Mexican Cartel Smugglers have long used traincars to move illegal aliens deeper into the US, but using trains for drug smuggling hasn't been as common recently, although that appears to be changing.
On September 14, 2025, a San Antonio-based "High Intensity Drug Area" (HIDTA) Task Force, which includes officers from the San Antonio Police Department, Texas Department of Public Safety, US Drug Enforcement Administration, and Union Pacific Railroad Police, checking northbound freight trains, hit the jackpot.
After a K9 showed keen interest in one of the train's railcars, agents took a closer look and found more than 500 pounds of methamphetamine worth well over a million dollars hidden inside.
A day later, US Customs & Border Protection (CBP) Officers in Nogales, Arizona, inspecting passing railcars found 365 pounds of meth, cocaine, and black tar heroin aboard another train.
Smuggling drugs by train across the US Border isn't unheard of for Mexico's cartels, but it is much riskier than smuggling them by either a semi truck, commercial vehicle, or passenger cars. The drivers of those vehicles can pull into a warehouse or other location where the drugs can be offloaded out of sight.
Drugs aboard a railcar must be retrieved along a rail line, which makes this method much riskier for the cartels.
In January of this year, eleven members of a Mexican Cartel smuggling ring who smuggled Fentanyl and Methamphetamine to the Midwest by rail were sentenced to 123 years in federal prison.
Their scheme fell apart when US Federal Agents seized over 68 kilograms of methamphetamine and over seven kilograms of fentanyl from a railcar in 2022, before they could retrieve it & began building a case against them.
This is not a new problem (although based on the two seizures this week, it appears the cartels may be testing this smuggling route out again).
In 2009, the US was so frustrated over cartel railroad smuggling schemes that it sued Union Pacific for $37 million for "failing to prevent the use of its rail cars to smuggle large quantities of narcotics into the United States."
Union Pacific successfully challenged the fine in court, but agreed to pay $50 million to the US government to beef up security on its line along the US Southern Border, as well as to pay for inspection stations like a Railcar Inspection Portal (RIP) at border crossings like Nogales (which likely contributed to that seizure of hundreds of pounds of drugs aboard that railcar there earlier this week).
Should more be done to shut down the Mexican Cartels' rail smuggling routes into the US?
Share your thoughts in the comments to this article!
Abrazos,
Jack Beavers
These dogs are amazing. A great asset for law enforcement! Your reports about these drug seizures warm my heart. I’m waiting for the next one. Go law enforcement!! Thank you!
It's nice to feel as though we might be winning at last.