'Scary as hell': Face-to-face with Mexico's drug cartels
Stuart Ramsay travels on illegal routes through Mexico to the US border to meet a cartel gang prepared to talk about smuggling.
Wednesday 10 April 2019 14:52, UK
The Mexican town of Nogales on the border with the United States has a long chequered history of gang violence, prostitution, drugs and people smuggling.
It is hardly a holiday destination, but boasts an astonishing volume of visitors.
The town is divided in half by a huge border fence that stretches out for miles on either side and runs right through the centre of Nogales.
Families split by the fence often meet at weekends to say hello; physically they're just inches apart but in reality they could be split forever.
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The ever present sound of the railway with trains passing across the border is a reminder that legitimate traffic isn't hampered by the fence - and with the right contacts illegal traffic isn't either.
It is through here that cartel gangs oversee the illegal smuggling of people to the US, a growing number of whom come from all over the world, not just Latin America.
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I have travelled on illegal routes from Guatemala into Mexico and up the 1,000 plus miles to the US border in the north for a meeting with a cartel gang prepared to talk about their business. It has taken months of negotiation.
A go-between jumps into our car and tells us to drive to a shopping mall near the centre of town and motions for us to stop.
After half an hour he directs us to another parking lot and we wait again.
The gang is watching us and watching to see if we are being followed. Any unusual police activity or a suspicious vehicle identified and the meeting would be off.
Our journey continues into a dilapidated housing estate. There is only one road in.
Amid burned out cars and swirling piles of rubbish, young men in small groups stare as we drive past. Looking out of the rear window I could see them making a call as we pass.
I've done this many times before all over world - it is standard behaviour - but trust me it's as scary as hell every single time.
As we pull up in front of a block of flats a man flashes a three fingered gang sign and we are ushered inside. Our camera kit is brought into the flat stairwell in bags.
Men point us upstairs. We hurry further up. I'm following cameraman Richie Mockler and I see him pause for a second as he enters a flat. I see why. We are greeted by a man in a balaclava holding a machine gun and he is pointing it at us.
Kidnapping, hostage taking, ransom, panic - all whistle through my head before the gang leader steps forward and says in heavily accented English "it's okay, come in, it's cool".
The gang covers their faces with bandannas and the boss explains the apartment is one of many storage areas they have in and around Nogales.
The armed guard is there to protect any of their cargo moving into America. The cargo can be all forms of drugs, but these days humans as well.
"The people are easier to move than this stuff," the boss tells me stabbing open a bale of marijuana.
"They do as they are told," he laughs.
He says the people smuggling business is worth a fortune to the crime gangs and their cartel bosses.
"The people pay a lot of money but they are safer using us to get them to America," he insists.
The success of the people smuggling operation is founded on the now well-documented but nonetheless staggering efficiency of the drug cartels' ability to move cargo to its final destination across many countries and thousands of miles.
The human cargo from around the world is a phenomenon few expected.
While gang members keep a constant watch through curtained windows for any suspicious movement outside, the gang leader confirms that his contacts in over half a dozen countries through Central and South America ferry the people all the way to him in Nogales.
"When they get to Mexico a guy calls me and says 'these are the people, they in Mexico, I want to send to Nogales'.
"It's like that," he tells me.
The gang does not appear to feel any guilt that it is part of a ruthless crime business that treats vulnerable people like cargo.
Gang members tell us it is time to pack and leave. As we hurried out and to our car I can hear the sound of beer cans being cracked open. Phones start ringing.
Plans are being made for more cargo. For the men in the flat it is just business.