♪ ♪
(Mariana speaking Spanish)
MARIANA: I can see somebody.
Okay. So this is our welcoming committee.
♪ ♪
MARIANA: Five years ago, almost no one had heard of it.
Today it's a household name.
Fentanyl.
MARIANA: In the US, fentanyl is helping drive overdose deaths
to record highs.
OFFICER: It's wiping out a generation.
MARIANA: While in Mexico, it's disrupting the drug trade
in ways not seen in generations.
MARIANA: But few people understand how the cartels
are getting their hands on the chemicals
necessary to make fentanyl,
or what the fallout will be
if they continue to churn these raw ingredients
into more deadly pills and powders.
(siren)
MARIANA: From Mexico's cartel country
to the border and into American communities...
Whoa.
...I'm going deep inside the fentanyl pipeline
to see exactly how it's fueling
the most devastating drug epidemic in US history.
♪ ♪
(siren)
MAN: Okay, received.
(siren)
MARIANA: Like many first responders across New England,
the Manchester Fire Department
handles far more overdoses than fires.
So it says it's a 26‐year‐old female,
overdose, not conscious, turning blue.
New Hampshire has one of the highest rates
of opioid‐related deaths in the country.
Looks like we're the first ones here.
MAN: Yeah, we're it.
♪ ♪
MARIANA: The chief is in there trying to revive this patient.
I got to see inside, there was a woman on the floor,
it was an overdose, she was overdosing.
♪ ♪
WOMAN: Heroin may kill.
Fentanyl will kill.
They took him from us.
MARIANA: I first reported on fentanyl in 2015,
when most Americans had never even heard of the drug.
Another overdose.
What I witnessed was shocking.
And this is what they're finding
in a lot of these overdose sites.
Fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin
and killed 20,000 people the following year.
Today the situation is even worse.
MAN: It's like playing Russian roulette
with a completely loaded gun.
You're going to die,
and it could be the first time you pull the trigger.
But every chamber's full, and how, you know,
you wanna take a 90% chance that you're gonna succumb to that
in seconds or minutes.
That is mind‐boggling.
MAN: Yo, come on. Get up, man.
Come on, get up. Come on, get up.
Come on, get up, buddy.
MARIANA: What do you think needs to happen for this to end?
Certainly less drugs on the streets, right?
Less drugs entering the United States?
You don't think so?
MARIANA: To understand why fentanyl is more prolific,
potent, and killing more people than ever,
I have to go to the source...
the Mexican cartels.
♪ ♪
MARIANA: It's go time.
♪ ♪
Our contact sent us a location of where to meet them.
It's at a port on a coast close by.
It's about 20 minutes away from where we are right now.
Fentanyl is the most dangerous drug in America,
and much of it comes from right here in Sinaloa, Mexico.
Hey, guys, what's happening?
MARIANA: Oh, my God.
Okay, we're trying to get there as fast as possible.
We've been in town less than 24 hours,
and already my cartel contact has gotten us a lead
on the arrival of a new shipment.
So that's one of the things, you know,
when you're following a real shipment and supply of drugs,
is that they're not gonna wait around for us
before they, it goes to the next location.
♪ ♪
(exhales)
So we're just crossing our fingers
and hoping that nothing falls through.
There are two ways fentanyl
illegally enters the United States:
through black market mail orders from China
or via Mexico's drug cartels, the people I'm trying to meet.
MARIANA: Yeah, so it's... that's him right up there.
They don't want us to show their faces or anything,
so just be careful.
But this is our guy.
MARIANA: Our hope for access comes through.
My sources inside the Sinaloa cartel have agreed
to show me the critical first step in their fentanyl pipeline.
So they've got this boat
ready for us to go out on sea with them.
Under the pretense of filming a little fishing expedition,
we're actually heading out to film something
that has never ever been filmed before.
♪ ♪
We're being taken out to sea by a guy who's asked us
specifically not to even point the camera in his direction.
He doesn't wanna be filmed at all.
And supposedly, we heard that our contacts
will be waiting for us somewhere out at sea,
and then we'll be told what the plan is.
Fentanyl has been called Mexico's ghost drug
because nobody has any idea how much is being produced
and imported into the United States,
but what's beyond a shred of doubt is its impact.
WOMAN: Hey!
MARIANA: Opioids are now the number one cause
of accidental deaths in the US,
killing more people than guns or car crashes.
WOMAN: Yeah, let's lay her down flat.
Everybody lay her down flat, okay?
MARIANA: In just a few years, fentanyl has become
the most popular synthetic opioid on the streets,
and Mexico's cartels have stepped up
to supply this demand.
But it's a little known secret
that the cartels can't make the drug themselves.
They first need to source these potent chemicals
from somewhere or someone else.
There's a boat that I think
might be the people we're meeting,
this boat right ahead, with three or four guys inside.
There are cargo ships all around us,
there's a fishing boat right here.
And then, we see it.
Oh, my (bleep) lord.
A row of large plastic barrels floating towards
the small tourist boat we've been following.
Barrels that have been tossed from the stern
of a rust‐covered fishing trawler nearby.
There were about ten barrels, white barrels,
that were thrown out to sea.
Packed inside are the potent chemicals
the cartels need to create fentanyl.
I mean, it's so (bleep) crazy.
You look at it,
and it just looks like a totally normal fishing boat.
There's hundreds, if not thousands of them
around the coast of Mexico.
In a way, it's sort of the perfect crime
because it's so indistinguishable.
It would never raise any alarm.
(man speaking Spanish)
MARIANA: Okay, it has to be really quick.
So it has to be really quick, guys.
They're saying that they don't feel obviously safe here.
(Mariana speaking Spanish)
MARIANA: What's inside the barrels?
Wow.
(man speaking Spanish)
MARIANA: Wow. So they're saying
that it was one of these big cargo ships
that we see all around us that threw these barrels oversea.
Then the fishing boat over here
got a GPS location of where to pick them up,
picks them up, brings it out,
and then there's a meeting point here
where these guys come and pick it up
and then take it to off to land.
Mazatlán is one of Mexico's busiest Pacific ports,
and while most of these international container ships
are moving legitimate commercial goods,
the smugglers tell me that some of the people on board
are in business with the Sinaloa cartel,
delivering the chemicals they need from Asia or Europe.
Okay. Sí, okay.
They say they have to go
because there's Marines all around us, and they're worried.
♪ ♪
We should definitely keep our distance
because we have a boat packed with drugs,
and if the Marines come or anything,
we don't want to be seen
being part of this operation, you know?
Incredibly, one of the cartel's most dangerous drugs
is being trafficked in plain sight.
♪ ♪
You can see what's happening right behind me,
they're unloading the boat one barrel at a time
going to shore.
We're in a little port
surrounded by other fishing boats.
There's actually a tourist boat
with about 50 people heading out right now, right next to us.
Earlier, I'd asked my contact
if we could follow this shipment from start to finish.
The answer was yes, if we can keep up.
We're here. We're here.
We're coming up. Okay, quick.
¿Ya se fueron?
Are they here or they left?
MAN: It was loaded from the boat to here
in a matter of 15 seconds.
MARIANA: I mean, it was crazy, the whole thing took about,
I don't know, 10 seconds? I don't know.
MAN: Yeah.
MARIANA: We've been waiting and planning this
for months and months.
MAN: A car just like that one.
MARIANA: Oh, it's like a tourist car?
MAN: Yes. Just like that one.
MARIANA: Oh, wow.
So it's these cars that you see all around Mazatlán,
which are these open trucks with these benches on the side,
and they transport tourists around here
in sort of these local tourist taxis.
And that's where they loaded them.
MAN: And that's where they loaded everything.
♪ ♪
(man singing in Spanish)
♪ ♪
MARIANA: Mazatlán is a popular resort town,
and it seems like the drug smugglers here
are using this to their advantage.
None of the tourists appear to realize
that this is a key staging ground
for the cartel's booming fentanyl business.
Keeping a low profile is key to a trafficker's survival.
Mexican law enforcement is all over the city,
and they're just one of many threats.
(phone ringing)
So why, what's happening? Why are we rushing?
MARIANA: My team has reestablished contact
with the smugglers,
but now it seems we're not the only ones pursuing the shipment.
MARIANA: Really?
MARIANA: So gunmen?
MARIANA: I'm hardly surprised,
Mexico is being ripped apart by gun violence,
as a dozen different cartels vie to control the drug trade.
With 11 containers full of drugs,
I'm sure that there's a lot of eyes out there,
other people trying to get their hands on it.
It's worth a lot of money.
Of course if we can't lose the people following us,
my contacts are going to disappear
along with the fentanyl shipment I'm trying to catch up with.
MARIANA: Let's just wait here for a second
and see if by any chance we see them pass by us.
I'm pursuing a group of fentanyl smugglers
through downtown Mazatlán.
But it now appears someone else is pursuing me.
It could be the Sinaloa cartel, it could be a rival group,
or it could be nothing.
Reporting on narcos in Mexico can make you paranoid.
Okay, so it looks like we've lost them.
They're not behind us.
(exhales)
It's a relief, but it's also slowed us down.
We need to catch up with the shipment we're following.
We've been given access to film
where they put these barrels with the fentanyl precursors
before they ship them to the labs.
But we're just waiting for an exact location.
Okay, I think this is it.
The GPS coordinates take us on a 30‐minute drive outside of town
to a gated apartment complex.
Okay, here, (bleep). Down.
I think we should put cameras down, guys. Sorry, but.
We have to be careful not to reveal the location
or identities of our hosts.
We're just following him, our contact.
These apartments are called privadas,
quiet residential communities.
My contact tells me this privada is controlled by the cartel.
MARIANA: The apartment is being used as a stash house;
a temporary waystation where the product is safe
from cops and competitors.
And it's managed by these two men.
MARIANA: Wow.
MARIANA: You can hear it. It's all liquid inside.
They say the chemicals swishing around inside these barrels
will be transported to secret labs further inland
where the cartel's chemists will process them
into fentanyl itself.
So all this stuff that they have here is worth about $350,000,
and they're saying that once it actually gets mixed
with the other products and transformed into fentanyl,
that it's worth millions and millions of dollars.
MARIANA: I've heard the cartels are getting
medical‐grade pharmaceuticals from outside Mexico,
and I want to know where.
MARIANA: Pushing further will put these guys in a tough spot
with their bosses.
Since they won't let me open the packages,
I can't implicate a specific country or company.
DONALD TRUMP: Today President Xi and I discussed
ways we can stop the lethal flow of poisonous drugs
into our countries.
A special emphasis will be placed on the new phenomena,
fentanyl.
MARIANA: It's a well‐known fact that China has thousands
of poorly regulated chemical companies
pumping out generic drugs
and pharmaceutical ingredients every week.
I really wish I could see what's written inside.
MARIANA: Okay. (speaks Spanish)
MARIANA: Trafficking networks are compartmentalized by design.
(speaks Spanish)
You get something from one guy
and pass it along to someone else.
In between, you do your job and you ask few questions.
But this network is nothing if not efficient.
My sources tell me it takes as little as eight days
for the chemicals to move from a Pacific Ocean delivery
to hidden cartel labs, then north across the US border
and finally onto America's streets.
MAN: Come on, get up, man.
Come on, get up, buddy.
(siren)
MARIANA: Fentanyl was first created in Belgium in 1960.
It was designed for use in surgery
and to treat the most severe forms of pain.
Over time, American pharmaceutical companies
found a profitable way to market related opioid medications
outside hospital settings.
WOMAN: Since I've been on this new pain medication,
I have not missed one day of work,
and my boss really appreciates that.
MARIANA: Prescriptions surged, and patients were reassured
that the risk of addiction was low.
MAN: Less than 1% of patients taking opioids
actually become addicted.
MARIANA: They were very wrong.
As fatal overdoses skyrocketed,
doctors made prescription opioids harder to get.
Addicts turned to heroin, and the crisis got worse.
Then in 2015, fentanyl emerged on the black market
in a big way: potent, cheap, and readily available on the street
without a prescription.
In the US, overdose rates exploded to record highs.
But here in Mexico,
fentanyl became a boon to the underworld economy.
♪ ♪
Which is why I've journeyed inland
to witness how the cartels transform
the precursor chemicals into street‐ready drugs.
(man singing in Spanish)
It's happening tonight in an underground lab
where we'll get a glimpse into the future
of the Mexican drug trade.
MARIANA: Unlike heroin, cocaine or marijuana,
fentanyl doesn't need farmland or water or sunshine;
it can all be made in an underworld lab like this,
by a handful of cartel chemists.
MARIANA: So this, he's saying, is the base to create the pills,
the M‐30 pills, the Mexican oxy.
M‐30 pills are imprinted with an M on one side
and the number 30 on the other in an attempt to make them
indistinguishable from legitimate oxycodone pills.
In just the last four years,
millions of these cartel‐manufactured pills
have flooded America's streets.
So you're saying just this little amount here,
if you were to ingest this somehow,
this amount could kill you immediately.
That's how powerful this stuff is.
(speaking Spanish)
Okay, everybody, we should put the masks on.
This is where it starts getting dangerous here.
If these chemists combine the raw materials just right,
in a matter of hours, they'll have successfully completed
the next step in the process,
creating sellable black market fentanyl.
MARIANA: This is the pure fentanyl.
They mixed all the liquids that come from Asia,
a lot of times from China, they mix it and they make this.
MARIANA: Like a veteran chef, the chemist tells me
his mixtures aren't entirely based on careful measurements,
but his own physiological reactions
to the chemical process.
MARIANA: This is so crazy.
Ooh. Look at this stuff.
MARIANA: I'm hoping, really, really hoping
this guy knows what he's doing here.
MARIANA: I'm starting to think my team and I
should get the hell out of here.
Outlaw narco chemists accidentally kill themselves
all the time.
This is so nuts.
MARIANA: I'm in the Sinaloan countryside,
I can't disclose where exactly,
in an underground lab with a cartel chemist
who is perfecting his latest shipment of fentanyl.
MARIANA: Turns out, he's a bit like a Mexican Walter White.
He runs a legitimate business by day,
but for the past four years,
he's been moonlighting for the Sinaloa cartel.
MARIANA: Once the paste dries
and the room clears of deadly fumes,
I'm told it's okay to take off our masks.
MARIANA: Now that the chemical ingredients
are properly balanced, it's time to craft the fake M‐30 pills,
each one designed to mimic the look of OxyContin,
the most popular painkiller in America.
MARIANA: Maybe, but that's not what I've seen
on America's streets.
MARIANA: It's clear that's nothing is going to stop
the process tonight,
and all that's left is to press the paste into pills.
The chemist tells me he makes $100
for every 20,000 pills.
Which means that on any given night,
he can make a few thousand dollars.
MARIANA: A sense of dread follows me north.
Soon, these pills will find their way
into the hands of American users,
and we know what happens then.
(baby crying)
MAN: Oh, my god.
MAN: Hello. Hey!
Andie, Andie, Andie.
MARIANA: But down here among Mexico's narco traffickers,
fentanyl isn't a deadly opioid.
It's an opportunity.
MARIANA: The ugly truth is that fentanyl supports
an incredibly lucrative underworld economy.
That means jobs for cartel accountants,
couriers, and chemists.
And for the those who undertake one of the most dangerous roles
in the pipeline: prepping the drugs for the final crossing
into the United States.
(horns honking)
Just south of the US‐Mexican border,
I've been granted access to film with these so‐called packers.
But we have to move fast; they're scheduled to smuggle
another fentanyl load across tonight.
So they just sent us a location.
It looks like it's about seven miles from the US border.
It definitely looks like we entered the rough part of town.
So let's just be discreet.
We're here. This is it.
♪ ♪
MARIANA: Our hosts are tense for good reason.
Right now they're in possession of five kilos of fentanyl
that's worth millions of dollars on the streets of America.
Whoa.
MARIANA: They tell me there are cops and competitors
everywhere in Mexico,
many willing to kill to corner the fentanyl marketplace.
MARIANA: Using ordinary household ingredients,
these packers will make five kilos of fentanyl
invisible to the eyes of the law.
And I'm about to see how it's done.
(siren)
MARIANA: I'm seven miles south of the US‐Mexico border,
about to witness how the Sinaloa cartel
smuggles five kilos of fentanyl into the United States.
Despite the green light I've been given,
the packers prepping the shipment are extremely anxious.
(speaking Spanish)
So he's trying, he's talking,
and I can see this guy's getting really nervous,
and telling him to speed up, because he says the person
that's gonna take it across the border is arriving any moment,
and he wants to make sure that he can get all of this
out of this house as soon as possible.
MARIANA: He's putting coffee on it right now.
MARIANA: I'm watching a shadowy game of cat and mouse.
In less than an hour, these drugs are headed
to the most frequently crossed
and one of most heavily patrolled borders in the world.
Last year, US Customs and Border Protection
seized more than a ton of fentanyl.
And yet, these packers plan on foiling
thousands of highly trained agents
and billions of dollars of surveillance technology
with little more than homemade ingenuity.
He has other products here.
He has mustard. He has...
(speaking Spanish)
MARIANA: Softener. Laundry softener.
And all this is to avoid any sort of smell.
So crazy.
Coffee, fabric softener, and mustard.
There's simply no way to describe the smell.
But the one thing it doesn't smell like is drugs.
Layer after layer, every coat could mean
the difference between failure and profit.
But dogs aren't the only concern.
MARIANA: So now they're able to disguise the smell for the dogs,
and also for the x‐ray machines
they have this carbon paper around it.
MARIANA: The packers tell me they'll make $2,000
for their work tonight, $400 per package.
And just like everyone I've met on this journey,
they do their job and then they pass the drugs on
to the next link in the supply chain.
MARIANA: The girl he's referring to is tonight's driver.
In the trafficking world, she's called a drug mule,
but I'll call her Beatriz.
MARIANA: Beatriz tells me she's been doing this for a year
and makes $3,000 per crossing.
MARIANA: After we finished speaking,
Beatriz agrees to let me follow her to the border.
The car parked in front, that's where all the drugs are stashed,
all ready to go up to the US.
And I think she's about to leave.
Fentanyl trafficking convictions in the US have increased
by nearly 5,000% over the past six years,
and those who are caught
are almost always sentenced to prison.
Right now, Beatriz has five kilos of it hidden in her trunk.
Where the heck is she going?
Something's wrong.
(siren)
Oh, my god.
She's seriously being followed by police, I'm not even joking.
Right?
Yeah.
Oh, my lord. What do we do?
I don't think we should go too close.
We need to figure out what the plan is now.
We were following her for, I mean, 10 seconds,
and then suddenly we see a police car come out of nowhere.
What the (bleep)? Why? What happened?
MARIANA: Just two miles south of the US‐Mexico border,
the drug mule I've been tracking is pulled over by police.
Her trunk is filled with five kilos of fentanyl,
worth millions of dollars on the street.
And she was stopped by the police over there.
I assume Beatriz is busted.
But the cops never opened her trunk.
And minutes later, she drives off.
I catch up with her further down the road.
MARIANA: Beatriz is shaken, so she decides to stay the night.
But the following day, she's at it again.
And I'm not far behind.
She has to be super nervous, you know?
She's packing five kilos of fentanyl.
So it's a very strange feeling, because on the one hand,
we've met her and we don't want her to get caught,
and I'm actually nervous for her.
But on the other hand, she has a car packed with drugs
that can kill a lot of people in the US.
It's complicated.
I know Beatriz has a growing family to provide for.
But in all my years reporting on the opioid crisis,
it's the parents who lost sons and daughters to overdoses
that I remember the most.
GIRL: Mom, wake up.
Come on. Ma, Ma, Ma!
MARIANA: And I can't help but wonder what they might think
as I watch Beatriz attempt to carry a deadly shipment
across the border.
But this is how a majority of drugs are smuggled into the US
according to the DEA.
Through legal ports of entry on the southwest border,
stashed in passenger vehicles or tractor trailers.
And I'm here to witness it for myself.
She was stopped, she's being checked right now.
I would say just put the cameras entirely down.
Last night, I watched the cartel packers slather her cargo
in coffee, mustard, and fabric softener,
all to avoid detection by America's drug‐sniffing dogs.
As the K‐9 units approach,
I'm about to see if their method actually works.
So they're opening the trunk right now.
They're looking under the hood.
This is a really uncomfortable moment.
(exhales)
And then, just when I'm certain she's busted...
Oh, my god.
They're letting her go.
Yeah, she's just going into her car and leaving.
I can't believe it.
They just let her go. I can't believe it.
♪ ♪
(exhales)
Beatriz agrees to meet up with us
a few miles north of the border.
I'm just gonna talk to her real quick.
She's right here.
(speaking Spanish)
I cannot believe...
MARIANA: Despite how nerve‐racking
crossing the border was,
Beatriz tells me she doesn't think she'll ever go to prison.
MARIANA: While there's no way for me to confirm this,
it's well‐documented that part of the Sinaloa cartel's strategy
is to infiltrate and corrupt America's border agents
with lucrative payoffs.
MARIANA: And there she goes with five kilos of fentanyl.
When I contacted CBP for comment, they told us, quote,
"US Customs and Border Protection
seized over 750,000 pounds of illegal narcotics in 2019.
Our officers remain relentless
and are always working to stay one step ahead of the cartels."
But with so much demand for drugs
and so much money to be made, it's a difficult task.
In recent years, there have been almost 200 drug overdose deaths
in the US every single day.
And fentanyl is the major reason.
I'm eager to follow this road to the end
to expose just how easy it is for these traffickers,
but I'm also aware the shipment I'm tracking
might end up killing someone.
So we were just given this location
right next to the 710 Freeway here in Los Angeles.
It's at the end of a dead‐end street.
And I think that's, I think that's actually our woman,
with the drugs inside her car.
There's a guy in an orange jumpsuit with a mask.
♪ ♪
So it looks like that's where they're doing the deal,
right here out in the open.
The masked men tell me they're all native Angelenos,
American citizens who work directly for the Sinaloa cartel.
But like everyone else I've met,
they focus on their jobs and ask no questions.
Do you know what's in these packages?
You really don't care what you're transporting?
MARIANA: So can you tell me more or less where they're heading?
MAN: This is one of the main distribution areas
that we have here.
MARIANA: This is very much like a hot potato
where they just want to get it out as soon as possible.
It was incredible, because you saw she arrived,
and within, I don't know, under 10 minutes,
they had managed to take the drugs out of her car,
put it in their car, and then they're off.
And he says he does this every other week,
which is crazy.
(siren)
OFFICER: There you go. OFFICER: You got it?
WOMAN: Stay with me. Stay with me. Stay with me.
WOMAN: Got three Narcan deployments.
(siren)
MARIANA: Never have so many people been addicted
to such a deadly narcotic.
Never has the need for solutions been more urgent.
I worry that the fentanyl supply chain seems too big to fail.
Too many people benefit,
and I've met many of them along my journey,
from the chemical companies in Asia to the cartels' chemists.
Americans will have to find a way to slow the demand,
because the suppliers will always find
a faster and more profitable way to deliver the goods.
MARIANA: In fact, they tell me the cartels have begun
to do just that by eliminating their Asian suppliers.
MARIANA: If that's true, the worst may be yet to come
for America's opioid epidemic.
Captioned by Side Door Media Services