Read the full project, Meth: The Prison Pipeline, here:
Texas’ proximity to Mexico undoubtedly explains the surge of methamphetamine into the state. It’s also fair to suggest this drives the number of meth cases that appear in federal district court in North Texas.
But that proximity — combined with the tough meth laws — also means that Latinos disproportionately bear the brunt of these harsh sentences.
In the Northern District of Texas, Latinos account for roughly 33% of the population, but 57% of meth defendants. They’re also 59% of those sentenced to more than 20 years in prison in the 10 years of federal court data analyzed by The Dallas Morning News.
In the Eastern District of Texas, Latinos represented an even greater share of meth defendants who received long sentences from October 2013 to September 2023. In that district, Latinos made up 41% of defendants sentenced for meth trafficking but accounted for 63% of sentences of 20 years or more.
The News investigation found that North Texas meth sentences are the longest in the nation. The News’ analysis of federal sentencing data shows that the national median sentence for a federal meth crime is six years. In North Texas, it’s 10.3 years.
Gloria Leal, Austin-based general counsel for the national office of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said highly pure meth carries harsher punishments yet is an outdated indicator of blame. That’s because virtually the entire meth supply, she said, is highly pure.
Judges in the Northern District of Texas tend to rule that the trafficked meth is highly pure, leading to tougher punishments, according to court records. Leal said Hispanics should not be subject to disproportionately high sentences because of an overreliance on meth purity.
“There is concern about the equity of the federal sentencing guidelines,” Leal said, “which undeniably has led to a disproportionate impact for Hispanics.”
She said all federal defendants should be subject to “equal treatment under the law.”
‘A history of policies and practices’
Karen Muñoz, an Austin-based staff attorney and fellow at LatinoJustice, a civil rights nonprofit organization, said inequities begin on the “front end with police” and continue throughout the justice system, including at sentencing.
”I can’t say that I’m surprised,” she said about the meth data. “There has been a history of policies and practices that disproportionately target Latinos, especially for drug-related offenses.”
Muñoz, a civil rights lawyer who grew up near the Texas-Mexico border, said her organization works on issues related to the overrepresentation of Latinos in the criminal justice system.
She said Latinos are subjected to longer sentences on average for many drug offenses. Stereotypes and the politicization of crime is a factor, she said, as well as Texas’ proximity to Mexico.
Latinos also often lack access to resources for quality counsel, Muñoz said, and for services that could allow them to avoid criminal legal entanglements in the first place.
”It’s connected to the fact that so often we face financial instability as a community.”
The notorious crack cocaine laws also produced a racial disparity by subjecting Black Americans to harsher sentences than whites who used the drug’s powder form.
Congress partially reformed the crack laws in 2010, somewhat lessening that impact. But lawmakers only toughened the nation’s meth laws over time as more Latinos became involved in the meth business that shifted to Mexico.
Still, Texas’ tough meth sentences cannot be explained solely by the state’s proximity to the Mexican border.
Other border states not as tough
California, another large border state, also sees a high number of meth trafficking cases. From October of 2013 through September 2023, the Southern District of California handled about 2.3 times the number of meth cases as the Northern District of Texas, federal sentencing data shows. Yet the median meth sentence in the California district for that time period was 2.7 years compared to 10 years in the Northern District of Texas.
In Arizona, a tough-on-crime border state like Texas that sees a lot of drug smuggling, the median meth sentence was less than three years.
Josh Kolsrud worked as a federal prosecutor in Phoenix and Yuma, an Arizona border town, before becoming a defense attorney. Kolsrud said he’s defended drug cases in both North Texas and California; and the Texas cases stand out for one reason.
“They are the most government-friendly judges I’ve ever been around,” he said.
In the Southern District of Florida, a hotbed of international drug trafficking from Mexico and the Caribbean, the median meth sentence over the past decade was about seven years — still considerably lower than in North Texas.
One major legislative change occurred in 1998 when Congress lowered the amount of meth needed to trigger certain mandatory minimum sentences.
This change coincided with a commission finding that from 1992 to 1998, the percentage of white meth offenders decreased from 86% to 59%, while the proportion of Latino offenders increased from 11% to 33%.
“The triggering quantities for methamphetamine … are now equal to those for crack cocaine, an overt objective noted and apparently sought by some sponsors of the legislation,” the U.S. Sentencing Commission said in a report.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston warned about racial disparities when Congress debated tougher meth penalties in the 1990s. She said she worried the bill would create unfair sentencing outcomes similar to how the crack cocaine laws affected Black Americans.
“I am especially concerned because there has been some debate whether this bill would disproportionately impact the Mexican American community in the United States,” said Lee, who died in July.
Lee, a lawyer, said at the time that the U.S. drug war focused on the wrong priorities.
“I do not want to be a part of a bill which specifically targets a minority group,” she said. “I believe we can win the war on drugs, by stressing treatment and prevention, and without alienating an important group of citizens from our society.”
In arguing for tougher meth penalties, some members of Congress compared it to crack cocaine.
Bill McCollum, while a U.S. representative from Florida, supported tougher meth laws during the same 1998 House debate. He has said meth is “as insidious as crack cocaine and more dangerous in certain respects.” He could not be reached for comment.