Drug smugglers travel through High Desert

APPLE VALLEY • Costing nearly 28,000 lives, Mexico’s brutal drug war has affected cities across the United States, including the High Desert, as smugglers drive on Interstate 15 to get to Los Angeles or Las Vegas.
Although there’s no direct evidence to tie street gangs selling narcotics in San Bernardino County with Mexican drug cartels, there is a correlation, said San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Deputy Richard Camacho.
“We do have gang issues in the High Desert, I can tell you that,” Camacho said during his presentation at an Apple Valley Rotary Club meeting Thursday. “There are two ways the drugs are coming through. North and south is the I-15, from Tijuana all the way to Vegas and up north. And I-15 lies right between your community. That’s why sometimes we find dumped bodies, homicide.”
Camacho said the High Desert is less of a market than a corridor of drug trafficking.
“We are probably a small market for the cartels,” he said. “Their drugs need to get to L.A. They need to get to Las Vegas. They need to get to major cities.”
Camacho, who was born in Mexico, said securing the border and stopping the illegal flow of drug money to Mexico will be keys to solving the problems.
To read about cartels smuggling not only drugs, but humans, see the full story in Friday's Daily Press. To subscribe to the Daily Press in print or online, call (760) 241-7755, 1-800-553-2006 or click here.