Montana Public Radio is bringing you listener powered reporting this election season.
Politicians have a lot to say about drug smuggling at the southern border and whether it’s tied to immigration. So we’re going to take a few minutes to hear how Montanans’ views are shaped by political rhetoric and whether they reflect what’s really happening.
MTPR's Aaron Bolton joins Austin Amestoy to break it all down.
Austin Amestoy: Aaron, What are voters here most concerned about when it comes to the southern border?
Aaron Bolton: This spring, voters on both the right and left told MTPR they worry about drugs, specifically fentanyl, coming across the border.
Judy Wickum is a 70-year-old retired nurse from Chester. She thinks migrants crossing the border are a problem and says Republicans will reduce that flow with tighter border restrictions.
“It’s sad. Some of them are probably legit people that really want to make a new life for themselves. But a lot of them I think are criminals and people who just want to cause trouble.”
Aaron Bolton: That’s a view you commonly hear from Republican voters. Laura Bufalo is 23 years old and says she supports Democrats. She lives in Box Elder near the Rocky Boy’s Reservation. Buffalo is less concerned about the people who are crossing the border. She says it’s locals who are proliferating drugs. It scares her.
“The fear of drugs getting in the way, whether that's you getting caught in them or being surrounded by it.”
Aaron Bolton: She wants more local resources to reduce drugs in her community and to help people with addiction.
Austin Amestoy: Ok, I’m hearing there are concerns of migrants bringing drugs across the border and the need for more resources to help people with addiction. Are these concerns from voters in line with what we’re hearing from political candidates?
Aaron Bolton: I think you hear talk about the southern border the most in Montana’s U.S. Senate and state attorney general races. Current Attorney General Austin Knudsen is in lockstep with voters like Wickum. Here’s Knudsen talking on News Nation.
“Until the federal government gets serious about enforcing that southern border and its immigration policies, we’re just going to see more and more of this.”
Aaron Bolton: Knudsen has regularly made arguments in court that migrants and cartel members directly bring drugs across the border between ports of entry and then sell them inside the U.S. .
Democrat Ben Alke, like a lot of Democrats, has shifted a bit to the middle, saying border security is an issue. Alke on Montana PBS said he would focus on what he could change in Montana.
“We need to do a better job with basic law enforcement that affects our communities.”
Austin Amestoy: Sen. Jon Tester also makes the case for border security in his ads.
Aaron Bolton: Yeah, here’s an example of one from earlier this year:
[Narrator] “Jon Tester worked with Republicans, fighting to shut down the border, target fentanyl traffickers and add hundreds of new border patrol agents.”
Aaron Bolton: The key difference between what you’re hearing from the Tester campaign and Republicans is tying drugs directly to migrants. Here’s Senate candidate Tim Sheehy on Fox News.
“In some cases, 10,000, 20,000 migrants a day, coming here, bringing drugs, bringing crime with them.”
Austin Amestoy: Ok, let’s start with how drugs cross the border. Are drugs being smuggled through tunnels or in the vast open spaces between ports of entry?
Aaron Bolton: The short answer is no. That may happen at times, but experts will tell you, by and large, drugs are smuggled through official border crossings.
Austin Amestoy: Why is that?
Aaron Bolton: I posed that question to Tony Payan, he’s the Director of the Center for U.S. and Mexico at the Baker Institute. He says Mexican drug cartels are run like a business. They are trying to find the cheapest and fastest way to smuggle drugs into the U.S. It’s much faster and more convenient to do that at a border crossing.
Law enforcement is there, but it’s impossible to search every vehicle.
“Today, you have almost 300 million crossings a year," Payan says. "That means the authorities at the border have to process almost a million … [people], depending on the day.”
Aaron Bolton: Payan adds that cartels are constantly finding ways to hide drugs in cargo on semi trucks in secret compartments or inside things like computers.
Austin Amestoy: So that’s the answer to where drugs come into the U.S. But who’s bringing these drugs across the border?
Aaron Bolton: Again, cartel involvement largely ends on the Mexican side of the border. It’s mostly U.S. citizens bringing those drugs across.
Experts like Payan point to arrest records as evidence of that. Cartels enlist Americans for this work. That’s because they won’t raise as much suspicion as say a Mexican national or someone with ties do a drug smuggling operation. It’s not just big trucks hiding drugs. Cartels entice young people or those struggling with addiction to smuggle drugs with the promise of easy money.
Austin Amestoy: So, drugs mostly come across the border at legal points of entry and it’s most often U.S. citizens working for cartels that bring the drugs over. So, what happens when the drugs make it into the U.S.? How do they get to Montana?
Aaron Bolton: Keith Weis is with the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. That’s a partnership between federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in Rocky Mountain states. He says the people trafficking drugs across the country do have ties with Mexican cartels.
"Doesn’t necessarily mean that cartels are on the ground and conducting their operations like you see in Mexico, which can be pretty fierce, there's a lot of violence associated with them.”
Aaron Bolton: Again, he says it’s largely U.S. citizens that buy shipments from cartels and traffic drugs in the U.S. They mostly use interstates to quickly move shipments across the country.
Austin Amestoy: Ok, so a much more complex picture than what politicians are painting right now. Do experts like Payan say this cat and mouse game of seizing drugs at the border or inside the U.S. is working?
Aaron Bolton: They say it isn’t. They will tell you traffickers will always change their tactics to keep moving drugs.
Payan says politicians often talk about stopping drugs from coming into the U.S. at the border. But he says there’s no evidence more money, border patrol or a wall will get that done. Yet that’s where most federal funding goes.
“That’s the main reason why we allocate it [funding] to the supply side. Because if we go to the supply side, then who do we have on the other side at the supply point? The bad guy, the foreigner, the border, the Mexican national.”
Aaron Bolton: He says that foreign bad guy argument is easy for voters to latch onto. Payan isn’t advocating for all law enforcement efforts to seize drugs to end. But he says a similar amount of funding needs to go into drug use prevention and treatment in order to reduce demand.
Austin Amestoy: I’m curious about the impact of drugs in Montana. What can you tell us?
Aaron Bolton: About 200 people died from drug overdoses in 2022, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those numbers have been steadily increasing and fentanyl has accounted for more of those deaths over time.
But it’s worth noting that these figures aren’t perfect. The CDC relies on death certificates, which are filled out by local officials. Those records can be inconsistent.
Austin Amestoy: Do we know who’s being impacted the most?
Aaron Bolton: Native Americans experience the highest overdose death rates in the U.S. In 2021, it was 30% higher compared to white people. That same is true in Montana. Indigenous Montanans death rate was twice as high as white people between 2009 and 2020, according to state data.. That’s despite making up only about 7% of the state population.
Austin Amestoy: That makes me wonder whether drug traffickers are targeting Indigenous communities.
Aaron Bolton: Experts and tribal officials say they are. Blackfeet Nation Tribal Council member Lyle Rutherford says there is a smaller law enforcement presence in many of these communities, making it easier for traffickers to operate.
“You look at some of the other tribes within the state of Montana, based on their population and land base, you only have one or two officers.”
He says Blackfeet have an agreement with the federal government that allows the tribe to fund 22 officers. But they still have to patrol 1.5 million acres.
He’d like political candidates to talk about how they will provide more law enforcement resources and how they will support communities struggling with addiction.
Austin Amestoy: Aaron, thanks for breaking down this issue for us.
Aaron Bolton: No problem.
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