Drugs, especially heroin, being smuggled into the United States by Mexican cartels, has reached record levels, according to a disturbing new report published Tuesday.

Once the drugs get smuggled, north Mexican traffickers use street, prison, and outlaw motorcycle gangs to distribute them throughout the country much like a legitimate enterprise.

This has been going on for years and there seems to be no end in sight, underlining the Obama administration's failure to protect the southern border, says the report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the nonpartisan agency that provides Congress with policy and legal analysis.

The report was released on the eve of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's visit to Mexico to meet with the country's president, Enrique Pena Nieto.

Trump has accused Mexico of sending drug dealers and rapists to the United States, and insists on building a wall between the two countries to make the U.S. safe.

"Mexican transnational criminal organizations are the major suppliers and key producers of most illegal drugs smuggled into the United States," the CRS states in its new report. "They have been increasing their share of the U.S. drug market—particularly with respect to heroin." The bulk of the heroin smuggled into the United States transits across the Southwest border, the CRS writes, revealing that from 2010 to 2015 heroin seizures in this area more than doubled from 1,016 kg to 2,524 kg.

There are at least eight major Mexican drug trafficking organizations operating in the United States with the Sinaloa Cartel being the most active, the CRS reveals. Mexican transnational criminal organizations (MTCOs) remain the greatest criminal drug threat to the United States; They operate sophisticated enterprises, using nearly 100 U.S. gangs in their cross-border crimes, government figures show.

Because the Mexican cartels move their drugs through the Southwest border, western states have become part of what's known as the "heroin transit zone," the report states. "In addition, authorities have seen black tar heroin emerge in the Northeastern United States."

Large quantities of a synthetic opioid known as Fentanyl are also entering the U.S. primarily via the Mexican border. Fentanyl is 25-40 times more potent than heroin and 50-100 times more potent than morphine.

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