News outlets sounded the alarm this week about Mexican cartels flooding Montana with drugs and violence. The publications fail to mention that law enforcement since the Obama administration were aware of cartels in the state since 2009.
In a piece by News Nation that MSN republished, they claimed the influence of Mexican cartels was “limited to cities on the southern border” until recently, when it has spread to U.S. regions “including Montana.”
The article they quotes Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, claiming that a recent rise in crime can be traced to Mexican cartels. Additionally, they point to an announcement by the U.S. Department of Justice in December about the conviction of 22 traffickers tied to the Sinaloa Cartel. Court documents from that particular case revealed the cartel group had been operating a drug route from California to Montana since 2019.
The presence of cartels in Montana is not a new. Documents in the archive of the President Barack Obama’s Administration revealed that during his era, “Mexican drug trafficking organizations” were “the principal suppliers of wholesale quantities of methamphetamine, marijuana, cocaine, and black tar heroin.” In that report, the Rocky Mountain High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) noted that during that time, there was an increase in Mexican meth coming from the south. At the time, fentanyl was not widely offered by cartels.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.
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