Del Rio court sentences Big Lake woman to 24 years for fentanyl smuggling

A federal judge in Del Rio has sent a sharp message about what can happen when a border inspection turns into a major narcotics case: Anahi Sanchez, a Big Lake woman tied to a fentanyl load at the Del Rio Port of Entry, was sentenced to 288 months in federal prison. For Val Verde County, the punishment underscores how quickly routine screening at the port can become a long federal case with consequences reaching far beyond the border.

The case began on April 4, 2022, when Sanchez, then 28, drove a Chevrolet Camaro to the Del Rio Port of Entry and told Customs and Border Protection officers that she and her son were returning to Big Lake after visiting family in Mexico. CBP referred the car to inspection, and officers found anomalies in the driver and passenger rear quarter-panels. A canine inspection then alerted for narcotics.

Officers searched further and found 30 packages hidden in a trap door near the rear driver-side and passenger-side wheel wells. Those packages later tested as 18 kilograms of fentanyl. Federal investigators concluded Sanchez was not an isolated courier but a regular and trusted transporter for a transnational criminal organization, crossing the border multiple times in vehicles loaded with narcotics. Prosecutors held her accountable for about 130 kilograms of fentanyl overall and said she typically carried the drugs to the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Sanchez was named in a five-count indictment returned May 4, 2022, on charges that included conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute fentanyl, importation and laundering of monetary instruments. She later pleaded guilty on Dec. 16, 2022, to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute fentanyl. The sentence, announced by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas on June 17, 2026, was imposed as part of the Homeland Security Task Force initiative, a federal effort aimed at cartels, foreign gangs, transnational criminal organizations and human smuggling and trafficking rings.

The Del Rio case fits a wider enforcement pattern at one of the region’s busiest crossings. In April 2022, CBP also announced a separate Del Rio seizure of 30 packages weighing 40.34 pounds, or 18.30 kilograms, of alleged fentanyl from a passenger vehicle, with Port Director Liliana Flores calling it a significant seizure of a potentially fatal hard narcotic. CBP has said more than 90% of interdicted fentanyl is stopped at ports of entry and that it has seized more fentanyl in the last two years than in the previous five years combined, a scale that helps explain why a case like Sanchez’s carries such weight in Del Rio and across the border corridor.