Mexico reports big fentanyl seizure before tariff deadline
Mexico reports big fentanyl seizure before tariff deadline
Mexico's government, under mounting pressure from US President Donald Trump to curb drug trafficking, announced Friday that it had seized 18 kilos of fentanyl hidden in a bus.
Trump has cited illegal flows of the deadly opioid and migrants as the main reasons for a planned 25 percent tariff on Mexican goods that the White House said would take effect on Saturday.
The Latin American nation has announced a series of major fentanyl seizures in recent weeks in an apparent attempt to highlight increased efforts to combat drug smuggling.
The latest haul was discovered in the spare wheel compartment of a passenger bus during a search on a highway in the northwestern border state of Sonora, authorities said.
Two kilos of heroin were found along with the fentanyl pills, according to a joint statement from the defense, navy and security ministries as well as the public prosecutor's office and the National Guard.
Two men were arrested and the vehicle was seized, it said.
The statement also reported the discovery of four tons of methamphetamine during a raid on a house in Playas de Rosarito, south of California, without saying when the seizures happened.
In December, the Mexican government announced what it called "the largest seizure of fentanyl in history," totaling more than one million pills.
The synthetic opioid, which is 50 times more potent than heroin, has been linked to tens of thousands of overdose deaths in the United States.
Mexico is one of the main trafficking routes for the drug and for the chemicals to manufacture it, most of which come from China, according to US authorities.
The US Drug Enforcement Administration says that Mexican cartels are "at the heart" of a synthetic narcotics crisis in the United States.
But Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum has said authorities have found no proof that fentanyl is being produced in the country.
"So far, we have not found that precursors arrive because most of the precursors come from Asia and that the whole process is manufactured here in Mexico," she said earlier this month.
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