Every morning for the past two months, a husband and wife from Tijuana have started their border commute by inspecting their vehicle. First, the husband checks the trunk, then he checks the underside of their SUV, which is usually parked overnight on the street of their gated neighborhood. At one point, they had browsed Amazon looking for a long-handled mirror to make it easier to search underneath the vehicle.
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Whatever it takes to make sure there are no drugs — or people — hidden inside.
The couple, who requested anonymity due to safety concerns, started this daily routine in July when their neighbor, who also crosses the border often, warned them that she had spotted someone messing with her car. She later found a GPS device attached to the car and reported it to police, suspecting that traffickers might be trying to track her border-crossing habits to use her as an unwitting smuggler, also known as a “blind mule.”
“I don’t cross the border without checking first anymore,” the wife said recently. “Once we’ve done that, I feel more comfortable. But I still drive straight from my house to San Diego.”
The use of blind mules to sneak drugs into the U.S. is not a new tactic — and it’s also not one that is often publicly acknowledged by U.S. law enforcement. But in recent months, authorities on both sides of the border have issued warnings to frequent border-crossers about the potential danger.
In Tijuana, police have been highlighting cases of drivers who have realized something is amiss before they’ve reached the border crossing. And in April, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s San Diego office said it was trying to “raise public awareness about the growing threat of ‘blind mule’ drug and human trafficking.”
Whether or not there is indeed such a growing threat is difficult to quantify, since it appears no one agency tracks every blind-mule case. That’s largely because there are multiple ways that victims realize they’ve been used as a blind mule. Sometimes drivers in Mexico notice before they reach the border that their vehicle has been tampered with and they report that to Tijuana authorities; sometimes CBP officers find the drugs at the port of entry; and sometimes drivers find the drugs in their vehicles after they’ve already crossed into the U.S.
“Smugglers are continually developing new ways to bypass law enforcement,” Sidney Aki, director of field operations for CBP’s San Diego field office, said in the agency’s April statement. “They may secretly hide narcotics in rental cars, personal vehicles, or even convince people to carry packages across borders under false pretenses. Our goal here is to educate the public so they can avoid becoming victims.”
On July 28, a woman reported to the Tijuana police that she had found an unknown spare tire in the trunk of her car. The police found packages of drugs inside the tire. (Tijuana Public Safety Department)
But whether or not blind-mule cases are on the rise is somewhat beside the point to Danni Iredale, a San Diego defense attorney. She said it’s important that everyone involved — from potential victims to law enforcement agencies to prosecutors and defense attorneys — acknowledge that blind-mule trafficking is one of the many tactics that drug traffickers have used and continue to use in the Tijuana-San Diego region.
“This has always happened, it continues to happen, and the same reasons exist,” Iredale, partner at the private firm Iredale & Roth, said in an interview. “Blind mules don’t know what they have, so they’re less likely to show signs of nervousness and more likely to pass inspection; they can’t steal the drugs; and they can’t point the finger to anyone else if they’re caught.”
A known tactic
On a Friday in May, a woman called Chula Vista police to report that while cleaning her Jeep at a car wash, she had discovered what she suspected were drugs wrapped in white trash bags stuffed in her spare-tire compartment, according to federal court documents. After confirming the packages of drugs were most likely methamphetamine, detectives from Chula Vista police’s Narcotic Enforcement Team set a trap, moving the Jeep to a parking lot where they could conduct surveillance.
When two people drove up about an hour later to retrieve the drugs, police moved in and arrested them, according to court documents. The pair allegedly admitted that they had already made a similar pickup earlier that day, the records state.
The Chula Vista detectives were curious about how the suspects had accessed the Jeep, which the detectives believed they had locked behind them when they had moved the vehicle, so they conducted a test, court records showed. They soon realized one door on the Jeep did not lock even when they pressed the lock button on the key fob and heard the alarm chirp.
“Based on this, investigators believe that the (drug-trafficking organization) responsible for this incident had tampered with the Jeep’s rear driver’s side door to ensure access to the vehicle for the sole purpose of retrieving the narcotics,” a Drug Enforcement Administration agent wrote in a statement of facts included with the criminal complaint.
Asked about cases in which apparent blind mules report suspected contraband after crossing the border, Chula Vista police spokesperson Sgt. Anthony Molina said the department does get some cases “every now and then.” But he added that it would be difficult to provide an exact number “given the variety of ways the calls or tips come in.”
He declined to comment on the case involving the Jeep, citing the ongoing investigation.
Jacob Galvan, acting special agent in charge of the DEA’s San Diego field division, said that while the DEA has not noticed any significant increase in the use of blind mules recently, it is one of the many ways that drug-trafficking organizations move their loads across the border.
“They will use any means they can … and exploit anybody — they don’t care,” Galvan said in an interview.
Last week on Tuesday, the Tijuana Public Safety Department, which includes the Tijuana police, reported two apparent blind-mule cases within hours of each other.
One man waiting to cross the border from Mexico told a law enforcement officer near the Otay Mesa Port of Entry that he could hear a baby crying from the trunk of his Honda Accord. Upon inspection, Mexican police found a man, a woman and a roughly 1-year-old child, according to police. They were all from Vietnam. The driver told officials he did not know the trio.
Hours earlier, Tijuana police reported that a man had found a GPS tracker and three packages of drugs wrapped in black tape secured to the underside of his Ford Focus. Police said the man had been at a convenience store and checked underneath his car out of precaution, since he’d previously found a GPS device attached to his car.
The Tijuana Public Safety Department reported on Sept. 16 that a man called the police after finding a GPS tracker and packages of drugs under his vehicle. (Tijuana Public Safety Department)
Tijuana police have reported several other similar cases in recent months, often involving both drugs and GPS trackers.
For example, in late April, a man realized the trunk of his Volkswagen Cabrio was slightly open when he returned to his parking spot at a shopping mall. He also noticed that items that should have been in the trunk were now on the passenger seat. Inside the trunk, he found a spare tire that he said did not belong to him, with bags of drugs tucked inside, police said.
When police arrived, they checked the mall’s security cameras and found footage of a man exiting a different vehicle. The footage showed one of the mall’s security guards had met up with the man, and together they placed the tire in the victim’s vehicle, according to a news release. Officers arrested the security guard and found 22 pounds of methamphetamine inside the tire.
The Tijuana Police Department reported on April 30 that a man called them after finding drugs inside a spare tire in his vehicle that did not belong to him. A security guard from the mall where the car was parked was arrested in connection with the incident. (Tijuana Public Safety Department)
In June, Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office in Baja California reported that a man was sentenced to five years for placing three packages of methamphetamine and a GPS tracker under a car belonging to someone else “with the intention of transporting it to the United States,” officials said in a news release.
‘We follow the evidence’
Because of the prevalence of blind-mule trafficking incidents, it’s a popular defense — at least initially — for many people caught driving drugs across the border.
A woman arrested in 2023 at the San Ysidro Port of Entry with nearly 43 pounds of cocaine in her vehicle admitted later that year that she’d made up a cover story about being a blind mule. After long maintaining that she was unaware of how the drugs got into her vehicle, she later admitted that she knew what she was doing and that she and her boyfriend had fabricated messages beforehand in an attempt to convince authorities of her innocence in case she was caught.
“Individuals involved in criminal activity often initially deny or minimize their involvement only to eventually plead guilty,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Mokhtari, chief of the criminal division in the Southern District of California, said in a statement. “Rather than be guided by their statements alone, we follow the evidence. If the facts show a defendant knew what he/she was transporting, or deliberately avoided finding out, we will hold them accountable.”
Federal prosecutors in San Diego have been reluctant at times to publicly acknowledge the use of blind mules, though in 2015 the Union-Tribune identified several cases in which prosecutors dropped charges against apparent unwitting couriers.
And since at least 2019, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Diego has included a memorandum disclosing the various types of blind-mule schemes that it is aware of dating back to 2011 as part of its routine exchange of discovery with defense counsel in drug-trafficking cases, according to discovery documents viewed by the Union-Tribune.
The 2019 version of that form was a little longer than one full page. The current version has grown to more than three full pages as prosecutors and the law enforcement agencies they work with have uncovered new blind-mule schemes.
The blind-mule defense was also at the heart of a San Diego case that made it to the U.S. Supreme Court last year.
In that case, Delilah Guadalupe Diaz v. United States of America, the legal question centered on whether an expert can testify about the criminal intent or mental state of most defendants charged with a particular crime, or if that kind of testimony is too general.
Diaz, who was represented by Iredale, specifically challenged the testimony of a federal agent who told a jury that “in most circumstances, the driver knows they are hired … to take the drugs from point A to point B.”
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of the government and against Diaz, ruling that expert witnesses can continue to tell jurors that most drug couriers caught at the U.S.-Mexico border know they’re transporting drugs even when defendants argue they were blind mules. The majority opinion stated that such testimony is not too general because a jury can still decide if a specific defendant is like most other defendants or not.
In its April statement, CBP said it’s important that drivers remain vigilant and aware of anything potentially amiss with their vehicles because blind mules “may face serious legal consequences despite being unaware of the illegal contents they are transporting.”
Galvan from the DEA’s San Diego office concurred, saying drivers may lose certain border-crossing privileges, such as the trusted-traveler program SENTRI, even if they’re unknowingly transporting drugs.
He said drug traffickers “do their homework” in Mexico, studying who crosses frequently. “The cartels know who has SENTRI,” he said. “They take advantage … (because) it’s faster and those people have been vetted already.”
Galvan said that if drivers in the U.S. become aware of drugs hidden in their vehicles, they should immediately call 911.
“They shouldn’t be afraid,” he said, noting that further investigation will help authorities confirm if a driver was unwittingly moving drugs.