following their trail to Montana.
“And then when they do that, they take ownership. “We’ve seen it time and time again.”
Montana’s great remoteness works in its favor: law enforcement agencies are already struggling to cover its vast territories.
The overdose death rate among Native Americans was more than twice that of white Montana residents in the decade leading up to 2020. U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Montana
Another layer of difficulty is added when trafficking takes place on Native American lands, where local and state officials are prohibited from arresting tribal members and tribal forces (which are underfunded and understaffed) are largely prohibited from arresting tribal members. arrest people outside the reservation.
The loophole provides security for the cartel to operate in Montana, which is becoming more attractive to traffickers thanks to the demand for drugs.
A counterfeit fentanyl pill that can be made for less than 25 cents in Mexico sells for $3 to $5 in cities like Seattle and Denver, where drug markets are more established, but up to $100 in remote parts of Montana, he reported. NBC.
“Right now it’s like it’s raining fentanyl on our reservation,” said Marvin Weatherwax, Jr. leg.mt.gov
The perfect storm makes the cartels’ 1,300-mile trip from the southern border worth it.
“The profits are just out of this world,” Zinn told the outlet.
The drug crisis has greatly affected Native American communities, which make up less than 7% of Montana’s population, census data show.
The overdose death rate among Native Americans was more than twice that of white Montana residents in the decade before 2020.
Cartels attack Native American reservations due to their limited law enforcement. AFP via Getty Images
Between 2017 and 2020, Montana’s opioid overdose death rate nearly tripled, with nearly 8 in every 100,000 succumbing to the drugs that year, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services.
“Right now it’s like it’s raining fentanyl on our reservation,” Marvin Weatherwax, Jr., a member of the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council and representative of Montana House District 15, told NBC.
Some desperate tribes have attempted to fight back despite their limited resources.
The Northern Cheyenne Tribe formed its own vigilante group, the People’s Camp, to fight the rise in violent crime and drug trafficking plaguing its community.
The tribe filed a lawsuit in 2022 against the Department of the Interior and its Bureau of Indian Affairs, alleging that the federal government had breached its obligation to keep reservation residents safe by failing to provide adequate law enforcement officers.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn