Border Force - America's Gate Keepers......

[ToraToraTora]

At the end when they do a summing up, most of the time drug smugglers are let off, they simply confiscate the drugs. Why do they not prosecute?

[ABerrant]

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2018/10/10/border-drug-trafficking-prosecutions-plunged-zero-tolerance/1521128002/

[fiction-factory]

That seems a fairly recent development though, ABerrant. Aren't these TV programmes often based on events from a few years ago before Trump? Maybe the problem is that it is very difficult to prove in court that the smugglers knew that they were transporting drugs. Or maybe a deal is struck in return for info on who is behind the smuggling.

[EDDIE51]

It is an open secret that most of the confiscated drugs soon end up back 'On the Street' having been resold by corrupt Officials.

[douglas9401]

'Open secret' or 'figment of over-active imagination'.

[naomi24]

That latter - as usual.

[Peter Pedant]

You have only to recollect Ollie North and the Iran Contra
scandal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affaira

to recognise the Federal govt has been dealing drugs (to raise money which didnt show up in the accounts)
and since they have done it before 1980
recycling drugs to the street may not be a figment of the imagination

but a figment of a fact !

a sort of "yeah so what they did that in 1980" thing

[Peter Pedant]

// they simply confiscate the drugs. Why do they not prosecute?
//

same reason as we let stabbers out and tell them they have to go to bed early for a week - the prisons are full anyway and it doesnt seem to do much good