Mexico: The booming trade fuelling a US drug epidemic and a deadly street war
We barely slow for red lights as cars pull out of our way.
We virtually take off as we scream over a hilly stretch of road.
We’re on board a Red Cross ambulance answering an emergency call in the northern Mexican city of Tijuana. It’s one of the most dangerous cities in the world.
A two-person team, talking into the walkie-talkie, asks for details of the emergency.
“It’s a shooting,” paramedic Zulma Cruz tells me. “We get as many as a dozen a day sometimes,” she says as we see blue lights flashing in the distance and pass a National Guard vehicle with a soldier holding a machine gun, silhouetted against the night sky.
Paramedic Zulma Cruz thinks a lot of the violence is linked to the growing fentanyl business
As we approach, what is now a crime scene as well as a medical emergency, I can see that the streets of one of the most cartel-infested neighbourhoods in this city are awash with police and military.
A second ambulance is surrounded by locals, watching on, and I can see ambulance teams inside treating a man who appears to be conscious.
“He is stable but critical,” Zulma tells me as she grabs an oxygen canister and her trauma pack and heads off to assist her colleagues.
Zulma is an experienced paramedic, who is used to the menacing presence of security forces and the stares of the local community, many of whom identify with or are part of the cartel.
This is another gangland assassination attempt – the patient has been shot in the head.
Three cartels are fighting for control over Tijuana – the Sinaloa Cartel, Jalisco New Generation, and the Tijuana Cartel.
There are over 2,000 murders a year here – that’s over six murders a day. To put that into perspective, in London last year just over 100 people were murdered.
It’s that crazy, and the Red Cross teams are the only ones capable of saving lives out here on the streets.
Zulma tells me that sometimes while she has been trying to save the lives of other victims of a hit, the cartel gunmen have approached her and told her to stop treatment.
Her Red Cross colleague, who didn’t want to be named, said the gunmen couldn’t be persuaded.
“That man dies here,” the gang member said, “then he shot him again,” her partner told me.
“We just had to walk away.”
I ask Zulma if she thinks a lot of this violence and chaos on the streets is linked to the growing fentanyl business.
“It definitely is, it definitely is,” she replies without hesitation.
“I think that it is linked to all that, the drugs, the cartels and fights for selling on the street, and sometimes they cross into each other’s turf…”
Another call for the Red Cross, this time for a fentanyl overdose.
Their medics carry the antidote to fentanyl poisoning – one of the most toxic drugs in the world.
Read more: Inside a secret fentanyl lab
It’s called Narcan, and it can save the lives of those who are almost dead.
They arrive on scene as the fire brigade administer first aid. Paramedic Alan Leon jumps out and gets ready to give the victim Narcan.
He briefly talks to the family gathered around the victim, unconscious on a pavement in a quiet residential area.
The man is completely unresponsive. His name is Juan, and he is dying.
Alan instructs a policeman holding a drip to raise it higher.
He then administers the Narcan directly into a cannula, and into the victim’s vein, while explaining to his emergency service colleagues what he’s doing.
They all wait. Time is critical and they’re hoping they’ve caught this victim in time.
Alan gently presses into Juan’s chest with his fist and tells everyone to wait.
He feels Juan’s chest again and then there is a sudden movement – the Narcan is working.
Moments later Juan sits up, utterly surprised, and grabs at the medical paraphernalia all around him.
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” he says. It really is quite remarkable.
Alan tells him to wait a minute, and then gives him another shot of Narcan.
“It’s reversing the fentanyl,” he tells Juan.
After a few minutes, Juan stands up and leans against a vehicle parked nearby – he is talking, he’s shocked he’s alive.
His wife and young son, who had watched the whole scene unfold, hug him as he fist bumps our producer.
Fentanyl use, fentanyl trafficking, gang wars, death and murder – the ambulance crews see it all every day, and it’s all linked.
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Tijuana’s red-light district is the most public location for the cartel wars and the use and sale of fentanyl on the streets.
It’s also a popular tourist hang out.
The gangs make a fortune from the drugs and sex industry here 24 hours a day, which is why they fight so hard to hold or take territory.
The area is constantly patrolled by police, the National Guard, and the Mexican army, who were deployed here last year to try to reduce homicides, and to fight organised crime.
An injured man is treated by paramedics
We joined the Baja California State Police on one of their patrols through the district.
They told us the cartels don’t care what fentanyl does to people, they are interested in one thing only – money.
“They know what they’re doing, they know what they’re producing, they know the problems they cause selling the drugs, they know that people are becoming more addicted in this country, they know it’s a problem, but they don’t care, they only worry about their own interests,” an officer, who didn’t want to be named, told me.
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The cartels know Mexico’s security services have a huge presence in the city, but they taunt them anyway, by posting videos on social media platforms like TikTok, showing off their guns, drugs, and money.
“Many times it’s to send a message to the other organisations, sometimes it’s to send a message to the police officers that we can’t touch them, but we are fighting back against all these organisations… we try to stop them in all the conflict zones and arrest them,” the officer explained.
Read more: The million dollar streets strewn with bodies contorted by the effects of fentanyl
‘Fentanyl steals your friends’: Pills bought on social media are killing kids in classrooms and in their beds
This district in Tijuana is ground zero for the fentanyl trade in Mexico, and the city is the gateway for drug and people smuggling over the border.
This trade is fuelling an illegal drug epidemic in the United States, and a street war inside Mexico.
More than 100 politicians from 24 different countries, including the UK, the US and the EU, have written a joint letter condemning China over the “arbitrary detention and unfair trial” of Jimmy Lai, a tycoon and pro-democracy campaigner.
The parliamentarians, led by senior British Conservative MP Alicia Kearns, are “urgently” demanding the immediate release of the 77-year-old British citizen, who has been held in solitary confinement at a maximum security prison in Hong Kong for almost four years.
The letter – which will be embarrassing for Beijing – was made public on the eve of Mr Lai’s trial resuming and on the day after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer met Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of a G20 summit of economic powers in Brazil.
It also comes as Hong Kong jailed 45 pro-democracy activists.
The group of politicians, who also include representatives from Canada, Australia, Spain, Germany, Ukraine and France, said Mr Lai’s treatment was “inhumane”.
“He is being tried on trumped-up charges arising from his peaceful promotion of democracy, his journalism and his human rights advocacy,” they wrote in the letter, which has been seen by Sky News.
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Starmer meets Chinese president
“The world is watching as the rule of law, media freedom and human rights in Hong Kong are eroded and undermined.
“We stand together in our defence of these fundamental freedoms and in our demand that Jimmy Lai be released immediately and unconditionally.”
Sir Keir raised the case of Mr Lai during remarks released at the start of his talks with Mr Xi on Monday – the first meeting between a British prime minister and the Chinese leader in six years.
The prime minister could be heard expressing concerns about reports of Mr Lai’s deteriorating health. However, he did not appear to call for his immediate release.
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From October: ‘This is what Hong Kong is’
Ms Kearns, the MP for Rutland and Stamford in the East Midlands, said the meeting had been an opportunity to be unequivocal that the UK expects Mr Lai to be freed.
“Jimmy Lai is being inhumanely persecuted for standing up for basic human values,” she said in a statement, released alongside the letter.
“He represents the flame of freedom millions seek around the world.
“We have a duty to fight for Jimmy Lai as a British citizen, and to take a stand against the Chinese Community Party’s erosion of rule of law in Hong Kong.
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“This letter represents the strength of international feeling and commitment of parliamentarians globally to securing Jimmy Lai’s immediate release and return to the UK with his family.”
Mr Lai was famously the proprietor of the Chinese-language newspaper Apple Daily in Hong Kong, which wrote scathing reports about the local authorities and the communist government in mainland China after Britain handed back the territory to Beijing in 1997.
The tabloid was a strong supporter of pro-democracy protesters who took to the streets of Hong Kong to demonstrate against the government in 2019.
But the media mogul was arrested the following year – one of the first victims of a draconian new security law imposed by the Chinese Communist Party.
His newspaper was closed after his bank accounts were frozen.
Mr Lai has since been convicted of illegal assembly and fraud. He is now on trial for sedition over articles published in Apple Daily.
World
Hong Kong jails 45 pro-democracy activists after accusing them of trying to overthrow the city’s government
Forty-five pro-democracy activists have been jailed in Hong Kong’s largest ever national security trial.
The activists sentenced with jail terms ranging from four years to ten years were accused of conspiracy to commit subversion after holding an unofficial primary election in Hong Kong in 2020.
They were arrested in 2021.
Hong Kong authorities say the defendants were trying to overthrow the territory’s government.
Democracy activist Benny Tai received the longest sentence of ten years. He became the face of the movement when thousands of protesters took to the city’s streets during the “Umbrella Movement” demonstrations.
However, Hong Kong officials accused him of being behind the plan to organise elections to select candidates.
Tai had pleaded guilty, his lawyers argued he believed his election plan was allowed under the city’s Basic Law.
Another prominent activist Joshua Wong received a sentence of more than four years.
Joshua Wong was sentenced to more than four years Pic: AP
Wong became one of the leading figures in the protests. His activism started as a 15 year old when he spearheaded a huge rally against a government plan to change the school curriculum.
Then in 2019 Hong Kong erupted in protests after the city’s government proposed a bill that would allow extradition to mainland China. It peaked in June 2019 when Amnesty International reported that up to two million people marched on the streets, paralysing parts of Hong Kong’s business district.
The extradition bill was later dropped but it had ignited a movement demanding political change and freedom to elect their own leaders in Hong Kong.
China’s central government called the protests “riots” that could not continue.
Hong Kong introduced a national security law in the aftermath of the protests.
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A woman is taken away by police outside the court Pic: Reuters
The US has called the trial “politically motivated”.
Dozens of family and friends of the accused were waiting for the verdict outside the West Kowloon Magistrates Court.
British citizen and media mogul Jimmy Lai is due to testify on Wednesday.
Meeting on the sidelines of the G20 in Brazil, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told China’s President Xi Jinping he’s concerned about the health of Lai.
He faces charges of fraud and the 2019 protests. He has also been charged with sedition and collusion with foreign forces.
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