Sinaloa Cartel smuggler at U.S.-Canada border says he'll "always" find a way to get migrants into the U.S.
On February 1st, President Trump imposed 25% tariffs on nearly all goods imported from Canada. Since then, his administration has engaged in an on again off again trade war with our longtime ally. The tariffs were imposed based on the exaggerated claim that millions of criminals and tons of deadly fentanyl have been pouring over the border into the United States— and that Canada has allowed it to happen.
Last month we went to the northern border, to the Chazy River, where even in the middle of winter, migrants continue to cross its frozen banks, often guided by human smugglers who openly advertise their services on Facebook and TikTok.
If President Trump and the Canadian government really want to tackle illegal immigration there, they might want to start online.
Search for 'border excursions' on TikTok and Facebook and you'll find a black market set to music that guarantees migrants safe passage across the northern border. There are posts in Spanish, English, and Punjabi. And reviews like you'd find on Yelp. These men in the back of a car, on their way to a new life in the United States, give their smugglers five stars and a thumbs up.
Stretching more than 5,500 miles, the U.S.-Canadian border is the longest international land border in the world. That's the U.S. on the right and Canada on the left.
In February, we traveled to an area the U.S. Customs and Border Protection calls the Swanton Sector, which runs from New Hampshire to upstate New York. Last year, more than 80% of migrant apprehensions at the northern border happened here.
The Swanton Sector is where this video was recorded in January. A group of men who just crossed the border ran to an SUV that drove them deeper into New York. You'll also see a woman getting out of the car and go north to Canada.
This man told us he coordinated the handoff and took the video:
Cecilia Vega: Can you tell us who you work for?
Javi (in Spanish/English translation): For the Sinaloa Cartel.
He goes by the name "Javi" and agreed to speak with us only with his camera off. He said he can't risk his identity being exposed.
Cecilia Vega: How does this work? They tell you where to go? They tell you how many people you have to bring across each week?
Javi (in Spanish/English translation): Exactly. That's how it goes. They provide the people. They have more people who are behind all this looking for customers, finding them, and summoning them to certain locations.
We found Javi through his online ads, which he says TikTok recently took down. In a conversation with our producer, he did briefly turn his camera on and allowed us to record his masked face.
While it's not possible to verify everything Javi told us, he sent these pictures of what he says are his guns as proof of his ties to the Sinaloa Cartel. A source in Canadian intelligence told us Javi's story is consistent with the cartel's human and drug smuggling operations.
The Sinaloa Cartel is one of the largest and most notorious in Mexico. These are videos Javi sent us of his work. He says he's part of a team of four. Some drive migrants to and from the border and plan logistics, while Javi says he guides people through the woods. The migrants pay about $3,000 each. Javi told us he makes about a thousand dollars per person… $500 go to the cartel -- the rest to the drivers. Some smugglers offer discounts for children.
Cecilia Vega: What's the youngest child you've ever crossed?
Javi (in Spanish/English translation): Three months.
Cecilia Vega: Tres meses.. (Translation: Three months)
Javi (in Spanish/English translation): Yes. Babies.
Cecilia Vega: what happens if one of the migrants you're working with doesn't pay?
Javi (in Spanish/English translation): They cannot go. They are held hostage until they pay up.
Cecilia Vega: Until what?
Javi (in Spanish/English translation): Until they pay.
Cecilia Vega: Do you work only with humans, or do you move drugs also?
Javi (in Spanish/English translation): Everything.
Cecilia Vega: How much fentanyl do you move across that border?
Javi (in Spanish/English translation): Lately, it's been quiet. But for a while there, we were bringing in thirty kilos per month.
Cecilia Vega: Wow.
Cecilia Vega: The drugs come from?
Cecilia Vega: De China? (Translation: From China?)
Javi (in Spanish/English translation): From China.
Cecilia Vega: De China (Translation: From China)
Javi (in Spanish/English translation): I get more into the U.S., but also it goes from the U.S. to Canada. And weapons.
How many pounds of drugs come across the northern border into the United States is unknown. President Trump claims tremendous amounts of fentanyl pour into the country through Canada.
Last year U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized 43 pounds of fentanyl at the northern border compared to more than 21,000 pounds confiscated at the U.S.- Mexico border.
And while the southern border saw 1.5 million illegal crossings last year, there were fewer than 24,000 illegal crossings from Canada.
Sheriff David Favro: See this woodline up here on the left? They come from way over there on the other side of-- you know, back side of Canada and walk along the edge of that woodline. And the woodline continues and goes down to the creek. Then they would follow the creek.
Sheriff David Favro oversees Clinton County, New York, which includes about 28 miles of border.
Cecilia Vega: Where are the smugglers in all this?
Sheriff David Favro: They're-- they're hiding. They're-- they're the cowards that are just taking the money, not caring about the people that are crossing, and what hazards those people might run into. So they're the ones that are just running the business and collecting the cash.
Last year in the Swanton Sector, there were more illegal crossings than the previous 17 years combined-- more than 19,000 migrants were arrested there. They came from 97 countries- mostly from India and Mexico.
And they cross year round, even through blizzards. In the middle of winter, authorities respond weekly to 911 calls from migrants. In January, six Haitians, including a 9-year-old girl, became lost in the woods and some were hospitalized with serious injuries. Last month, this man from Spain suffered severe frostbite.
Sheriff Favro took us down a local road divided by the border. The area is covered by surveillance cameras on both sides. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police saw us and soon after drove by on patrol.
Cecilia Vega: when someone is crossing in the dead of winter and there's feet of snow, what are they up against out there?
Sheriff David Favro: They're up against a lot. And the worst thing that they're up against is the freezing cold, because the temperatures-- you're-- you're walking through the snow and your pants are getting wet, your boots are gonna start soaking through eventually, and they don't even realize. They're so desperate and so quick to try and get to where-- where they're-- they wanna be, that they don't realize frostbite is setting in. And that's one of the biggest dangers.
The case Sheriff Favro says he'll never forget is the death of Ana Vazquez-Flores. Residents of Champlain, New York erected a memorial in honor of her and her unborn baby.
The 33-year-old supermarket worker was 5 months pregnant with her first child when she and her husband flew from Mexico to Montreal in December 2023.
They found this Colombian man who advertised on TikTok and hired him to guide Ana across the border.
Text messages taken from court documents show they paid him $2,500.
Ana's husband asked "... is it safe?"
"Well, look…truth is the only certain thing in life is death, but we are effective."
On the evening of December 11th, Ana began her walk alone through the snow. The alleged smuggler tracked her by GPS on their phones and texted directions. It was dark and the temperature was below freezing.
Ana's husband had a visa to work in the United States and was waiting for her in New York.
He wrote: "have you already picked her up?"
"She is crossing friend."
"I am very nervous." her husband said.
Forty minutes later, the alleged smuggler wrote, "bro, hello, I think she got wet or turned off her cell phone."
Investigators think Ana was following his instructions when she stepped into the icy Chazy River. She was already in America. Three days later park rangers and sheriff Favro's deputies found Ana's body.
The alleged smuggler was arrested at his home in Quebec by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at the request of the U.S. Justice Department. He was extradited to the United States in February. He pleaded not guilty to smuggling charges and is being held at the Clinton County jail.
Sheriff Favro says that's the type of coordination that should happen between neighbors.
Sheriff David Favro: I find it unusual that up here along the northern border with all the attention that we've had, I haven't been contacted by anybody at a federal level, really, other than the Border Patrol. We work hand in hand with the Border Patrol.
Cecilia Vega: But you've not heard from Washington, from the White House, from anybody in the president's administration who have been looking intently at your border here?
Sheriff David Favro: No.
This six-time elected sheriff-- a Democrat-- does credit President Trump's immigration policies for the drop in illegal crossings that he's seen at the northern border.
And while Sheriff Favro welcomes a lull, after 43 years in law enforcement, he says the quiet rarely lasts.
Sheriff David Favro: Today, our state of mind is, "When is something gonna happen?" That's-- that's the big concern. And that's always in the back of, I think, every law enforcement member's mind. When is --when is something going to occur? When the numbers are down it gets eerily quiet and we kind of worry about quiet. We like it when-- when things are just steady so that we-- we know what's going on, have a better handle on it.
Cecilia Vega: You don't trust the quiet–
Sheriff David Favro: We-- we–
Cecilia Vega: That it's gonna stick–
Sheriff David Favro: We just don't trust the quiet is gonna stick.
Canada's new Prime Minister Mark Carney retaliated with tariffs in response to President Trump's tariffs. But the Canadian government did concede to Trump's complaints about the border and announced a nearly billion dollar plan to strengthen border security, by adding more boots on the ground, helicopters and drones and appointed a fentanyl czar.
Cecilia Vega: Are tariffs the answer?
Kelly Sundberg: The tariffs have disrupted relationships between our two countries both economically and socially. I mean, I don't see Canada as really being the issue here. Yeah, the border needs to be secured, but there's better ways of doing it than threatening your largest and longest standing partner.
Professor Kelly Sundberg spent 15 years as an officer in the Canadian Border Services Agency and now researches border security at Mount Royal University in Calgary.
Kelly Sundberg: We've done a lotta great steps in trying to keep the border open. On the Canadian side we have fallen short in keeping it secure. We do not have-- a Border Patrol, such as the United States. We have very few officers. So-- equivalent to ICE-- so your Immigration Customs Enforcement in the United States-- which has thousands of officers, for our entire country we have 400. Clearly, if we're going to-- address the concerns of President Trump-- let alone the concerns of many Canadians also, is we need to increase those numbers.
Cecilia Vega: You'd like to see more?
Kelly Sundberg: For the number of cases that we have, I've calculated we probably need around 4,000 to 5,000 officers nationally.
Last month Canada and the United States -- on the same day-- declared the Sinaloa Cartel a terrorist organization.
We spoke to Javi again this week and he told us the cartel has since had to change the way it moves drugs across the northern border, but the designation has not affected how many people they smuggle into the United States illegally.
Cecilia Vega: What has the return of Donald Trump meant for your business?
Javi (in Spanish/English translation): There's always going to be business. Later on, Donald Trump's time will pass, and this will continue. This is not going to stop.
Cecilia Vega: If they put more border patrol officers at the border, if they put more checkpoints, is there anything anyone can do to stop you from moving people across the border?
Javi: No. No.
Cecilia Vega: Nada? (Translation: nothing?)
Javi (in Spanish/English translation): No, nothing. There's always a way. The border between Canada and the U.S. is much bigger than the one with Mexico. You can always get in.
Cecilia Vega: You'll find another way.
Javi (in Spanish/English translation): Always.
Produced by Michael Rey and Jaime Woods. Associate producer, Luisa Garcia. Broadcast associates, Katie Jahns and Georgia Rosenberg. Edited by Matthew Lev.
