Cargo Theft in the Transportation Sector: A Comparative Analysis of Texas and Mexico
03.29.2026 at 01:08pm
Tractor-trailer at Otay Mesa US-MX Border Crossing. Public Domain (CC0).
Dr. Nathan Jones, Senior Small Wars Journal–El Centro Fellow, has published a technical report on a cargo theft in Mexico and Texas. The report—Cargo Theft in the Transportation Sector: A Comparative Analysis of Texas and Mexico—has significant sections on organized crime modus operandi in Mexico in relation to cargo theft with a focus on trucking theft.
Abstract: This technical report compares trucking cargo theft in the Texas and Mexico and finds fundamentally different organized crime groups (OCGs) and modus operandi at work in each entity. Mexican trucking cargo theft is fundamentally more violent and overt, whereas theft in Texas tends to be less violent and is shifting to fraud/deception mixed with cyber elements to enhance digital fraud; described as strategic theft with elements of FBI defined cyber theft. Mexican OCGs engage truck cargo theft as part of diversification of criminal activities trend. Weak state capacity in Mexico helps to explain the key differences in these criminal markets despite their parasitic feeding on a highly integrated binational transportation sector. The role of private security firms is discussed, and policy prescriptions are provided.
Dr. Jones’s findings point to a negative criminal equilibrium in Mexico in which private sector entities are forced to use the Mexican legal system to force Mexican prosecutors to actually prosecute cases against organized crime and these cargo theft crews. The report also discusses some of the new ways technologies are being used to secure supply chains and prevent these types of theft. The the technical report was published by the Institute for Homeland Security at Sam Houston State University and has direct implications for the US critical infrastructure (transportation sector).
Nathan Jones, Cargo Theft in the Transportation Sector: A Comparative Analysis of Texas and Mexico. Technical Paper. Institute for Homeland Security, Sam Houston State University (Report No. 2026 – 1036), 2026,
