Map: Southern Arizona drug corridors

Arizona's border wall is being built with anti-drug money. But it won't stop hard drugs, data shows.

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To see how drug smuggling works in Southern Arizona, the Star analyzed 750 federal court cases from 2018 and sorted them into four smuggling corridors.

Most marijuana is smuggled through the desert, where the new wall is going up, which is in line with Customs and Border Protection statistics.

At the same time, smugglers are moving large loads of the more dangerous meth and heroin through ports of entry—where the wall can't touch them.

The new 30-foot wall near Douglas and Lukeville will cost $1.2 billion in anti-narcotics funds. The Star's analysis showed the wall will cut through marijuana smuggling routes—even though marijuana is grown and sold legally as medicine on the Arizona side of the border.

The main routes for marijuana smuggling are the desert west of Tucson, where 43 miles of border wall are being built, and the Cochise corridor, where 20 miles of wall are planned.

Fentanyl busts are spread out across the main ports in Arizona.

While smugglers — many of them migrants who can't afford to pay passage fees to cartels — haul 40-pound backpacks of marijuana across the desert ...

...marijuana is widely available legally for medical use in Arizona and is legal for recreation in neighboring California.

In fact, for the first time, sales of medical marijuana in Arizona surpassed the amount of marijuana seized at the state's border with Mexico this year.

The new wall is going up as marijuana seizures at the border already plummeted 87% since 2013 without it. At the same time, the amount of meth seized at the ports has spiked by 300%.

The new wall is going up as marijuana seizures at the border already plummeted 87% since 2013 without it. At the same time, the amount of meth seized at the ports has spiked by 300%.