From Mexico cartel safe house to US streets: BBC tracks deadly fentanyl targeted by Trump tariffs

Inside a safe house on the Mexican border, a Los Angeles fentanyl dealer stood by, carefully observing members of a Mexican drug cartel preparing their latest shipment. The synthetic opioid was wrapped in tinfoil, sealed in plastic, and then, with a greasy splash, dropped into the gas tank of a trafficker's nondescript car.

The dealer, using the alias Jay, had crossed the border from the U.S. to this cartel-controlled Mexican border safe house. The house looked no different from the others nearby. They were told to drive in quickly, and an iron gate slammed shut behind us. They don't manufacture the drugs here, but are still wary of attracting attention. Everyone spoke in hushed tones and moved quickly.

This deadly trade has become central to a global economic dispute. The White House in the United States is using the smuggling of fentanyl across the U.S. border as a key reason to raise tariffs on other countries. U.S. President Trump also vowed to "wage war" on drug cartels. The BBC was granted rare access to a cartel operation along the border and traveled to the U.S. to meet their end customers, to understand if the international dispute is having any impact on stopping the flow of illegal drugs.

The people they met at the safe house were all low-level operatives for a well-known cartel. Two of the men loading the car admitted to feeling guilty occasionally. But when asked if the man stuffing drugs into the gas tank felt guilty about the deaths the pills caused, he laughed dismissively. "We have families too, of course we feel guilty. But if I stop, it will continue anyway. It's not my problem," he shrugged.

These men, their faces covered, removed the back seat of the car to access the gas tank, careful not to spill any gasoline. The smell inside the car could alert customs officials on the other side of the border that the tank had been tampered with. The light green pills, 5,000 in total, marked with an M, were packed tightly together – just a small fraction of what Jay said he sells each week in Los Angeles and the northwestern U.S.

"I try to get 100,000 pills a week," the soft-spoken dealer told reporters. "I don't transport them all in one car. I try to spread them out in different cars. This minimizes the risk of me losing all the pills."

In response to what President Trump called the flood of illegal drugs and illegal immigrants into the U.S., the U.S. imposed a 25% tariff on all goods coming from Mexico. Some of these tariffs have been postponed until April 2nd. Combating the fentanyl trade is one of President Trump's top policy goals, but Jay is not optimistic about his chances. "The last time he was in office, he tried to do the same thing, but never succeeded. There will always be demand. And where is the biggest demand? The United States, lucky for us. We are right on the border," Jay said with a laugh.

There is a large amount of drugs flowing into the United States, most of which comes from Mexico. According to Jay, the price he charges in Los Angeles has dropped from $5 or $6 per pill a year ago to $1.50 (£1.16) now. Mexican police say cartels have shifted to fentanyl on a massive scale, which is 50 times stronger than heroin, because unlike other opioids (made from poppies), it is entirely synthetic and easier to manufacture and transport.

The potency and addictiveness of fentanyl have left deep scars on American society: more people die from drug overdoses in the U.S. than from guns or car accidents. The death toll has started to decline, possibly in part due to the increased availability of naloxone, a drug that can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose. But the latest figures are still grim: from October 2023 to September 2024, 87,000 people died from drug overdoses (mostly opioids), down from 114,000 the previous year.

To avoid punitive tariffs from the White House, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has pledged to send 10,000 National Guard troops to the border. Since October, the government has arrested more than 900 people in Sinaloa, a major drug trafficking hub. Last December, Mexico announced its largest-ever seizure of fentanyl in the state: more than a ton of pills. In fact, the country has seized more fentanyl in the past five months than it did in the previous year.

Mexico has also made it more difficult to import key ingredients for fentanyl from China, prompting cartels to reduce the potency of each pill – and, in the process, reduce their lethality. In late February, 29 high-ranking drug cartel figures were handed over to the U.S., including members of five of the six Mexican criminal groups recently designated as terrorist organizations by the Trump administration.

President Sheinbaum also said she has agreed to an increase in CIA surveillance drone operations over Mexican territory to search for fentanyl production labs, following media disclosures of these secret missions. Jay admitted that his trade is dangerous for both himself and his customers, but he is not worried. "They are always trying to blame us, saying we are the ones poisoning American citizens. But they are the biggest users."

He calmly distanced himself from the responsibility and guilt for the deaths caused by his drugs. He claimed not to know anyone who has died from using his product. "I only deal with other suppliers," he told reporters. Cartels primarily use U.S. citizens as couriers for their drug crossings because they are less likely to be stopped by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The driver, who identified himself as Charlie, also has a U.S. passport. He was also indifferent to the suffering caused by the fentanyl epidemic. "I need the money," he said. When asked how many times he had run drugs, he replied: "Too many." (Reporters later learned that the 5,000 pills in the gas tank made it safely across the border.)

President Sheinbaum also recently emphasized the demand side of the crisis, saying that the U.S. fentanyl crisis began in the late 1990s with the legal but "irresponsible approval" of painkillers such as OxyContin. "The U.S. government should be responsible for the opioid consumption crisis that has led to so many deaths," she said at a daily news conference.

On the other side of the border is Derek Maltz, who has spent his entire career working for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. He has been appointed as the acting head of the DEA and gave an interview to reporters before he took office. "The Mexican cartels need to know we are coming down," he told reporters. "We are going to be aggressive in hunting you and your business because you are killing our American kids at record levels, and that is not tolerable."

However, Maltz also agreed that tackling the cartels alone would not solve the opioid crisis. "The cartels are very bad people," he told reporters. "They are transnational criminals. They are drug terrorists. However, there is a serious demand problem in the United States, and we have to address why our people are turning to drugs for help."

In the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia (known as the largest open-air drug market on the East Coast of the U.S.), Rosalind Pichardo of "Operation Save Our City" is using her second Bible. On the back cover of the book, she records the number of times she has reversed opioid overdoses using the fast-acting drug naloxone. Over the past six years, that number totals 2,931. She flips through the pages, the numbers written in red vividly portraying the memories of the individuals she saved and the ones she lost.

She begins to list: "Male, 60s... Male, 30s... Female, 30s, very thin, no hair." Next to each name on this list of fentanyl victims is the dose of naloxone (sold under the name Narcan) she used to try to revive the person. Pichardo runs a welcome center called "The Sun House," which she calls a "no judgment zone." She is angered by terms like "junkie," "dope fiend," or "zombie" used to describe the people in her community. Instead, she calls everyone "sunshine." Some she doesn't remember; some she will never forget.

"Look at this, seven years old, two Narcan," she points out. Pichardo was called to a neighbor's house, where a woman was holding a child who was turning blue. Pichardo went inside, the girl was placed on the floor, but as she went in, the child's father ran upstairs with a bag. "I was thinking, if that was my child, I would be running to help the child," she recalled. At first, she thought it might be epilepsy, but she saw drug scales and plastic bags on a nearby table. The child's father was a drug dealer; the seven-year-old had been poisoned and overdosed on his drugs. "I was angry," she said. The two doses of naloxone were enough to save the child's life.

On another page, a woman six months pregnant, two doses of naloxone. She also survived. In Kensington, drugs are cheap and plentiful, and people inject in public. As she walks through the neighborhood, Pichardo finds people passed out on the sidewalks, a woman slumped over pulling up her pants, a man lying next to a subway turnstile, another man sitting in a wheelchair, eyes closed, money in his hand. He, like a growing number of opioid users, has had a limb amputated. A new drug on the streets, the animal tranquilizer xylazine, is being mixed with fentanyl. It causes open wounds that become infected. In some places, the air stinks.

John White is 56 years old and has been battling addiction for the past 40 years. At the Sun House, Pichardo handed him a bowl of homemade soup. "I've been in this city all my life," he said. "The fentanyl and opioid epidemic is the worst I've ever seen. Fentanyl gets you addicted, you have to get more. So they put it in everything." White overdosed on fentanyl after smoking a laced joint: it is being added to all sorts of illegal drugs, including heroin, cocaine, and marijuana.

Pichardo holds out little hope that life in Kensington will improve, even if the fentanyl trade from Mexico is cut off. "The problem with our war on drugs is – it didn't work then, and I don't believe it will work now," she explained. She says that when the supply of one drug is cut off, another takes its place. "It used to be heroin, now it's not. Now it's fentanyl. When there's no fentanyl, now it's xylazine. So they'll find a way to get people addicted so people can make money off of people, off of people's pain," Pichardo said.

Directly across the street from the Sun House, a young woman was found collapsed on the sidewalk, her body sprawled on the concrete: she was unresponsive. Pichardo rushed to the scene, her medical kit by her side, and administered naloxone again. The woman was eventually revived – she would live. Roz Pichardo returned to the Sun House, another life saved, another number to add to the back cover of her worn Bible.