A California sheriff says cartels made more money smuggling people than drugs during the Biden years, which is bad news for border communities and good news now that the border has tightened.

• Riverside County sits on the main freeway routes from the southern border, so massive amounts of fentanyl and trafficked people pass through it.
• Deputies seize hundreds of pounds of fentanyl every week, mostly from a handful of cartel-linked drivers.
• Under Biden's open border, cartels earned so much from human smuggling that they let regular gangs handle the drug trade.
• Once Trump locked down the border, cartels took the drug trade back fully into their own hands.
• One of the sheriff's own young deputies was caught moving 520,000 fentanyl pills for an uncle high up in the cartel.

Outlook: Tighter border enforcement is expected to keep shifting cartel money back toward drugs, with fentanyl seizures staying heavy along the California freeway corridors.